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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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.
