Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #70: Good Firewood, Cute Bunnies, Musical Parking Spots, etc.

 

1. I was out for a drive and went past a house that had one of those racks filled with bundles of firewood. That’s pretty common, especially on Cape Cod. Then you’ll see a cheaply made sign that says something like ‘Fire Wood $10 a bundle.’ Well, this particular house must have been having bad luck with its sales. Their sign said exactly what I just wrote, but then scribbled in black marker next to it was the word ‘Good.’ So, putting ‘good’ next to your firewood sign, I don’t think, will bring new potential customers, but that’s just me. It’s like Milhouse on The Simpsons saying ‘but my mom thinks I’m cool.’ Nah, doesn’t work.

2. Nothing is better than ending a day of work by being challenged to a race on a ski ergometer by your boss. A ski erg basically mimics a skiing motion and is great for cardio training. If you’re not prepared, it can leave you wiped out. We battled it out to see who could get to 500 meters fastest. My boss did it in 1:29, I finished in 1:31. Both really great times. I was gassed and then had to drive home with my arms destroyed and feeling like I wanted to lay down and sleep. I will be trying to beat his time, though, in the future, just after warming up first.

3. I can still run, not as fast or as far as I used to, but each time I do, I feel a little more confident. Nothing kills that confidence like playing some basketball. I go to a full court at a recreation area less than a mile from where I live. Rarely, if ever, do I see people playing there so I usually have it all to myself. Running up and down the court is doable. Stopping, cutting, and most of all jumping, these are a different story. I played a ton as a kid and was even on the school team in 7^th and 8^th grade. Now staring down 50, I feel my age when trying to do any sort of jump shot. My left knee has nothing left to give. I’m surprised I can clear an anthill with my sad hops today.

4. It’s late May with Memorial Day Weekend arriving. Yet here I sat one evening this week, bundled up in my winter night clothes, wrapped in a blanket. A heavy rainstorm on Thursday was dumping 1-2” of rain. That kept temperatures hovering around 50. Coupled with gusts of over 55mph, it left it feeling like it was in the mid-30s. Of course, I’ve had my heat off for over a month, since you know it’s spring. Memorial Day Monday will be sunny and 65 but still that one chilly night was like the scene in a horror movie where the killer comes back for one more scare.

5. Few things will stop your heart than having it say your credit/debit card was declined. Luckily, when it happened this week, it was because I had mistyped my own PIN number. I was paying for something at a store and saw the ‘declined’ pop-up. Even though I knew that I had simply typed the wrong PIN number, my heart jumped. In this day and age, with identity theft being a real issue, your mind immediately goes to ‘oh no did I get hacked?’ I breathed a sigh of relief when I tried a second time with my PIN, but there was a split second where I was terrified.

6. I love rabbits. They’re so cute. The only thing cuter than a rabbit is a baby bunny. So you can imagine my thrill when coming home one evening this week, I saw a little puffball bunny eating grass in the front yard. I am working hard to get photos and/or video. I could try to coax it closer with food. The problem is that it’s a little one I don’t want to get it used to people as it’s not going to be a pet. I’d feel bad if this little baseball-sized fluffy bunny got hurt because it started hanging around waiting to be fed. There are coyotes, owls, foxes, and other animals living nearby that would love a rabbit dinner. So I’ll have to work on my skills with a zoom lens to get some bunny photos.

7. The Planet Fitness location I go to this week, finally, and I do mean finally, updated its equipment. I have the Black Card membership and have visited probably close to 10 other locations. Each of those has equipment like medicine balls, kettlebells, bands, foam rollers, and other things that are great for exercise. The gym closest to me seemed to think dumbbells and machines that constantly broke down were good enough for us. They were closed 2 full days putting in all new equipment, and I will say I was pleasantly surprised by what is there now. Although true to form when I got there, one of the new cardio machines already had an ‘out of order’ sign on it.

8. It was an odd sight while sitting in a mostly empty beach parking lot that I saw a car parked a ways away. It backed out of one spot, but rather than leaving, it moved about 3 spots down and parked again. I thought to myself, was the view really that different, like 10 feet away? They only stayed a few minutes longer, so I’ll never know what was up with them. Maybe they have a parking spot checklist and they’re trying to spend a few minutes in all of them before the end of the summer?

9. I have fallen down a rabbit hole of watching other people play the Friday the 13^th game that came out in 2017. You can play as a counselor trying to survive, or even better, you can play as Jason and kill people in some really gruesome ways. I enjoy watching others play for a few minutes as long as there’s no commentary from the players, just the sounds of Jason on a killing spree. I should probably just get the game and play myself. Then I can post YouTube videos of me playing just like a 15-year-old!

10. It takes a special kind of person to pull up to a trash can at the beach and get out to throw a full garbage bag into it in broad daylight. This lady didn’t even try to hide what she was doing. I debated saying something but I figured at least she threw it in the can, unlike the scum who leave full bags of trash on the side of the road. After she left, I briefly thought about checking to see if she had thrown anything away with her address on it. I had a fantasy of finding her house and throwing the bag on her lawn. Then I remembered this would mean I’d have to dig through someone’s bag of trash in a public place. There’s no way I wouldn’t end up looking crazy.

Initial Impressions 2.0 #19: Unknown Savings, Jury Duty, Parking Lot Musician, etc.

1. I frequent 2 supermarkets, Stop & Shop and Shaw’s. Both have rewards programs you can enter that include savings on gas. Ironically, I only routinely use the points I get through Stop & Shop. The other day I finally thought I should check Shaw’s points and see what I could do with them. It turns out that I had enough to get 70 cents a gallon off of gas. I filled my tank for a shade over $20. I guess it pays to never check your rewards points.

2. Within an hour of driving on Cape Cod on Memorial Day Weekend I was already begging for Labor Day. From the lady screaming at me to pull out of a parking lot, despite there being a car directly in my way. Oh sure lady I’ll just broadside this car so you can get to the dollar store 2 seconds faster. A man driving ahead of me also decided it would be nice to randomly slam on his brakes to let someone make a left turn. Never mind the fact that there were no cars behind me so that same car would have been turning 2 seconds later. I know it’s not all tourists, but the number of idiots naturally goes up with the number of overall people who come to the Cape to visit.

3. Does anyone know if it’s illegal to drive your car down along the power lines? I’m talking about those dirt areas directly underneath the rows of poles that extend at least a few hundred yards. I cut through this one power lines pathway on my runs and saw a random SUV parked in the middle of this area with some guy sitting in a chair outside of it. Not sure if it’s against the law or anything but it was definitely weird and suspicious to me.

4. In the warmer months I could wash my car daily and it would still never be clean. First, because it’s a white car so it shows all the dirt. Second because the parking spot I have where I live is under some trees. This leaves the car susceptible to sap, pollen, bird poop, and even bug poop. I’d invest in one of those car covers but I feel like it would take less time to wash my car daily than to take that on and off.

5. I’m terrible at keeping in touch with people who mean the most to me. I fully admit that. It’s something I am trying to work on, including picking one person to text and check in with each day. However I also realize that telephones and email work both ways, so when I see, or don’t see, those same people reaching out to me I don’t feel quite as bad.

6. Walking through the supermarket freezer section I happened upon new Totino’s Breakfast Bites. They are basically pizza rolls just with eggs/sausage, etc inside. I’ve loved pizza rolls since I was a kid so it was only natural that I let out an audible grunt/moan of excitement when I saw them. The only problem? They come in boxes of 40. Meaning I’d eat all of them in one sitting for sure. Had to pass, for now.

7. I had my latest jury duty adventure this week. It started when I got my summons in the mail last week. Immediately I went on the website to try to postpone it only to be stopped since the current date WAS my postponed date from last year, so booo #1. The next thing I had to do was cancel my training clients for that day. I couldn’t take the chance of being called in for the jury and having clients show up to my work, but I was not there, so booo #2. Then I just said the hell with it and took the entire day off from my job. Of course at 5pm the day before I was supposed to have jury duty I got the email that I didn’t have to go in, so booo #3, but also I had an extra day off to do work on the podcast, videos, and this blog, so it’s a small yay.

8. I don’t know what it says about where I live on Cape Cod but there has been a bicycle leaning up against a tree outside of the gym I go to for about a year. No exaggeration, this blue bike has sat there for that long. Nobody has claimed it, nobody has taken it. It’s almost like it’s an experiment to see how long it will stay there before someone claims it as their own. I finally got around to snapping a photo of it, so now watch it’ll be gone before the next blog goes up.

Been there for a year

9. Sitting in the middle of a Stop & Shop parking lot I saw a man who appeared to be playing a saxophone. He had a sign asking for donations. The only problem was that the music he was playing also had drums, bass, etc in it but nobody playing those instruments. Also his ‘saxophone’ looked more like a Casio keyboard. Now I’m not saying he wasn’t actually playing a sax along with a pre-recorded beat, I don’t know since I didn’t care enough to go over and scrutinize his music. That would have cost me at least a $5 in his jar.

10. Irrelevant thing that I think about too much. Is Louisville pronounced Loo-eee-ville, or Loo-uh-ville? The person’s name Louis is pronounced Loo-ee, not Loo-uh. But I’m not from there so I don’t know the proper pronunciation. Much like people who come to Massachusetts and can’t pronounce Worcester, Leominster, Peabody, or Quincy. The most egregious one I ever heard was someone who pronounced Hyannis as Hay-nis. Like, really? The only thing heinous was their stupidity.

11. Product Review: I tried the Levia Dream Seltzer, it’s cannabis-infused. It was Jam Berry in flavor and for mellowing out. It tasted like a good raspberry/blackberry mix. I enjoyed it, the dispensary I went to said it’s smooth and mellow because it’s not super potent with THC. Although they did say if you chug it you might get hit a little harder. I spent an hour drinking it and felt great. I need controlled doses of any cannabis. If I smoke I go from ‘this is fun’ to ‘oh no this is an ordeal now’ in a flash. So drinks and edibles are the way to go for me. So yeah, if you like weed drinks grab one. Here is their website: Levia Cannabis-Infused Seltzer