Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #123: A Classic Story, Birthdays & Graduations, Meteors, etc.

1. It sometimes shocks me to think that I have been a part of social media for 23 years. My first profile was created for Friendster in 2003. We’re closing in on half of my life chronicled online. This is all on Facebook, as nothing original from Friendster or Myspace exists anymore. I check the memories page on Facebook daily. It creates some fun snapshots of different chapters of my life. One rabbit hole that I fell down this week had to do with the last year of my Nana’s life. There wasn’t much of substance relating to her from 2009. However, a specific memory popped up this week. It involved someone hitting my parked car while I was at my Nana’s house. In short, the guy did a U-turn and rear-ended my Jeep, destroying the rear axle. This guy was a weirdo and wanted desperately to go inside and talk to my 85-year-old Nana. Why? To tell his side of the story? It’s like, dude, you hit my parked car, tell me the story, not my grandmother. Anyway, I went way down the rabbit hole of that accident story and turned it into a great blog (I think). It was the last classic story of my life while my Nana was still alive. You can read the blog here: The Final Classic Story From My Nana's Life



2. I was asked to do an author talk about my latest book for this summer at a local library. It was all set up with the date and time. Then the person who reached out to me about the event said the date they agreed to had already been taken. Funny how they offered it and agreed to it, but then went back on that. Okay fine. So I rescheduled. I filled out paperwork to use their conference room, which I’ve never had to do for any event I’ve ever done. Whatever, it was all set. This week, the same person reached out and said they needed to reschedule yet again. No reason given. So I sent in a pair of dates I could do, making this the third different set of dates for a show at this same library. I am not sure if they are incompetent. Maybe they think they can just jerk me around and I will continue to reschedule my talk, which, remind you, they reached out to me for? While I love to do these speaking events and I will be way more flexible than I probably should be, part of me wants them to not be able to accommodate my new dates so I can just tell them to take a hike. We’ll see what happens.


3. After writing the full treatment for a sitcom I am trying to get picked up, I joined a website where people post their shows in the hopes that television companies and execs will see it and possibly want to create it. I am hopeful but not holding my breath since I know that for every person like me, there are probably hundreds of others, many likely with good ideas as well. I want to make the best impression I can, so I shot a video and shared the full details of the proposed show. Any decent profile needs a photo, so obviously, I wanted to put a good face out there. That’s where the hiccups came. No matter what I did, the site kept saying there were issues with my photo. I tried several photos before finally contacting the website. I explained my issue and then also said I could send the photo to them, asking if they could just put it on my profile. Instead, they recommended changing the size, the DPI, and the file format of the photo. Each time it didn’t work, and I reiterated that it might be easier to just send them my photo. Finally, after three times of being given advice that didn’t work, they asked me to send the photo. Gee, thanks for listening. It only took a week and a handful of messages. I don’t think that I missed any opportunities in the week that my profile was up without a photo, but still, would it have taken more than five seconds to plug my photo in? It probably took 1,000 times more effort to write three emails than it would to click and post. Oh well, it’ll be worth it if the show gets picked up.


4. Despite creeping toward 50, I still enjoy playing basketball every now and then. I don’t play competitively; my body can’t handle that. I go to a nearby recreation area where there is a court that is almost always empty. I went this week to shoot around for a while. It was a perfect afternoon. Well, except for one thing. It’s pollen season. Oh boy, did that come into play. Every time I bounced the ball, a puff of yellow dust came up. I made it 15 minutes before I was getting gassed, but I pressed on. I needed to make it to at least half an hour of good cardio. By the time I hit that mark, I was pretty much choking on the pollen. I must have had a cloud of the stuff all around the court like I was Pigpen in Peanuts. My black shirt and shorts were coated in yellow like powdered sugar on a donut. That being said, it ended up being a good shoot around, and I burned over 300 calories. Not too shabby.

Me playing basketball this week.

5. I highly recommend The Burroughs on Netflix. I had been waiting for it since I saw the first trailer a little over a month ago, and it did not disappoint. Without spoiling anything, it is basically like a perfect mixture of Stranger Things and Cocoon. It centers around a retirement community that is a town in the middle of the desert. It stars several big-time actors like Alfred Molina, Bill Pullman, and Geena Davis. She is excellent, and there is a nod to Thelma & Louise in it. It is eight episodes, so an easy binge. Or you can be like me and savor it and only watch one episode per night. Even then, it only lasted a little over a week. It has been really popular on Netflix since debuting, so my hope is that it gets greenlit for a second season because there is a lot of room for more story. Go and check it out if you can.

6. A nightmare scenario almost came true this week. Since Memorial Day Weekend has passed, the beaches have gotten their porta-potties back. There is a beach I like to spend a few minutes at on my way to work most days. I took a little walk and decided to use the facilities before heading back to my car. A few steps from the porta-potty, I spotted what looked like a septic truck entering the parking lot. I figured whoever was driving saw me. Then I heard the beeping of it backing up. It dawned on me that they were there to empty the porta-potty. For a brief moment, I didn’t know what they were going to do. Bust in through the door? Strap the thing to the truck and take off with it? Even if they didn’t see me, I knew they weren’t just going to knock the porta-potty over to empty it. They’d have to open the door, which was locked. I don’t know why I felt this sense of dread while listening to the truck backing up. I stepped out and gave a wave to the driver, and everything was fine. I hope those guys get paid well. I have seen some of the most disgusting porta-potties, and knowing that people have to clean them is just nasty. So yeah, pay the septic people more, they literally deal with shit for a living.


7. This weekend, I was able to see my nephew Landon graduate from high school. It’s an interesting feeling to watch someone you’ve known since they were born taking that step into whatever the next chapter of their life is. I say this time around is interesting because next week marks 30 years since I graduated high school, so my mind has been back in those bygone days of 1996. At times, I feel like I have one foot back in my youth with the other foot trying to keep me moving forward into the future. There are times when I feel confused. How can the younger generation of family be moving on to the ‘real world’ when I feel like I haven’t firmly established myself? Luckily, I am not the only one. Everywhere I look, I find people my age expressing how they don’t feel like they’ve got being an adult down to a science. I kind of long for the days of having a textbook to follow when going through classes in school. Now all you can do is keep walking the path you’re on and hope that you’re going the right way.




8. Pontificating aside, the graduation was a fun family event. The weather was rainy and windy. It held off when we all arrived, but by the time we walked outside, the wind was kicking up, and the rain had started falling. It’s a shock to the system to be standing outside on the last weekend of May with wind chills around 40. A sunny and warm outdoor graduation would have been better, but I’m just glad I was there at all. I didn’t get to see my nephew Liam’s graduation, and my niece Emma’s graduation was during COVID. I did manage to see it from outside the fence at the high school, but it wasn’t the same. I wish we could have had a family cookout after, like we did for my oldest niece, Kaleigh, but just being with a good chunk of family was a pleasure that I don’t get nearly as often as I wish I did. We got some photos before the rain really kicked up to remember the day.


9. Staring down 50 in 18 months, I think, has made my sentimental side take over a lot in my life. I find that there are a lot of achievements, celebrations, graduations, and such that give me mixed emotions. I am happy to see and be around family, but then I end up feeling a bit empty and bittersweet. It’s not anything they do. It is the sad reality that we don’t all get together like we used to. I miss the giant holidays at my grandparents' houses. I miss big cookouts, family reunions, and hangouts just because. As we all go down the roads of our own lives, sometimes they can take us further from each other, even though we might not physically be too far apart. Jobs take up hours, and schedules don’t match. Other obligations can make it so that only when events like achievements, celebrations, and graduations come around can the family find a way to be together. It’s bittersweet because there are only so many of those types of events. If I could, I would have family get-togethers every week until we got so sick of each other that we had to pause them to recharge. Sadly, that isn’t in the cards for me currently. All I can do is check my calendar to see what the next event is that might result in another big family gathering.


10. There was a high wind warning this weekend. It was on the day of my nephew’s graduation. It really picked up in the afternoon with winds gusting 40-50mph. Despite the terrible weather, I needed to head out to the store plus to get gas. I could feel how bad the wind was while driving. It felt like my car was being pushed side to side at times. At this point, it was only in the mid 40s with wind chills dipping near freezing, at the end of May. I stopped for gas and didn’t pay attention to the wind. When I opened my door, the wind took it. The door ended up smashing into a trash can and sending it toppling over. I picked it back up, but it made the person pumping gas next to me look worried. I don’t know if she thought I was mad about gas prices and just karate kicked the garbage over. I figured I’d leave it a mystery rather than explain to her about the wind. She probably wouldn’t have believed me, or freaked out, scared, and taken off.


11. It’s not every day that a meteor comes flying into the Earth’s atmosphere. It’s even rarer when it happens only an hour from where you live. This weekend, we had a meteor rumored to be about three feet in diameter explode through the sky around Boston. The sonic booms were captured by all sorts of cameras. Apparently, the sound could be heard anywhere from Montreal to Delaware. It happened around 2:30 pm, and I was inside, so I have no clue if we could hear it. Reports said it landed in Cape Cod Bay. Not sure if anyone is going to try to find it or not. Plus, there was a rare Blue Moon that same night. So to recap, on the same day in Massachusetts, there were gale-force winds, snow, a meteor, and a blue moon. I love my home.

Radar picking up the exploding meteor(WWLP)

12. My niece Kaleigh celebrated her 27th birthday this weekend. It’s amazing how fast time can go. I fully remember my sister Kate being pregnant with her and having me drive my beat-up old Ford F-150 down the bumpiest roads we could find to try to induce labor. I have vivid memories of moving all of our stuff into a new house with my stepfather, Serpa, on the day Kaleigh was born. He and I were the last to the hospital to meet Kaleigh. I was 21 and had orange-yellow hair, an eyebrow ring, and a hemp necklace. It was the dawning of the full-on quarter-life crisis. I remember those early months being a travel trio with Kate, Kaleigh, and the numerous people who thought she was my daughter. My sister’s reaction was always priceless. I bring these memories up because, for as much as I am not a fan of getting older myself, I can deal with aches and pains and grays because I know I got to spend so much quality time with my nieces and nephews. The bittersweet feeling I tend to get around their milestones as they grow mainly comes from knowing that with each passing day, our roads grow further apart. I don’t have regrets about not spending enough time with them as kids because I actually did. In a world where I have had way too many regrets to count, the time I spent with my nieces and nephews is not one of them. I tend to get very reflective in moments like these. It was a good week for family and a good week to be reflective.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #75: Hand Sandwich, Sleeping Bees, Ruined Trampoline, etc.

1. My sprained ankle happened 3 weeks ago and is getting closer to being healed. Of course, that meant it was time for me to inflict another injury on myself. This time I decided to create a hand sandwich and use the steel of the reverse hyper machine at work as the bread. In trying to adjust the flat pad for a future client, I mistook where my hand was. Instead of having it braced with my left hand, I had nothing. When the arm let go it pancaked my right hand between two steel bars. I had a client on the treadmill and was doing this while she walked to save time. I gasped but didn’t scream. My boss walked in a minute later, and I was basically hyperventilating. I was sure my hand was broken. Luckily, there was a less than one-inch gap between the steel bars so my hand wasn’t completely crushed, just mostly. There was lots of ice, lots of ibuprofen, and lots of bruising and swelling. Oh, and also it was a Monday, and I had a super busy day training clients, so it was a bundle of laughs.

Right after the damage was done, it got a lot worse.

2. Cape Cod and much of the country got its first major heat wave this week. We had several days of weather in the high 80s and low 90s. I finally broke down and put in my A/C. This was also the day of my hand injury so trying to put in the A/C was a battle as I tried to gently put it in the window sill while making sure my injured hand didn’t give way. Then the A/C would have fallen onto the cars in the driveway. It would have been like a sitcom with way less laughing from me. Not to worry though the A/C went in and is working fine, just in time for temperatures to drop at the end of the week, making the A/C not necessary, thanks.


3. In continuing with the healing of my right hand I put some pain-relieving gel on it one afternoon. The stuff works well. After work I went out for a short walk with a little running on one of the hottest days in a few years on Cape Cod. It was only when I got back to my car that I noticed my right hand was on fire. Not literally but the combination of the gel, my profuse sweating, and the heat of the day made the perfect mix. My hand was burning until I could get home and take a shower. I still recommend the pain-relieving gel though.


4. One more thing about that hot afternoon of walking and running. First, when I parked at a small lot along the bike trail, I spotted several crows in a tree. They all had their head back and their mouths wide open. It was so odd and creepy but I later found out that they do this on hot days to keep cool since they cannot sweat. Second, while walking the trail, I had 2 different chipmunks I passed that didn’t run away. These chipmunks were sitting beside the trail in the grass too hot to run or care that I was there. I literally could have reached down and picked one up. When the ‘real feel’ is 105 at 6pm, I guess I can’t blame them.


5. When leaving the house one *much* cooler afternoon this week, I spotted a bumblebee sprawled out on top of some blue hydrangea flowers. It was just lying there so I got out my phone and grabbed an up-close video and photo. It wiggled its antennae a bit and when I blew on it to see if it was ok it did move its legs a little. I read that bees sometimes sleep on or in flowers. I also read that they do something similar when they are near the end of their life. When I got home later the bee was gone, so I don’t know if it flew away or if it was picked off as an easy meal.

Was it just sleeping?

6. One thing I am trying to figure out. Is it common for people who own Jeeps to line their dash with rubber toys and other assorted toys? Is this something new? I have seen way more such Jeeps over the last few months than I’d expect. Maybe I am seeing the same few Jeeps repeatedly, but I don’t think so. These Jeeps tend to have a handful to more than a dozen toys on their dash. It’s interesting. I’m curious, but not curious enough to take time out to Google it.


7. I saw on Instagram last week a story featuring a handful of girls running to and jumping on a trampoline located in the dunes of a beach somewhere on Cape Cod. I thought it would be a fun adventure to find and get some photos and videos of to share on social media. Of course, because we’re not allowed to have nice things as soon as I started researching it I found that it had already been ruined. I went out to where it was located and sure enough, some piece of garbage had sliced the trampoline open, making it useless for anyone who might want to go have a little summer fun. Can you imagine being that much of a sad loser that you see something that you know makes others happy and you feel you have to destroy it? Absolute scum. The rumor is it might get replaced with a new one so I have made it a point not to share where it is just in case.

People suck

8. For those who don’t know this summer marks the returns of the cicadas for their visit that occurs once every 17 years. On Cape Cod it has been interesting. We have them but they have not ventured all the way down Cape. Where I live we don’t have any cicadas. I want to try to get a few photos of them since if I don’t I’ll have to wait until 2042. I had to drive about 20-25 minutes west to get to where they have been routinely spotted. I stopped at a marina and could hear their hum so I knew I was in the right area. The problem was that I didn’t know where to stop to try to look for them. Plus it was a gray and drizzly afternoon. I ended up not getting any photos. The best I got was seeing a few in the road but I wasn’t going to stop my car and get out to take photos of a cicada. Oh well there still is plenty of time left in the summer.


9. It is still weird for me to be back in the routine of getting regular haircuts. I had been shaving my head pretty routinely for about 14 years. Long story short I have not been a fan of my hair as it doesn’t grow straight or curly. It grows somewhere in between. I started growing it out in November as a sort of birthday gift to my mother, who has hated my shaved head intensely. With the return of hair meant the return of haircuts. I now keep the top longer and the sides and back short and faded. It doesn’t look bad, and I’m actually enjoying it. This week it was time for a haircut. I have been going to the same barber shop for over 25 years, when I have hair to cut that is. The barber who cut my hair I had never been to. I gave him my haircut instructions and let him have at it. All in all it looks great but I did have a mini heart attack when he wet my hair to trim the top. When he was done he showed me how it looked and he had parted my hair much in the same way it used to be parted when I was like 10 years old. Once I messed it back up it was good, but I worried I was going to be stuck looking like the kid in my old school picture there.

For a moment this guy came back, though much older

10. Even though summer is only a little over a week old it’s time for me to start planning my annual end of the summer vacation. I take my week’s paid vacation the week before Labor Day. It ends up being somewhere around 11 straight days off from work which is always good. Last year I took a 3 day road trip to northern New England, specifically northern New Hampshire into Vermont and then back home through the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. I am thinking this year should be another 3 day road trip but concentrated in Maine. I haven’t been to Maine since 2019 so it’ll all be fresh again. Time to get to planning.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #55: Being A Trainer, Goose Party, Sad Subs, etc.

 

1. My true passion in life is writing and creating things with my mind. However, in my daily life, I work as a personal trainer. I have been at it for nearly 10 years and I must know my stuff to still be employed doing it. I didn’t realize how much of an impact I’d had though. I had a person I’d trained for several years in their home reach out to me. They had a pretty bad injury and once cleared from PT they wanted to train with me again. I don’t do in-home training anymore though. They were perfectly happy to drive 20 miles from their home to my work if it meant I trained them. That really made my day to hear.

2. I have gotten to about a week of cutting my caffeine intake by roughly half. I can’t, and won’t, totally give up caffeine. That being said I do know that my intake level was way too high. I love energy drinks. I love pre-workout supplements and have for decades. My goal over the proceeding weeks is to get energy drinks back to a ‘few times a week’ deal rather than daily, or 2x daily. I ordered a nice stainless steel travel coffee mug so hopefully spending money on that will motivate me to drink more coffee.

3. I wasn’t paying attention at the gym. I went to get on a stationary bike for a few minutes of intense cardio. These bikes, especially the upright ones, typically have a pair of compartments to place a drink, towel, or phone. So I set up the seat and put my towel in the left side compartment. As I said I wasn’t paying attention so I went to put my phone in the right side compartment but instead my phone dropped onto the floor. My first thought was since I wasn’t paying attention I had placed my phone on the edge or something and it had fallen off. I put the phone back into the right side compartment and it dropped straight through to the floor. Why? Because there was no compartment, just a hole. I had to laugh at the foolishness of literally dropping my phone through that empty space twice before actually looking to see what was up.

4. An interesting event that keeps on occurring recently is the huge flocks of geese that fly past my window several times a day on most days. At first, I chalked it up to migration but it’s now the dead of winter. Usually, in the hour or so right before or after noon I’ll hear a flock of probably 20-40 geese honking as they fly by. Then it happens again. It’s typically 2-3 times if I’m sitting at my desk working. I wonder if I am in their typical flight pattern, or if they just think I enjoy hearing a chorus of geese honking several times in rapid succession.

Flock of seagulls this is not.

5. It was pretty funny to see an old man bargaining with an automatic door at a grocery store. He was pushing his cart toward the door to exit and obviously, the door should automatically swing open. It did not. If it was me I would have just pushed the cart into the door and forced it open. This old man decided to speak kindly to it as if that might make it reconsider not opening. Again, it did not. I am not sure if he had the strength to force the door open but he didn’t try. He ended up going out through the in door as that one was working without issue.

6. I had a hankering for a meatball sub. So I went to a nearby sub shop that I don’t typically visit. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure if they were still in business. I stopped and the ‘open’ sign was lit. I opened the door and it was way too dark and quiet. I thought about turning around but a guy’s head popped up behind the counter. I placed my order and waited. I never heard a sound from the kitchen. No phone ringing, only the sound of the television playing. After 6-7 minutes he came back around with the sub wrapped. I felt a bit bad since he was seemingly all by himself so I left him a tip. He made sure to pick the tip jar up from under the counter before ringing me up. The sub was good though.

7. I’ve had the same pair of old-school over-ear wireless headphones for probably almost 7 years. For someone who used to break their headphones at the gym sometimes after only a few days it has been a luxury I’m not used to. However, it might be about time to put these out to pasture. The outlet to plug it in to charge is now so worn that I have to move the wire in a very specific way to get it to begin charging. I currently have the headphones plugged into my laptop with my mouse pad draped over the charging outlet as it’s the only way to get the dang headphones to keep charging. When you have to go through that much effort just to charge it might be time to 86 them.

8. The first real snowstorm of winter came this week on Cape Cod. We lucked out as we only ended up with 3-4” of heavy wet snow. The highlights were my Fitbit showing me in my heart rate zone for 35 minutes, meaning it was either really heavy snow or my cardio is terrible. The other highlight was me using the heavy wet snow as a makeshift car wash. I grabbed handfuls and rubbed it into dirty spots on my white car. Hey, it worked. Froze my hands a bit but saved the money it would cost at an actual car wash.

Real snow, but not a real lot of snow.

9. I’m addicted to the Playground feature on the new IOS update for my iPhone. It allows you to turn almost any photo into an AI-created animation. I spent way too much time going through my photos and having Playground turn people into animations. What I found particularly funny was that when I ran the program on several photos of me as a child they turned me into a girl. This wasn’t a one-off, no it was several different photos. I didn’t think my hair was that long when I was 4-5 years old, but I guess AI thought differently.

10. Although I didn’t have a favorite in Super Bowl 59 I will admit I was happy to see the Philadelphia Eagles crush the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22. I like the Chiefs. I like Mahomes, Kelce, Andy Reid, and yes Taylor Swift. The thing is though the more the Chiefs win the more they can start to lay claim as being as good or better than Tom Brady’s New England Patriots were. We can’t have that. So I am not big fans of either team that played, but in terms of helping the Patriots’ legacy the right team won the Super Bowl.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog: #47 - Holiday Photo Trips, Laptop Blue Screens, My Nana's TV, etc

1. One of my recent favorite holiday traditions is snapping photos and videos of a little boat in Allen Harbor in Harwich, MA. I found it maybe 5 years ago by accident. My only issue until this year was that the boat was in an area where if I parked in front of it I had to jump down almost 5 feet to the dock below to be eye-to-eye with it. This year it was moved down where I could easily step my old bones down. Granted I could just walk down the dock to where the elevation was lower, but hey I’m in photo mode. Also, photos of this boat are guaranteed to blow up on social media, and I’m all about the clicks and likes.

2. My final author event of 2024 was one of my best ever. Speaking at the Hyannis Yacht Club was amazing. Very fancy, and very friendly, and all of the people who came out to see my presentation gave it rave reviews. The woman who organized it said the people loved it. I could tell by the number of books I sold. To top it off I got sent home with some choice selections from the lunch buffet. I was busting with happiness when I left, and then busting with food later on.

It was a fun and classy book event.

3. People who know me and have come to my speaking events are shocked I am the same person they know. This comes down to me being far more introverted in my daily life. With my dreams of being a writer came the issue of having to learn to speak in public for events. It was not easy. My first few events back in 2014 consisted of me speaking into an open copy of the book I was presenting. I needed to craft a visual presentation to take eyes off of me. Plus a friend of mine at an event said I looked ‘bush league’ acting like a scared rabbit talking into my book. That influenced me too.

4. My event at the Hyannis Yacht Club was made even better by my cousin Dale being there. She and her husband, my cousin Richard, have always been special to me. As everyone grows older, and some start passing away, we see each other less and less. Last year I saw them both at a family event and she asked me to stay in touch. I did briefly via email but that didn’t last. So seeing her at this event was a thrill. It also helped to have family in the audience to put me at ease. As I just mentioned I am way more introverted than I appear at these events, so any sort of home-field advantage I’ll take.

5. One morning this week I woke up and turned my laptop on as I do every day. I was horrified to get the dreaded blue screen. It mentioned something not being installed or some other issue with an update. My heart was in my throat. I’ve had this happen several times before on old laptops. The worst incident was in the spring of 2020 when my hard drive basically cooked itself. I ended up losing well over 1,000 photos and videos from my amazing 6-day 2,100-mile road trip in November 2019. I turned the laptop off and back on and wouldn’t you know it everything was fine. Granted I’m now expecting another issue anytime now, but it’s almost like the computer gods wanted to remind me not to get too comfortable with my technology running smoothly.

6. As the holidays go along I start to realize just how many places on Cape Cod are a part of my annual photo trips. I start to get memories popping up on social media which remind me to visit these places. By my count, I have close to 10 places that likely will span several trips. It’s almost like an obligation now to get my fair share of holiday cheer. I don’t mind though. Any excuse to take night drives and get some really nice photos is alright with me.

7. When it comes to this year’s first shoot my luck was both good and bad. It was cold, hovering around freezing. It wasn’t very windy, even by the ocean, so that was good. However, a few of the spots I visited are typically lit up either with a spotlight or actual Christmas lights. This year two places were not lit up, at least not when I was there. I guess it could be worse, it gives me an excuse to go back again before the season ends to try to get more photos.

A festive scene on the Eastham town green.

8. Wandering through Stop & Shop one evening this week I passed by Marty the robot that glides along looking for messes for the staff to clean. If you walk near it the robot stops because it has a sensor so it doesn’t just plow into people. But it can be kind of slow and get in the way at times. Me? I just step around it because it’s not a big deal. This angry old man though felt the need to plow into it a couple of times with his shopping cart while badgering his wife. A. He’s a jerk and I feel bad for his wife. B. He looks exactly how you think he looks. 60-something, mustache, some garbage phrase on his shirt that needs a wash, and jeans that look like they’re going to blow away like dandelion spores.

9. I made a typical foolish card for some friends and family for Christmas. What I end up doing is creating a card and getting it printed through Walgreens. I do have an account with them but use it probably once a year. When I got ready to have this card printed I needed to sign in. Fine. Since I don’t use my Walgreens account much I needed to check my email to confirm. Sadly my Walgreens account uses my old AOL email. So I had to go sign in there for the first time in forever. When I went to sign in there because I never use my AOL account I then had to verify myself for that through my Gmail account. I did that and was actually expecting to have to verify my Gmail account next through my Subway account or something. Cards are ordered though and all is good.

10. Finally after having my Nana’s old giant CRT TV for 15 years since she died I decided it needed to go. I haven’t turned it on in many years. Basically, it’s been a huge paperweight on an antique stand that I remember her having since I was a kid. As far as I know, it still works. It even has the remote. When it came to carrying the TV down the stairs and out to the street I noticed that it felt far heavier than I remembered. I thought maybe I’m just older and weaker which was pretty depressing. Then I noticed I had the TV still hooked up to the cable wire which made it feel like a thousand pounds. The fact that I forgot to check that was more depressing. I left it out by the street with a ‘free’ sign on it. 

How I thought my move of my Nana's TV might end up.