Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #127: Monday Rainday, Business Cards, Relax or Else, etc.

1. Monday Runday was Monday Rainday this week. I will take a little rain over 85 and humid, though every day of the week. It was fitting, though, that after just over 3 miles of circling an old school track in varying intensities of rain, the water stopped. My legs were tired, so I had no plans to run to reach my desired 3 miles. I just had to walk faster and endure the rain. One thing I have been very happy with is the durability of my headphones. I have had the same pair of big red over-ear headphones for going on 8 years. I know that someday they will break and I will need a new pair, but that wasn’t the case on this day. The rain didn’t short them out, although I didn’t risk it, and when the rain got steadier, I took my headphones off and hid them in my shirt. Years ago, at my peak as a runner, I used to enjoy running in all sorts of inclement weather. I’d run in rain, wind, snow, whatever. I guess since I ran all of those races and ran in all of the different types of weather, I have lost the desire to do so again.


2. One day this week, I was training an 87-year-old client. She was brought by her daughter-in-law and also had her 7-year-old granddaughter in tow. I have known them over the years at my work, as the daughter-in-law is a patient at my work. The 7-year-old I have known since she was a toddler, and I give her free rein to come into the gym if I am training someone and she is there. On this day, she was just hanging out while I trained her grandmother. This was after she and I failed to find a rogue cricket that had been calling the gym home. Anyway, I was training her grandmother, and so she grabbed a dry-erase marker and started scribbling on our green dry-erase board. When she left, I saw what she wrote, and it was so sweet and cute that I decided to leave it up there. I won’t erase it, but there’s no guarantee it won’t be erased. The fun coincidence was that her other grandmother was a client of mine in the afternoon. She practically melted when I told her who wrote that sweet message. I won’t leave you in suspense. I did take a photo of it to share.




3. No matter how many speaking events I do for my books, I will always feel blessed and humbled. I am always happy that people, the vast majority total strangers, take time out of their day to come out and hear me speak. That’s why I do my best to make each and every event the best I can possibly do. This week I had an event at the Eldredge Library in Chatham. Despite it being a sunny, 80-degree day in early summer, there were close to 30 people who chose to come inside, sit, and hear me speak about my latest book. In Their Footsteps: The Interesting People, Places, and Events of Cape Cod History features 40 stories from the Cape, all in chronological order. It was a fun event, and I have a few more this summer. Come and see me on July 15th at 5pm at the Snow Library in Orleans, or on July 23rd at 6pm at the Dennis Public Library. They will both be great shows, I promise!

Coming up next!

4. This week marked the 250th episode of the In My Footsteps Podcast, which I have hosted since November 2020. It’s amazing to think that the idea I had once, my brain had cleared after giving up alcohol, would have such staying power. It began as a way to distract myself from the alcohol demons I was fighting off. It was just me talking about all of the subjects I enjoyed. Slowly, it morphed into my favorite thing I do. I actually love the research, planning, recording, and yikes, even the editing of these podcasts. A podcast is easily the best way to keep in contact with your audience. You can speak about anything you want, and I bet you’d find people interested. A lot of it comes down to time. Doing all of the work surrounding the podcast can be time-consuming. If you’ve ever thought of starting your own podcast, all you need is some sort of computer, recording software, a decent microphone, a topic, and the desire to create it. My show is now strictly GenX nostalgia, but that covers a ton of ground. It ends up being nearly anything that has occurred between 1960 and 2005. You can see why I believe that I can easily do another 250 episodes. If you’ve never listened, now is your chance to start. They are fun and breezy at around an hour each. Thank you to those who have listened, and here’s to the next 250 episodes!



5. What do you do with outdated business cards? In 2009, I created my first business card. It featured Chatham Lighthouse and simply described me as an author. This was despite not having any published books or even a blog. For some reason, probably because it was a better deal, I had something like 500 cards printed. They lasted me until 2017. By that time, I had 4 published books, so a change was needed. I bring cards to my speaking events because they are a way that people can possibly keep connected, even if they don’t buy a book. The most recent cards I had made were when I had 6 published books. I now have 10. I am currently in the process of designing new cards that I should have for my next event. The outdated cards are something else. Around the time I redesigned my author cards in 2017, I also created personal trainer cards. I thought I might be able to drum up business for in-home training if I had my own business cards to hand out. I might have had 100 made, and in the 9 years since, have probably handed out less than 20. That means I have a boatload of cards with a photo of me from 2014 promoting something I have no desire to do again currently, that being in-home training. Oh, but wait, there’s more. I also created cards for my podcast. Again, about 100 made. The problem is, since I printed those, I changed not only my podcast logo, but what the show is about in general. So those are even more useless than the training cards. Yay. I have something like 150 useless business cards. I might keep one of each and then send the rest through the shredder at work.


6. Family get-togethers used to be a regular occurrence when I was younger. Now they have become fewer and further apart. Despite having a pretty busy schedule for the most part, I try my best to make time if a family get-together is on the horizon. This week I was able to do so. I went to have dinner with my cousin Patrick, who was still on Cape Cod from Las Vegas. We were at our cousins Richard and Dale’s house. They are our 2nd cousins. It was a wonderful and worthwhile experience. The weather was perfect, so we all ate outside. I sometimes forget that Dale used to run a restaurant on Cape Cod decades ago and is an accomplished cook. She just casually whipped up a Bearnaise sauce, Greek salad with dressing, and fresh whipped cream like it was no big deal. I was tired from a busy day, but didn’t want the dinner to end. At this point in my life, I do realize that you never know when another family moment like that might happen. Even when the sun was starting to go down after 8pm, I stood out in the driveway with Patrick and just talked about anything we could. It was a battle between fatigue and genuinely wanting to stay and chat as long as my body would hold up. I am grateful for these moments today, when, as a kid, they were so common that I felt almost as if I could miss a handful and not miss a thing. Patrick says he might come back to Cape Cod next year, but you never know what happens, so I am glad we got a lot of chances to spend time together during this visit. If you are lucky, you end up with many family members that you would rearrange your day just to spend some time with. I am that type of lucky.




7. Every time I go into a certain local supermarket, if a specific employee is working there, they always say hi to me. Not ‘hi’ like they’re just going through the motions, but saying it like they know me. I see this guy who has to be maybe a few years older than me, going about his job, but nine times out of ten, if I pass by him, he stops and specifically says hello to me. He even occasionally asks how things are going. I am sure he is probably just friendly, and he does the same thing with other customers, but I don’t have any other employee at any other supermarket do that. Part of me wants to stop and ask if we know each other, but I doubt it. He never says my name or asks anything more specific that might make me think we have a history. Believe me, it’s not a bad thing. I’d much rather have someone go out of their way to say hi to me than the alternative. I could only imagine having someone shoot me a dirty look every time I was in their store.


8. When I was at my peak as a runner, probably 2015-2016, I used to run sometimes as much as 40 to 50 miles per week. I definitely had my share of aches, pains, and injuries, yet somehow I kept going year after year. Once I injured my right hip while training for a Top 10 finish in a 5K in 2018, things changed. The injuries tipped the scales, and slowly but surely, my running career faded. I kept trying, but it was an exercise in futility. A few years ago, I made a concerted effort to return to running races. I at least wanted to do one, even if my time was nowhere near what I used to be able to do. I competed in three races between 2024 and 2025. The last race I did, my time was something like 6 minutes better than I expected. My confidence was sky high. Only a few weeks later, I severely sprained my ankle and everything shut down. I haven’t run a race since and haven’t run much at all. In the last month or so, I started wondering if there was anything that I had done when I was at my peak as a runner that I might be able to add back into my life that might help me start running more. Two things came to mind. One was making BCAAs (branched-chain amino acids) part of my daily life. They help muscles recover from strenuous exercise. The other was adding more glucosamine to my supplement regimen. It helps with the lubrication of joints and overall joint health. When I was running 40+ miles a week, I took more than the recommended dose of glucosamine regularly, and my knees and hips always responded well. I figured it was worth a shot to try that again. It takes two weeks or so to get the full effect of any vitamin or supplement into your body, so I didn’t attempt anything before then. I have noticed in the time since I started taking 1.5x the recommended amount of glucosamine that my joints, specifically my knees, feel better than they have in quite a while. This came to a head this weekend when I went for a long walk. It was like my legs were craving running, so I gave in. It wasn’t like it used to be. There were no stretches of sub-7-minute miles. But I did end up running much more than I have in months. There were even points where I thought I should stop and walk, but my body was on autopilot like the old days. I just kept running and focusing on my stride. Only time will tell if this is a significant development in my running life or if it’s my brain tricking my body until something else breaks. Either way, it felt good to be running on a beautiful summer morning on Cape Cod again.


9. It’s amazing how a little dose of the old runner’s high can make a route I’ve gone down hundreds of times feel fresh and new. A favorite running route leads along a river to the beach. It’s through a historic village and is in total just over three miles from my front door to the ocean’s edge. When I was a competitive runner, I’d enjoy the route but be more focused on my pace. Now I can stop and take it all in at times. Little coves, flowers, loads of walkers and riders, historic homes, and ample beachfront views. I figured, why not create a little video of this route? You never know who might get inspired to check it out themselves. You can drive it if you want, but walking or cycling is better.




10. In recent weeks, I have started to try to make Sundays into a day when I don’t do anything major. I make it a day where I sit around and relax. No exercise, no content work, just mindlessly recharging my battery. It’s not that I’ve lost the desire to work hard on my content or enjoy some sort of exercise, but I have found that if I never relax, I feel like I am in a constant state of fatigue to start my new work week. My brain automatically goes to projects I should be working on. I admit I will do some minor work, like posting links to projects on social media. However, more involved things have to be put on the back burner at least for a day. There have been long stretches over the last 5 or so years where I have felt in a state of perpetual burnout. My energy levels crater, and I get agitated at that. A month or so ago, I decided to force myself to sit and relax all Sunday. I did this by binging several episodes of the Netflix series Dark. I felt for so long that if I wasn’t constantly working on something, I’d fall behind whatever imaginary metric there was to show my progress in creative fields. Now I have come to realize that if I don’t take at least a day to fully relax and recharge, it could lead to longer stretches where I just can’t keep that pace up physically or mentally. Not just for me but for anyone, make sure you take some time, some real time, to relax and recharge. It will do you a world of good.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #116: Something Very Bad, 12 Seasons, A Cool Bike Rack, etc.

1. My latest binge-worthy show on Netflix is a recent addition to the platform. Something Very Bad Is About To Happen is a horror series created by Hayley Boston and produced by the Duffer Brothers. It is about a woman who is going to get married, but things start happening that kind of tell her maybe she shouldn’t marry into her future husband’s family. It just came out on Netflix in the last week or so. I already enjoy it. The show is pretty dark, moody, creepy, and atmospheric. I will do my best not to spoil anything. There are eight episodes, and it’s unclear if there will be a second season since it’s being promoted as a ‘limited series.’ Highly recommended if you enjoy psychological horror.

2. A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I had a man in the gym at work running on a treadmill in an active metabolic test. During that test, for some reason, the power in half of the gym suddenly went out. It was pretty dangerous since it immediately turned off the treadmill when it was going close to 8mph. Nothing had happened like that since, so I thought maybe it was a one-time anomaly. Nope. This week, it was a woman on the treadmill doing oxygen therapy. This is where you perform some sort of moderate cardio while breathing in 93% pure oxygen through a mask. I was in the middle of performing shockwave therapy on a patient's shoulder when I noticed all of the lights went out in the gym. This wasn’t part of the power; it was all of it. I had to ask someone else to go and check if the woman was alright. She was, but it was again very dangerous that the power just decided to go out. There was nothing different on our end, so it might be something that the owners of the building need to get taken care of.


3. It’s the time of year when the herring start making their journey from ponds to the ocean on Cape Cod. We have a few herring runs on the Cape. Perhaps the most well-known is the Stony Brook one in Brewster. It had been getting a major facelift over the past year, so it was unknown if it would be done and reopened in time for the annual explosion of herring through the waters. If you’ve never seen the herring run, think of it as thousands of 6-8” long fish trying to swim from a pond, down a series of fish ladders, and out to the ocean. Then imagine split rail fences on either side of the rushing water, lined with hungry gulls. It becomes a fight for survival with loads of fish being swallowed long before they reach their destination. This year, there is an added level of difficulty as osprey have joined the chat as far as grabbing a herring lunch. As of this writing, I have seen the herring, but seeing as how I drive by there daily on my way to and from work, I’ll be stopping in to try to get some footage of the impending massacre.

A wide view of the herring run.

4. In New England, we have a long-running joke that instead of 4 seasons, we have 12. This is based on the wacky ways our weather evolves over the year. As of this blog, we are about halfway through April. Several weeks into spring. Wherever you are reading this from, what is the weather like? Spring? Summer? Probably somewhere in there. We are currently in Third Winter, aka our 5th season of 12. Just this past week, we’ve had lows dip into the mid 20s and even had a few flakes in the air one day when the high didn’t even reach 40. I’m not saying I need it to be 70 instantly, but at least have it be in the low 50s consistently. Up next in our year in New England is The Pollening. I’m super excited for my allergies to leap out from behind a bush and whack me on the head like a mob hit. Anyway, you know I’d have the full 12 seasons of New England sheet for you.

5. Sometimes it’s best to keep things simple when it comes to exercise. I have a client at my job who is pretty hardcore. I enjoy being able to craft some elaborate, fun, and challenging exercises for her. Sometimes, though, I might take it a step too far in terms of complication. An idea I had this week was a sort of kettlebell drag. I took three yoga straps and tied them together before taking the end of the last one and tying it to a 26-pound kettlebell. The object is to use the straps to pull the bell to your feet. Then you’d walk across the gym and pull the bell toward you again, and so on. The apparatus was all set to go. I had been bragging excitedly about the setup to her. She grabbed one end of the straps, gave it a pull, and instantly, one of the knots I’d tied came undone. Fail #1. So I tied it back up as tightly as I could. She grabbed one end, gave it a pull, bam, another one came untied with a metal clasp, going flying. Fail #2. This time, she tied it back together. One drag of the kettlebell, and she said it wasn’t challenging enough. So I grabbed a thick band and proceeded to tie a heavier kettlebell to the 26-pound one. Again, overcomplicated. One last time, she grabbed the strap and gave it a pull. This time, the third and final yoga strap popped off with another metal clasp flying. We both laughed pretty hard...then she had to do sets on the battle ropes. So the joke ended up being on her.


6. Having a good edible means editing photos on your phone while simultaneously scanning the room, looking for where you put your phone. Not much else can be said about this. I indulge in an edible every now and then. Usually, I just veg out watching Netflix. I started editing photos from a little shoot I did, which is coming up next. I got so zoned out editing the photos that my mind began wandering to someone I wanted to text. I looked around for my phone so I could text, and it actually took me a minute to realize my phone was in my hands. Hey, at least I just stay home rather than subject the rest of society to my foolishness in that state.


7. I took a quick hop over the bridge to get some video at the nearby but remote Scusset Beach in Sagamore Beach. I began with my new favorite thing, using my selfie stick to shoot video out of my car’s roof while driving. That was fun, as was the walk out to the end of the jetty. Naturally, with my location at the Cape Cod Canal, I was able to watch a few boats go in and out, including a much bigger ship. One funny thing about Scusset Beach is that there is a very specific bike rack there that I am obsessed with. Every time I go, I stare at it and inevitably take a photo of it. I don’t know if it’s just the design of it, but it has been a thing of mine for probably 25 years. If I go to Scusset, I will end up gawking at that bike rack.

Almost hypnotic

8. I graduated from middle school (8th grade) in 1992. That was the last time I had been inside the halls of Mattacheese Middle School on Cape Cod. Until this week, that is. I was out for a long walk and ended up deciding to head over to Mattacheese, which was close to 3 ½ miles in each direction. The school itself is closed, although the gym and outdoor fields are still used for youth sports. I was there, and the gym was being used, so naturally I walked in. I was not able to go very far since the rest of the school was still locked. I did get to see the gym, the chorus room where I had music class, and use a bathroom, which was thrilling. Don’t worry though, I let the staff there know what I was doing, so I didn’t look too suspicious wandering down the halls.

Definitely don't look 14 anymore

9. This past week has felt like I am trying to get the train rolling down the tracks again after basically spending the last few months just trying to survive winter. There are so many projects I am working on, will be working on, or want to work on. It feels now like I need to take a step back and try to organize things and make a plan for the rest of the year. My mind is like a front yard after a storm, covered in branches and other debris. I just have to find a place to start cleaning up. I guess I didn’t realize how tough this winter was mentally until I sat down and tried to pick up where I left off with projects, and it was like chasing dandelion spores in the wind. Luckily, there’s no pressing deadline on any projects, at least for this month.


10. It’s amazing how you can fall out of the habit of something that was second nature for so many years. I was a regular at the gym from my college days. I remember working out in the highly retro gym at Cape Cod Community College. There was equipment that was 20 years old when I was going in the late 1990s. No matter what, though, I was at the gym working out 4-5x per week. Unless I was hurt or sick, I was a regular. Now, I have been working as a personal trainer for 10 years, and I find it harder than ever to keep up appearances at the gym. When exercise became work, it changed things. When I worked as a cook, I hated cooking at home. It became an extension of my job. Now with training, it’s becoming the same thing. I do it all day and rarely have the desire to do it again after work. I don’t think it’s all because I train people for a job. I am closing in on 50. My body has seen its fair share of injuries. I have lingering right hip and left knee issues from running, and no doubt am starting to feel the creep of arthritis in my left shoulder and right elbow. Plus, as you age, your energy levels naturally drop. It’s all stacked against me. That being said, I also know, because training is my job, that exercise is a positive solution to a lot of issues. I think this spring into summer will be a lot of me recalibrating what I am looking to do with myself at the gym. I can’t really run. I can’t really lift heavy. What I can do, though, is show up and keep moving.

The end of the jetty at Scusset Beach

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #114: Cash Windfall, 2004 All Over Again, Shell Tree Redux, etc.

1. We have a thing in my state, Find Mass Money. It’s for people to check whether they have unclaimed money, property, stocks, or anything like that. I used it once before and had a small amount of money I was owed on a Sears credit card, probably from the early 2000s, back when Sears was still a thing. This week, one of my sisters messaged me saying that they found me on Find Mass Money. I went and checked. It was through Google and had me listed at an address I hadn’t been at since 2010. I was intrigued and claimed my ‘property.’ For a few minutes, it was like waiting for the lottery numbers to get drawn. Would it be some untold fortune that I had forgotten about? Then I got the email. I’d be getting a check sent to me for the sum of $8.29. Yay. Oh well, it is free money. At least I assume it is. I have no clue what I did to earn it. I’m guessing selling ebooks way back then. Luckily, it’ll only be 6 weeks until I get my check. I can buy a small pizza with a coupon code.


2. If I don’t have a client to train at the beginning or end of my shift at work, I will usually adjust my schedule accordingly so I can have a little extra time to do content/creative work. I had a pair of days this week where it was the opposite. I had a client at the beginning and end of my shift, but nothing in the middle. That’s the worst because it leaves me hours to fill. If we have other therapies to do, or if I have paperwork to do, I can make the day not seem excruciatingly long. However, one day this week, I walked in the door and within 5 seconds found out my first client had canceled less than an hour earlier. She said she ‘didn’t feel well.’ I think it was because it was raining. Anyway, the big issue wasn’t the cancellation. It was the fact that I had no other client until 6 hours later. This meant I could have clocked in maybe two hours later and gotten a lot of work done at home. I was pretty angry about that, but I did my best not to take it out on anyone else.


3. Something that doesn’t happen every day. At work, I was leading both a resting and an active metabolic test. The resting is easy. You sit in a dark room for 10 minutes and breathe normally through a mask with a filter, and the data is recorded. The active is more difficult. Think of it as a sort of stress test. You warm up, typically on a treadmill, and then go through an escalating ramp-up. You go until your body has had enough and then get to do a shorter recovery. Again, you breathe through the filtered mask with the data being recorded. When running the treadmill, the speeds can get up there as the client pushes themselves to the brink. When I did my test a few years ago, I was cruising up to 8.8mph on the treadmill. For this active test, I had the client running the treadmill. They were up to 7.9mph. By that point, we had enough data, so I told them that if they wanted to stop, we could. They wanted to go a little longer, which was fine. Then fate intervened. Out of nowhere, a fuse blew and immediately shut the power off to the treadmill. Luckily, the client caught themselves before they went flying into the monitor. I have no idea what happened. We’ve had the same equipment powered on for a few years and never had a fuse blow. It might have been from somewhere else in the building connected to the same circuit breaker. The client definitely wasn’t complaining that the test was just suddenly over, though. That was the most unique ending to one of those metabolic tests.


4. Being that I am knee-deep in Season 3 of Yellowjackets, you could say I was a little happy to see that Christina Ricci, who plays Misty, had joined Threads. Being that I am a big fan of hers and may have had (or still have) a crush on her for 30 years, I wondered if I should message her, welcoming her to Threads. I went halfway and shared a post that I tagged her in, mostly since I am sure she’ll be getting loads of DM’s and other mentions. I have a slightly higher than zero percent chance of her seeing it or responding, but just know that if she does, you’ll be able to hear me fanboying out through your screen.

5. I was partying like it was 2004 this week. The washing machine where I live is down, so I’ve been driving to the next town over to use the laundromat. Back 20+ years ago, I frequented the same spot to do laundry, not to hang out. So that has been a blast from the past. I’ve even taken the scenic route down past where I lived at the time. After putting together my 1990s retro short video on Instagram and busting out an old flannel for it, I had been jonesing to start wearing them again. I haven’t worn a flannel shirt regularly in probably 20 years. I thought that I needed to change and evolve my style as I grew older. This week though, I caved and wore the same flannel I used to wear when going to that same laundromat back in the mid 2000s. I played my new favorite 1990s playlist I created on Spotify, and pulled up to the laundromat feeling like it was 2004. I doubt I’ll go back to torn jeans like back in the 90s though. I’m like a hybrid of several versions of myself now. It’s interesting how you grow and evolve even when you don’t think you are.


6. There are certainly different levels of stupidity in the world. Driving up a sidewalk thinking it’s a road has to be near the top. Yes, I saw this happen this week. A person pulled their car up the paved walkway leading from the sidewalk to a library. Hopefully realizing how dumb they were, they pulled back out onto the main road, took a turn, and drove into the actual library parking lot. How do these morons even have licenses? They were either a moron or drunk. Instead of GPS and onboard computers, new vehicles should have tattlers like some trucks do. These should be connected to the local police or DMV, and they should register when an idiot driver breaks a law or makes a dangerous mistake while driving. It should tally points with some infractions being more than others. Speeding, crossing into the other lane, cutting people off, these things should be added up, and once you hit a certain magic number, your license is revoked, and your car shuts off wherever you are. Then you have to pay to have it towed as an extra kick in the ass for your stupidity. It’s beyond ridiculous the number of stupid drivers I see. They are all ages, too.


7. One of my new favorite things to do is shoot driving content. I open my moon roof and stick my arm out of it while holding my phone. Before we go too far, I have only done this on quiet back roads with nobody driving behind me, not on a main road or highway. I did a trial run of shooting using my selfie stick from the roof. I hadn’t used it before because I was worried the phone would blow away, because of course it would. After a successful video using the selfie stick, I was even more enthused about driving content. I had a plan to drive to Skaket Beach in Orleans. I knew where I could stop, assemble my apparatus, and get to recording. The drive was a minute or so. I was excited because I could hear birds in the trees while driving. I slowly pulled into a parking spot facing the water. It was perfect, or was it? Nope. Apparently, after I hit record on my phone, I accidentally stopped recording before the dang selfie stick was even extended. So my whole drive down was for nothing. What did I do? Drive back out and do it again. Yes, I did the Skaket Beach drive again because the footage was so good. In the end, I parked in the same spot again, between the same cars. I am sure I looked highly suspect.




8. Winter is finally over, yes. But nothing said the winter weather would go away. Having temperatures hovering around freezing and even seeing some flakes this weekend is enough to make me rip my hair out. Everywhere else in the country is seeing record highs, and in New England, it’s mid-30s. I feel like my body and mind have just shut down until we get our first real taste of spring. I just want to sit around and wait for it. Of course, I will force myself outside to get some high-quality video, but if I didn’t have that, I’d literally say call me when it’s 60. It looks like this upcoming week might see us get regularly into the 50s just in time for April to start. Fingers crossed.


9. I was raised at a time when you were basically on your own growing up, and you had to figure most things out yourself. Being a Gen-Xer meant becoming an adult, or at least feeling like an adult, long before you even had your driver’s license. It made you keenly aware and objectively skeptical of nearly everything and everyone around you. I think this protected us who grew up in the 80s and 90s, but it’s not as helpful the older you get. It makes it that much harder for you to open up and ask for help or advice. As I stare down 50, I feel at times like I am still trying to figure out what my path is. I have many things I enjoy, and I believe several useful skills that could be turned into paying jobs that will feel fulfilling. The problem comes with asking for advice. I feel like I should know what it is I want to do and how to get there. So if I never ask outside voices, even close friends and family, what they think, all I get left with is my own voice. My voice has certain beliefs, fears, and hangups. I try, but at times feel like I can’t see beyond the limitations my own voice and thoughts put on me. So it becomes a process where I am on a treadmill with a sail on it. I am constantly moving on the treadmill, but I can only go so far as the wind will move the actual machine. But being on the treadmill feels safer and more secure than stepping off onto the unknown ground.


10. As far as dating sites go, the worst free version has to be eHarmony. There are two giant issues with that site. One is that you don’t see photos. Well, you do, but they’re blurred. Yeah, I know, the site is meant to match you on personality, but come on. I can’t even get a vague idea of what a person looks like. It’s like they’re in witness protection. The other issue that is even bigger is the fact that your matches are based on your state. Anybody from your state is sent as a match on the free version. I live in Massachusetts, so I could, and have, had matches from over 200 miles away. I’m willing to push my match distance to 50 miles, but over 200? Not a chance. That’s just me. Imagine living in California? You could get matched with someone 1,000 miles away. Why even have match distances then? It’s so dumb. Just match everyone in the U.S. with anyone, regardless of distance. The ultimate disaster would be driving 3 hours to meet a match with the blurred face and getting there, and they’re hideous. Now what? Drive all the way home, or waste more money on a hotel for the night? Yikes. You might be asking why I keep my profile there. Probably laziness. I check every so often, get mad at how lame it is, and quickly sign out. Plus, my profile is hidden, so it’s not like I get messages.


11. It’s interesting how many things can change in a few years. No, this isn’t something about life. It’s about a spot I hadn’t been to on Cape Cod in, I’d guess, 5 years. Long Beach in Centerville is ostensibly just the western end of the more well-known Craigville Beach. There is no divider separating the two beaches. At least that’s how it used to be. Years ago, there used to be this amazing dead tree located about a mile walk from the parking area that was adorned with what had to be a hundred or more shells. Some were painted, others were just resting on or tied to the tree. I believe it was either a dead tree or just a gigantic piece of driftwood with numerous branches. Anyway, probably in 2021, word got out that the shell tree had been destroyed. I went out to see, and it was true. All that remained was a few shells on the ground, and I think a sawed-off stump. The rich jerks who owned that piece of beach decided that they needed to put us commoners in our place and ruin something that only brought joy to those who ventured out that way. This weekend, I returned, hoping that maybe a new shell tree had sprung up. I did find one about a mile out. It was much smaller with a few dozen shells on it. The big thing now is that Long Beach is littered with ‘private property’ signs. Granted, you can walk the water line, but the sign says it’s the owner's discretion. So beware, just when you think the rich assholes have forgotten, they’re going to strike and put a barbed wire fence across the beach. Not so that they can enjoy their ‘private property’ but just so that we have less public space to enjoy.

Part of the new, smaller shell tree.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #106: Neverending Winter, Going Viral, Being Stubborn, etc.

1. What a whopper of a snowstorm. On Cape Cod, we got around a foot of heavy wet snow, with nearly double that in some places off-Cape. With the way the roads were, I ended up with a day off from work on Monday. Rather than drive the slushy roads to the gym, I used shoveling the snow as a workout. I only had to do half of the driveway, and I ended up burning over 800 calories in more than an hour of shoveling. It was hard work but a lot of fun as I wore my headphones and played music while some flurries fell. Sadly, the weather shows that we won’t be getting much in the way of melting. It’s supposed to be around or below freezing for the next several weeks. Early in the week, it looked like we might be in line for yet another storm. Luckily, it was a bust, and we only got flurries.


2. After the snow ended, it was relatively warm, so I ventured out before dark. I figured run to the store and get home before it was dark and the really cold air returned. While I was driving, I had to avoid a couple of sidewalk snow plows that were taking wide turns into the street. That was fine. On my way home, I started getting a little comfortable. I thought the roads were nice and safe. Then I saw a plow stopped in the middle of the road ahead of me. It turned out that an SUV had rear-ended it. I don’t think it was a case of bad roads. I mean, they were free of any snow, so the plow wasn’t, you know, plowing. I am assuming that the SUV driver was going too fast, rounded a corner, and slammed into the plow, which was going slower. Seeing that immediately made me slow down and just concentrate on getting home in one piece.


3. I swear that if the people who own the building where I work could, they would not do any sort of upkeep during the winter. We have had the plow people ‘not show’ after one storm. Now, this week, it looks like they hired someone who had never driven a plow to push piles of snow all over the employee parking lot. It wasn’t cleared; the snow was just moved to other areas still in the way. Also, their idea of ‘clearing the walkway’ was literally clearing one shovel’s width of snow. I shouldn’t be surprised, I mean, it took them two years to fix our mini split in the gym so we could have consistent heat. At this rate, we’re going to have to park at the beach and get taken via shuttle bus to work. What a joke.


4. Dedication to the Craft. I was asked by a big Boston Instagram account to get a video of the slush waves for a collaboration. They have close to 350K followers, so I thought it was a nice chance to get some exposure. I went in the morning before work. The snow was packed, but as I trudged through it, I started sinking up to my knees. I pressed on and walked until I reached what I thought was about the edge of the water. I started shooting and started feeling my feet getting freezing cold. It turns out I wasn’t at the edge of the water; I was standing ankle deep in slush water. Still, I couldn’t stop until I got an adequate amount of video. After 30 seconds, I was done. My feet were soaked and frozen. My toes were numb for an hour. I got to work and immediately took off my shoes and socks to thaw my feet out. Nothing like walking around barefoot at your job. I legit had to microwave my socks; that was a fun experience. That being said, my Instagram video, I got for the collaboration, as of this writing, has more than 50,000 likes and over 1 MILLION views. It actually went viral, so I’d say it was a fair trade. Here is that video.



5. Finding out I have a bad case of Golfer’s Elbow (Medial Epicondylitis) is good in one sense because I can get some exercises and a brace and hopefully be good as new in a few weeks. It’s bad in another sense because I do not, and have never, played golf. I found out that my case of it is from doing what I’m doing now, writing at my laptop. A funny side note is that on the day I got my official diagnosis from my boss, my 13-year-old client came in to train. He showed me no mercy like he was a sensei at Cobra Kai. He wanted me to throw a 10-pound slam ball as hard as I could at him. I did my best, but he continued to call my attempts weak. I might be almost 50, but being called out still can work. So my elbow was sore after work, but I’ll never let him know.


6. This week I finished binging Cobra Kai on Netflix. For those who don’t know, it is a series based on the Karate Kid original trilogy. It literally has everyone who was in those movies as part of the 6 seasons and 65 episodes. As a fan of the movies, I absolutely loved the series. It’s the perfect mix of action, drama, humor, and heart. I was every bit as invested in this series as I was in Stranger Things. I won’t spoil much, but having finished the main character has to be Johnny Lawrence and his story arc, despite Daniel Larusso being a big part of the series. It has tons of amazing 80s music, which always gets an A in my book. On top of that, there are so many great characters. There are the kids being trained in karate. There are the characters you remember from the movies. There are tons of Easter eggs from the original movies that fans will love picking up on. What I really loved was that, despite there being good and bad people in reality, everybody was a shade of gray. Even the worst villains had things that made you feel for them or even root for them. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a show to get into.

7. I was chatting with one of my clients this week about how it’s been the snowiest winter in years, and I can’t wait for spring. She is heading to Florida for a vacation. I said it was good for her, but that we still had about 7 weeks of winter left. She said, ‘Oh no, actually it’s only 4.’ What? Spring starts on March 20th. According to her logic, it would begin about February 26th. Maybe she doesn’t know the actual first day of spring? She is in her 80s, so maybe she’s just making up her own calendar now? I just smiled and nodded and said goodbye. In my mind, I’m guessing that in those extra 3 weeks she’s lost, we’re going to end up getting at least one major snowstorm because she jinxed it.


8. I was born blond, so sometimes my brain doesn’t work at full power. I had plans one day this week to get done at work and go to the gym to use the treadmill for an hour. On this day, the temperature was in the low 20s, so my motivation to drive 20 minutes and then work out was low. Then it dawned on me. I work in a gym. We were closed, and I had the entire place to myself. I realized I could *gasp* work out there! I simply punched out, changed into my workout gear, and got onto the treadmill. In the time it would have taken me to drive to the gym, I already had put in more than a mile on the treadmill. All jokes aside, I think I choose to go to the gym so that I’m not just hanging around my job after hours. Like when I was a cook, I didn’t want to then change and go sit out front and have dinner. I just wanted to get the F out of there.


9. Over the last few years, I have felt less guilt about not reaching out to people I don’t hear from because communication works both ways. If I’m not reaching out, it also means they’re not. Still, there is an old friend I haven’t spoken to in over 5 years now that has been on my mind a lot recently. We were very similar personality-wise. This could be the best or worst thing. I tended to see a lot of myself in her, and some of her quirks were like holding a mirror up to myself. That can be hard to deal with. One similarity we have is extreme stubbornness. This comes back to the ‘not reaching out’ thing. We had a bit of a falling out. It mostly came down to my alcohol problems. I was not ready to accept my issues and instead cut her off. By the time I got sober, she was ready to move several hundred miles away. We never did reconnect. She also isn’t on any social media. However, I do still have her in my phone. Remember the stubbornness? I just can’t bring myself to text her. I don’t know if she’ll be happy to hear from me, or if she’s held onto the anger at our falling out. Knowing that we are similar, I think of what I would do. I honestly don’t know if I’d be happy or if I’d immediately go back into the last argument we had. So for now, I’ll share a few cryptic posts, hoping that another friend of hers will see and mention it to her. I thought I had left that stuff back in 2013.


10. When slush waves arrive in winter, it can’t be long until the icebergs return as well. It has been well below average temperature-wise on Cape Cod in the last month. We routinely have highs stuck in the low 20s or worse. On a day this week with highs in the mid-teens and a wind chill hovering around zero, I took a ride. I stopped at a popular photography spot, Bass Hole. It is on Cape Cod Bay, and sure enough, it was totally iced over. It looked, and felt, like I was standing on Antarctica. I lasted 5 minutes in the cold before tapping out. As much as I can’t wait until spring arrives, in 7 weeks, remember, I am glad I got these photos. You can actually feel the cold through them. Side note, it took close to 10 minutes for the tips of my fingers to get their feeling back.

11. The frozen over Cape Cod Bay has been a goldmine as far as photos and videos go. The last trip out this week was to Rock Harbor, which is a part of both Orleans and Eastham. I knew it would be a vast sea of icebergs. The issues had to do with the deep snow and ice. I wore sneakers, which work well on stable ground, ice not so much. The snow was playing jokes. I was walking on it, and it held just long enough for me to think it was solid, only to sink in up to my knees. It made it hard to walk out and back from my car. I also had a few fun times on the ice. I went down a couple of times, including a nice bruise on my right shin. My hands were pretty frozen as well. Despite it sounding like I hated my time out there, I loved every second of it, especially when I looked over the photos. Still can’t wait for spring though.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #100: Back In Time, Fox Sounds, 90s Mindset, etc.

1. I got an important message on Facebook this week. I need to convert my security to two-factor authentication before a certain date. The date? December 31, 1969. So not only do I need to change my security settings on Facebook, but I also need to find Doc Brown and the DeLorean and go back over 50 years to do it. It doesn’t give me a lot of confidence in security settings when they can’t even get the year right. If I have no other choice, I’ll wait until they at least get the date right before I go switching up my security settings.


2. Stand By Me and The Princess Bride were two of the most important films of my childhood in the 1980s. Rob Reiner was one of the most important directors of the last 40 years. Far beyond his work as Mike ‘Meathead’ Stivic on All In the Family, he created some of the most beloved films of my life. Death comes for all of us. It is undefeated. But for someone so beloved in Hollywood to be murdered in his own home in his late 70s, it’s beyond awful. I’m sure more details will be coming out in the weeks to come, but it appears as though it was his own son who did it. Sad, so damn sad. RIP Rob Reiner.


3. I signed up again for Netflix this week. It was mostly due to my FOMO over the final season of Stranger Things. I signed up for the lowest tier, with ads, for $7.99. I was anticipating being overloaded with ads. Thus far I have watched four episodes of Stranger Things Season 4, because I have to catch up, and I have yet to see one single ad. I even had to go check and make sure I didn’t accidentally sign up at a higher tier. You know what that means, right? At some point in the near future, the luck will even out, and I’ll be watching a show that is 75% ads. I have jinxed myself, but it’ll be worth it for Stranger Things, Cobra Kai, and Black Mirror.


4. I absolutely loved IT: Welcome To Derry. The show was loaded with easter eggs for lovers of the IT movies and also expanded the lore of those movies and the book. The plan is for 2 more seasons, each taking place in a different year as Pennywise continues his quest to destroy his enemies, present and future. If you enjoy horror, you’ll love this. It’s shot beautifully and should win an Emmy for cinematography, and other things. The acting is first-class. There are 8 total episodes, and each one feels like a movie in and of itself. I will not spoil anything for those who are watching or are going to watch. All I’ll say is that at the end, you’ll see how the prequel show lines up with the movies. Excellent.

5. In the continuing adventures of training my 12-year-old client comes this gem. We normally throw a 10# medicine ball back and forth for almost our entire 30-minute session. This week, his shoulder was tired, and his legs were tired from snow fun. I found a workaround by having him kick a kid’s rubber ball. His heart rate was still getting up there, and we made a game out of it. Luckily, without any weight to the ball, it could hit anything and not cause damage. Well, almost anything. During our session, the very first kick he did managed to be a line drive to my nuts. I had to not sell the impact, otherwise the whole session would have turned into him trying to nail me in the junk with the ball, or something more dangerous. In all, it was a fun time with 300 calories burned by me.


6. I have vivid dreams quite often. I will wake up multiple times per week, remembering whatever the dream was that I had. Most of the time, they are just random stuff, as most dreams tend to be. This week I had a dream like that, although it did feel like it had more meaning. I was at a school track with my friend Mike, of Monday Runday fame. For the first time ever, we were joined by our other friends Steve and Greg. What made this dream stand out was that our friend Pete showed up. Sadly, he passed away from cancer a little over 3 years ago. In the dream, he was drinking a specific type of water that, in the dream world, we recognized as being one taken off the market because it was proven to cause cancer. He had to have me and Greg scrub down the bleachers with soap and water so he could safely sit on them, as he had a compromised immune system in the dream. I don’t remember much of what we spoke about; it was brief, but I remember the water and us all bringing up how it had been pulled for causing cancer. I wish there were some special message Pete had for me to relay to the others. Maybe there was, but I forgot it. I think the fact that he was there, and I had never dreamed of all of those other friends before, makes this a special dream. Thanks for visiting, Pete.


7. As a big fan of the Back to the Future movies, I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of time travel. I can’t build a time machine. I don’t know how to make a flux capacitor. However, little did I know that I didn’t need to build a time machine. I have access to one in the basement in the form of the dryer. I was drying my laundry this week and waiting for the last 3 minutes to tick off on the timer. All of a sudden, boom! It’s back up to 19 minutes! I went 16 minutes into the past just like that. Nothing important happened, like me knowing the Powerball numbers or being able to save someone from an accident. Nope. In fact, it was just the fact that my clothes apparently weren’t dry in the time the dryer said they would be. So, in conclusion, the dryer isn’t a time machine, but it is a liar.


8. A strange occurrence happened one afternoon this week. We had a day of pretty steady rain, but as the sunset drew close, I noticed that there were some breaks in the clouds. I figured it was a perfect excuse to get outside since it was in the 50s in mid-December. I drove to a nearby beach and snapped a few cool photos before heading back to my car to post them on social media. While I was sitting in my car, I heard a strange sound. I thought it was either a kid screaming or an odd dog barking. I looked in my mirrors and saw a fox standing in the parking lot, maybe 20 feet behind my car. I stepped out and began shooting a video. It trotted away, but not before making that same odd barking sound on video. I went back to sitting in my car, but heard the barks a few more times and saw the fox walking through the parking lot toward the beach. Being foolish, I got out and started trying to find it to get more photos or videos. Now I had watched the fox running, and it didn’t look injured, so I felt like I wouldn’t get attacked. It was also dusk, so it was hard to see where it could have been hiding. Eventually, after walking across the entire beach, I heard it barking again. It was sitting up on a hill next to a fence, barking. I didn’t dare get too close, so I didn’t end up getting any more video. A person walking to the beach also heard the fox and thought it might have been calling its mate. I wasn’t going to keep chasing after it, especially since it disappeared under the fence. I did get the video, though.



9. I have been writing for decades. I first wanted to become a writer when I was in 2nd grade. I’ve done poetry, song lyrics, short stories, novels, blogs, and various other types of books. Despite having some experience in writing, I am surprised at how much of a learning curve there is for me when it comes to script writing. As some of you know, I am working on a script for a feature-length film that will be happening in the summer of 2026. It’s based on an old short story of mine, The Cabin, which I wrote in 2009. First off, I have to revise the actual book since my writing has improved in the last 15 years. Then I have to adapt that into a script. Why is it a learning curve? I guess it’s having to include a lot more ancillary details like where the scene is, some of how the camera should shoot, descriptions of actions, and the like. Think of it as having to describe everything that’s happening in as much detail as possible. Luckily, I have some time to get the first draft of the script done. After that, the director of the film, who has loads of experience, can help guide me to the finish line.


10. It was three long weeks that I wasn’t able to go for any outdoor walks. The weather was the main culprit. The only thing better than the 45-degree and sunny day was digging deep into my past with 90s Pop Radio on Pandora. Oh, but not just '90s Pop, but the ‘Discovery’ setting, deep cuts, man. After about 3 miles of my 5.5-mile walk, I was full-on back in the 90s, and it was bliss. I want to find a way to make 2026 more like the 1990s because the 2020s have been the worst decade of my life. Not sure what I can do to make that happen. Music, yes, a lot of the same friends, yes. Unfortunately, I am on the downside to 50, no matter how much I listen to Nirvana and wear flannel, that won't change. Maybe it’s a mindset. In the 90s, my whole life was an open road, and seemingly anything was possible. Now in the 2020s, it’s like I’m on a pothole-filled dirt road running through a wide-open desert with no side streets and no scenic overlooks. Maybe that’s the goal for 2026, to bring back the wonder I had for life in the 1990s. I’ll get to work on that.

This is how the 2020s have felt in my life.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #97: Air Supply, Cat Distribution System, Turkey Day, etc.

1. It costs $2.50 for 5 minutes of air at Cumberland Farms. On one hand, it’s outrageous that you have to pay for air, I mean, it’s everywhere. On the other hand, I shouldn’t be surprised that greedy corporations try to squeeze every cent out of their customers. I’m surprised more stores don’t have pay toilets. Anyway, I stopped to fill my tires up since it’s been cold, so the tire pressure naturally goes down. Since I paid with my debit card, I thought it would be nice, since I paid for 5 minutes of air, that if I don’t use all 5 minutes of air, I should get the remainder of the money reimbursed back onto my card. Or I should at least get a doggy bag to put the leftover air into.


2. Thanksgiving week, and it was mayhem in the supermarkets. I was given a list of some things to bring to my mom’s for our holiday meal. Luckily, I got most of it out of the way early. As the day got closer, it was madness. There weren’t any fights or anything, just loads of people wanting the same things. We have a Market Basket about a half hour from where I live, and I enjoy going there as often as I can because their prices are lower. Plus, I consider it like a field trip. That being said, I saw people’s posts on social media saying that our Market Basket was like Thunderdome due to Thanksgiving shopping, and to stay away. No worries, I’ll be sure to hit up Market Basket after Thanksgiving, you know, when people are hitting the gym out of guilt.


3. Update on last week. I said I had ordered a few things from Amazon, including a travel-sized deodorant, because I needed to spend ten cents more to get free shipping. Well, nothing beats expecting a tracking update and instead being told your package has been damaged and returned to sender. Yes, they will be sending everything out new, but I would like to know exactly what happened. I didn’t order anything fragile, so what did a truck back over my box? Did a driver have a bad day and boot it into the ocean? Did someone pack a glitter bomb to fool porch pirates, and it went off accidentally? I’ll never know, but I’m sure my imagined scenarios are better than reality.


4. I saw something this week that really spoke to me. It’s known as the GPS Theory of Life. When you’re driving, and you miss a turn or go the wrong way, your GPS recalculates. It doesn’t say ‘Oh well you missed your destination’ and make you go home. It still gets you where you want to go. The same should apply to one’s life. When you fail, or choose your own metaphorical wrong turn, life isn’t over. You recalculate and find a new way there. I love this idea and can use it in my own life. I have been lucky and blessed on my journey overall, but I am still not where I want to be. I have a vision of what ‘success’ in my life means. I feel as though I have done my fair share of recalculating over the years. The one thing I haven’t done, though, is turn back and go home. No, I am going to keep recalculating and get by all of the road construction, one-way streets, vehicle accidents, police cars, and closed businesses until I get to where I am meant to be. Jokes aside, I do love the positivity and perseverance of the GPS Theory and wanted to share it.


5. As 2025 draws closer to the end, it’s time for me to get ready to renew my personal training certification. I have to do continuing education just like many other fields, like teachers and other healthcare providers. There is a certain number of CECs I need to renew, which is standard. The only issue is that since I last renewed 2 years ago, my training school has made renewing ‘easier’ by actually making it harder. Instead of a list of courses with their CECs and cost right there, I am instead having to email the school to ask questions that probably make them wonder if I have been hit on the head too much. My biggest question has to do with one course that should fulfill my renewal qualifications, but suspiciously has a name similar to another certification I already have. I am also a medical fitness specialist. There is a pair of courses for a medical fitness programmer. Very similar, right? The main point of this is I don’t want to spend the money on a course only to find out it’s the same thing I already have. Doubles are fine when collecting baseball cards, but not when it’s a non-refundable fitness course.


6. I do believe in the power of positive affirmation and manifestation. You might not always get what you want, but believing you can and thinking positively can only help your mental health. For those who don’t believe in manifestation, I give you Exhibit A from this week. I enjoy watching funny cat videos because I love cats and am rocketing headlong toward 50. So I was watching a video, and I thought to myself, ‘When was the last time I got to pet a cat?’ It had been a really long time, like possibly a couple of years. I have seen a few, but shockingly, if you go running at a strange cat to pet them, they tend to run away. Well, fast forward to the next day, and I was out for a walk, and what did I see? A cute gray and white striped cat. I stopped and crouched down, and the cat came over, and I got to spend a few minutes petting this cat. Once that was done, we both went our separate ways. I was not a part of the mythical ‘cat distribution system,’ where cats seem to find you and then just become yours. Besides that, this cat had a collar, so I wasn’t going to catnap it, although I did get a photo and video. So yeah I can manifest a cat to pet but not the ability to work full-time as a content creator? Okay.

Cat Distribution System

7. I spent Thanksgiving Eve night researching scriptwriting software. This is to start preparing for a big 2026, which will include filming my first feature-length film. I have written ten published books, hundreds of blogs and articles, and more than a dozen ebooks. Also, in college, I took a course in broadcast writing. All of that experience is a good start, but writing a script is so different than anything else I’ve written. It’s like you have to put on paper everything that will make up the project. It’s not just the story. It’s the setting, the stage directions, the emotion of scenes and actors, in addition to the actual story. I believe that I will start the writing process next month when I have an extended break from my day job. Unless something changes, I’m looking at a program called WriterDuet for getting my script started. This is going to be likely the major event of my professional life in 2026, so there’s nothing wrong with getting the ship ready to set sail when the time is right.


8. Thanksgiving was filled with food, fun, and family. Last year, I ate so much so fast that I ended up basically needing to go home and lie on the floor for a few hours to try to digest. This year, I was smarter. I ate just as much but took my time. It allowed me to enjoy the day more while also enjoying just as much food. I did find it funny that I was being watched like a hawk by family as I began to eat. I felt like a mischievous child trying to get away with something. Turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, stuffing, butternut squash, cranberry sauce, pies, cookies, it was all a part of a really fun Thanksgiving.


9. A fun side story on Thanksgiving was our deep dive into our Ancestry DNA results and traits. I had mine done several years back. Since then, my mother, 2 nieces, and a nephew have all done it. It’s fascinating to see how, despite us all being family, our specific DNA is different. Probably the funniest thing was when we began looking at our traits. My niece Kaleigh somehow had access to all 40+ of her traits despite not paying for a membership, while the rest of us only had access to 5 super generic traits. I have things like: Prone to taking naps, more adaptable, morning person, etc. The laughs came when my niece Emma and I found that our traits were exactly the same. That and the fact that she has inherited much of my wacky sense of humor made Thanksgiving a boatload of laughs. Next up, we wait for 2 of my sisters and a cousin to do their DNA tests so we can compare the regions where we’re from, but also laugh at the traits we have that don’t seem to be as accurate as we’d like.


10. It’s been so long since I’ve sat down with my big over-ear headphones on and listened to a full album of music I haven’t heard before. I did just that when I listened to Radiohead’s 2016 album A Moon Shaped Pool. Ever since OK Computer came out in 1997, Radiohead has been one of the bands whose music seems to unlock something in my brain. I find myself able to write more easily with their music playing. It was a fun experience spending nearly an hour working on one single poem. It definitely has a Radiohead vibe to it. If you like Radiohead’s music, you will enjoy this album. I now feel the need to find more albums I haven’t heard before from bands I like to see what sorts of ideas they kick up.

The album cover

11. Every few weeks, I take a field trip, a little over 20 miles west to the nearest Market Basket. Their prices are way lower than either Shaw’s or Stop & Shop. For example, a regular-sized bag of Doritos is $6.29 at Stop & Shop. At Market Basket, it’s $3.99. You can see why it’s worth the drive to go. I have wanted for years for Market Basket to find a way to get a store closer to me, but I think there’s something with Stop & Shop having too much control over who can open supermarkets on Cape Cod. I know this because a few years ago, I sent the corporate email of Market Basket a link to a piece of property in Dennis Port that used to be occupied by Benny’s. I said it wasn’t huge, but it would make for a nice mid-sized supermarket. There was no reply. Now that the property is available again since Big Lots came and failed there. I’m debating sending another email to Market Basket about it, but I don’t think it would make a difference.


12. I got to wear a new shirt that I bought at Old Navy a few weeks back. Just a t-shirt, nothing special. The funny part was that I put it on and forgot to take the tags off. Rather than removing the shirt, I grabbed a small pair of scissors to cut them off. One was easy to take down by the waist. The other was up at the collar. All I kept thinking as I slowly brought this sharp object toward my jugular was hopefully my phone doesn’t suddenly ring, or the smoke detector goes off. Then I’d be down with scissors jammed in my neck. There’d be no way to spin that into anything but another foolish injury right up there with throwing my back out bending to look at sliced meats at the supermarket. That happened earlier in the spring.


13. Cape Cod Cthulhu, the film that is my first acting role, is now available on Blu-Ray. Here is the link: Cape Cod Cthulhu. It was so much fun to shoot back in March. You can go back into the blog archives and find more details about the experience then. There’s a Black Friday sale, and that makes it an even better way to support indie filmmakers. It’s a campy horror film, and I play myself as a podcaster. Also, here is the trailer for the movie for those curious. There will be much more news on the film front of my career in 2026. It’s going to be a big year!

14. I was lucky enough to be asked to take the senior year photos for my nephew Landon. He’s the third of my six nieces and nephews that I’ve taken the photos for. He’s the first nephew, and being a guy, he wasn’t too particular about how or where the photos were taken. He just didn’t want to go to the beach, so instead we went to the woods. It was a fun time playing Grunge music on Pandora during the drive. We went to a local conservation area and took about 40 photos. Even if he’s not super particular about the photos, I at least wanted to do my best so that in future years he will have a lot of senior photos to look at. For my senior photos way back in the 1990s, I got a bunch taken by the school photographer, but I only have the one that I chose. 

15. The lowlight for me of Landon's photo trip though was putting in the address of my sister's new house to go pick up my nephew. The problem was that rather than putting the right town, I put the wrong one and obviously went to the wrong address. I sat in front of a stranger's house for several minutes before thinking I might be at the wrong place. I put the same street address in my GPS, and sure enough, there was the right place the next town over. At least it gave my sister another in a long line of foolish stories I've been a part of in my life.


16. The only thing that could match the joy I had of taking Landon’s senior photos was getting to see several family members I hadn’t seen in years later that same day. My Aunt Emma was on Cape Cod for one more night before leaving to go back home to Las Vegas. She had stopped over on the Cape after spending two months traveling Europe with friends and family. In the years since my Nana passed, and the years since my Uncle Eric passed, I don’t see family members on that side as much as I’d like. It’s nobody’s fault; time just passes quicker, it seems the older you get. We met at my cousins' Dale and Richard’s house and spent a few hours catching up. I made sure I fully appreciated what was going on, because at this point, I don’t take for granted the time I get with loved ones. I’m hoping to see Emma and my cousin Patrick again soon if I can ever find the time to get out to Las Vegas. If that doesn’t happen soon enough, at least I took full advantage of the time I had this week.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #83: Deep Discounts, Feeling Froggy, Two-A-Days, etc.

1. Sometimes you just get lucky. No, I didn’t win the lottery, but it did feel like I got away with something. When at the supermarket, I was in the a la carte section looking for something quick and easy for dinner. I am a fan of scalloped potatoes. I saw a couple of containers of them and went to grab one. The first was about $4.75 and had probably 12 ounces of food in the container. Then I looked at the other and had to do a double-take. It had about the same amount of potatoes but was priced at 12 cents. No, that’s not a misprint. Someone labeled the potatoes as 12 cents. Even though it was their mistake, I still hit the self-checkout like I had a box of cookies jammed up into my shirt. Once I was out the door, I was thrilled. Dinner was extremely cheap, lucky me. Of course I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t skeptical of the discount. I did wait a few hours, half-expecting to get some sort of food poisoning. Nope, just some rogue employee or complete fool giving me the best deal in a while.

2. One thing I enjoy about Facebook is the daily memories collection. Having been on the site since 2007, I have 18 years worth of posts, photos, etc. Sometimes they can be embarrassing or annoying, like when I’d share cryptic posts about someone I was interested in. I am noticing recently just how much my life revolved around the game FarmVille in 2009. Nearly every day in my memories, there is a blank status update from 2009 that says FarmVille. I don’t feel too bad, though, because at its peak in 2010 it had over 34 million active daily users. If you don’t know or don’t remember FarmVille, you’re in luck. FarmVille is still around online and you can go play now. However, as much as I’d be interested in dropping by to plant a few new crops, I worry that it would become an obsession again. I don’t know if I have time currently for another part-time job of being an online farmer again.

3. I have a client I train at my day job who is notorious for late cancellations or switching their appointment times quite often. They got so bad at late cancellations that they finally had to start being charged a fee for the inconvenience. The late cancellations stopped, and the incessant switching of their appointment times began. This week was perhaps the worst of them all. This client was supposed to be in to train on Thursday afternoon. They called and asked to switch to Wednesday afternoon. I figured that was fine; it worked out with my schedule as it would allow me to start my vacation a little early. Within an hour of the change that they asked for, they then canceled the changed appointment. I was dumbstruck. I made it a point to have our office manager not offer the old time slot to this client. No way I was giving up a few extra hours of vacation for someone who might end up canceling again anyway.

4. The last day at work before my vacation started was like the last day of school before summer. It was only fitting that the day began with something wacky. I enter through a side door that goes through the gym. I tend to go in and set my first workout up before even getting to my desk. On this day, I was walking and thought I saw a leaf on the floor, as they can get tracked in from outside. Only when the ‘leaf’ moved did I realize it wasn’t a leaf. Upon further inspection, I found it was a tiny ‘peeper’ frog. It was about the size of a quarter. How did it get in the gym? No idea but I had a helluva time wrangling it to get it out. I had to chase it around with a paper cup in one hand and a paper towel in the other. Eventually, I caught it. Luckily, out behind our parking lot is a swampy area. This is where I chose to let it go. I even got a video of it.

5. Only when I started my vacation this week did I realize just how much of a creature of habit I am. I have a routine on Fridays which consists of doing laundry and recording the next episode of my podcast. With 11 straight days and 15 out of 17 days off, I have almost unlimited time to do things. Still, my intention was to do my typical Friday routine. That was until I realized I was on vacation and then I basically wiped the slate clean. I still did end up doing my laundry on Friday though. Oh well, I still need a little structure.

6. The biggest news of the week, and maybe the year, is my first attempt at filmmaking. I am partnering with my friend, producer Frank Durant, on a short Cape Cod film, When Henry Met Henry. It will be a fictional meeting between iconic authors Henry David Thoreau and Henry Beston set on the beach on Cape Cod. I am going to be either a director or producer; we’ll see. We are crowdfunding much of the film. In one afternoon, I created a landing page for the film, a short video detailing what we are doing, and got the GoFundMe up and running. The crowdfunding will run through October 11th, with the film being shot later that month. We hope for it to be done in early 2026. Obviously, much more to come on this front.

7. I learned the hard way that there is a limit to how many electrical items can be running at once in my apartment. I was using my convection oven and got impatient. I decided to use my microwave to heat something up at the same time. This, coupled with a light and a fan going proceeded to blow the fuse. It was funny, not anything serious. The reason was that it took several minutes for everything running to blow the fuse so I thought I was in the clear. Nope, bam out goes everything. Needless to say, I will practice more patience when cooking.

8. Since the weather turned a bit cooler and less humid, to where I could take my A/C out, I briefly forgot that it was still the tourist summer season. I found this out when I took a leisurely drive on Route 6A, which is typically less busy than many other roads during the summer. If what I saw was still ‘less busy,’ I shudder to think of how slammed Route 28 was. Sorry for the specific road names for anyone not from Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Either way, the drive was worth it to snag the buy one, get one for $1 deal on weed seltzers at my favorite dispensary. For that deal, I took the pain of crazy traffic.

9. I am closing in on 50. I am trying my best to age with dignity. This means not going overboard with anti-aging creams or hair dyes. The same cannot be said for one guy at my gym. He has to be mid-60s and he is fighting Father Time with all he has. For many months, this guy had a fully gray buzz cut. He’s one of those ‘alpha’ hardos. It’s pretty funny to see this guy now dating a woman 25 years younger than him and also with a pretty bad dye job. I mean honestly, his hair looks like cream soda now. I guess to him it’s better to cling to straws of your distant past than it is to have some pride. Well, he’s a hardo, so he probably thinks he looks amazing.

10. As I just said, I am closing in on 50. Well, in a little over 2 years, but still it gets closer every day. So I was surprised when I somehow managed to tackle a double workout day, aka 'two-a-days' in sports. Every now and then, when I was younger, I’d work out in the morning and again in the evening. It was rare and usually just so I could brag that I did it. This week, the timing was perfect. One of my oldest friends was down on the Cape with his family and to my pleasant surprise, he wanted to get together for a long walk. Not that I didn’t believe him, but I decided to hedge my bets and go to the gym in the morning. I only did strength training. Then, around 4pm I met up with him and his wife, and we did a 4-mile walk. Now granted, I’ve burned more calories on one long walk this year than I did in both workouts on this day, but that’s beside the point. I turned back the clock briefly, but as I write this, I am waiting to see how my body feels the next day.