Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #137: The Cabin Prologue

1. For weeks leading up to my departure from Cape Cod to go produce my feature film, The Cabin, everything was smooth. The fundraiser went off without a hitch; I got my hotel, rented a car, and we hired the whole crew. In my mind, this was the next natural progression in my creative journey. The last five years have been one long road of continued growth. It’s funny how, despite all of the things I just mentioned, the old insecurities came creeping up the day before I was to head out. It was like the Imposter Syndrome and the little negative voice in my head decided to make themselves known. When I woke up on Monday, I felt this tension and these nerves that hadn’t been there even the night before. It was as if the reality of the situation finally stepped to the front. The voice was asking me if I knew what I was getting myself into. It asked who I thought I was, trying to do something new and challenging. It tried telling me that I would be found out and this project would fail. I have had to battle these demons of self-worth and self-confidence for way too long, and this is no different. I have been told every step of the way that the script I wrote is good. We have everything set up to make the best film we can. I have the funds, the place to stay, the car, the time, and yet despite all of that, the voice still came calling. I had to take a step back and reassure myself that I deserve this opportunity based on all of the hard work and sacrifices I’ve made throughout the years. It’s almost as if the closer I get to this new, exciting opportunity, the harder those old thoughts push back. Only when I open that door and step through will those voices shut up. They won’t do it on their own. I have to make them by believing in myself.


2. To time things right, I had to put off doing my laundry until the day before I left for Pennsylvania. I wanted to make sure I had all of the clean clothing possible for the movie shoot. No need to stop at some dollar store and buy shirts made of recycled paper. This meant that those extra days without doing laundry saw me wearing clothes I haven’t taken out of the closet in a long time. Thankfully, I do have enough that I didn’t run out. I suppose there are some guys who have enough outfits to last a handful of days, and if anything goes wrong, they’re stuck wearing an old T-shirt they’ve been using as an oil rag for years. The only downside to waiting to do laundry was the sheer size of the load. The laundromat I go to doesn’t have a good spin cycle to rinse the excess water out of the clothing. This means when I take them out of the washer, they weigh a ton, sopping wet. You do get a workout having to carry the basket. In total, to get that load of laundry done and fully dried, it took about 2 ½ hours. Lucky for me, all I had to do on that day was wash clothes and pack. If I had made any plans, they would have needed to be postponed. Telling someone you can’t meet them because you’re doing laundry sounds like a lame excuse because you don’t really want to see them. Next time I do a huge load like that, I’ll have to weigh it to see just how much of a workout I get when carrying it.


3. Once everything was packed and ready for the long drive out to Pennsylvania, the last thing on my list of things to do on Cape Cod was checking for a few things for the trip and the shoot itself. This meant going to Dollar Tree and Ocean State Job Lot. Hey, I’m not looking to gash the movie budget by getting expensive items. Mark, the film director, asked me to look for cheap clothes we could ruin for the film as well as some LED lights for a few scenes. As is typically the case when I go to these stores, I wandered around looking for any deals I didn’t know I needed. I got a cheap T-shirt for shredding but found myself interested in some of the other clothes. I literally just mentioned above that I didn’t want to get such clothing for my regular wardrobe, and yet here I was on the edge. I will say that teenage me would have scoffed at shopping at Job Lot, or as my Nana used to call it, ‘Odd Lot.’ Now, I find the savings more appealing than caring what some rando might think of whatever I get. I got a cool travel bag for toothpaste and things of the like. The piece de résistance, though, was buying unknown-brand energy shots at both Job Lot and Dollar Tree. They would no doubt come in handy on the long drive out. Eventually I had to remind myself that I could always come back again once the movie was done being filmed.


4. The anxiety was in full-court press Tuesday morning as I got ready to leave for Pennsylvania. Despite checking repeatedly, I still believed that I was missing something when packing. I finally had to accept that everything was good and leave. I was a little early when I got to my mom’s. It was there that I was leaving my car for the week. Leaving it at the airport wasn’t as bad as I’d expected, something like $80 for the week, but $0 is way better. It’s a good thing I was early too because it took a few minutes at the airport to figure out where to go to get my rental car. My sister Ashley, who drove me to the airport, had to circle the parking lot a few times while we figured out the protocol. Eventually she parked in front of the main terminal of the Hyannis Airport while I ran in to check. I was renting through Budget but got rerouted to Avis. The terminal was empty, as I guess not too many people are arriving or departing from Cape Cod on a Tuesday morning in September. The actual process of getting the car was easy and took a few minutes. I had wondered how many people went to the airport to rent a car but didn’t come in via plane. Surely I can’t be the only one. Oh well, they didn’t ask any questions, so I wasn’t sharing any info. Shortly after, Ashley was helping me toss my luggage into the backseat of a pretty sweet Honda Accord. Of course, it began to rain once I was ready to drive, but we’ll get to that in a moment. I was very grateful that my sister took time from her day to drop me at the airport. The money I saved alone on parking and an Uber probably covered the gas and tolls on the trips out and back.

This was what it looked like, except mine was gray.

5. Speaking of tolls. Because this was a new adventure, I wanted to try a few new things. I’d never rented a car for a trip, so driving a pretty new one with a touchscreen display was an immediate luxury. I also wanted to try a different navigation app, so I went old school with MapQuest. It all seemed fine at first. You get to pick out an avatar to move across the map while you drive. I picked someone who looked like he was from Lord of the Rings. I just kept calling him Gandalf. It was my choice to keep the toll option turned on while driving. It was already 450 miles, and I figured that was the fastest, so I could spend a little money on tolls to speed things up. What I didn’t expect was MapQuest not only bringing me to the toll road, the Mass Pike, which was expected, but also taking me off and back onto it. It was like they saw the toll option on the app and wanted to see how much they could rack up for me. I yelled that Gandalf was screwing me over, which wouldn’t have made any sense out of context. I had no clue what my toll bill would be. They do everything by license plate now, and you get a bill sent. That leads to another issue you may have guessed. It’s not my car, so it will be the rental company getting the toll bill. I am sure they will just use my card to pay for it, as I would expect. I do wonder if I can get a receipt so I can see just how much I paid. Oh, and I got rid of MapQuest and went to an old reliable in Waze. That whole getting me on and off the Pike twice was weird. I plan on keeping the toll option off for the drive home as well.


6. I have driven in all of the bad weather. Rain, snow, storms, wind, so when the weather report said some rain along my driving route, I was prepared. What I wasn’t prepared for was a near-death experience. For a while, going through Western Massachusetts, the rain was basic showers, nothing to be too concerned about. Then as I crossed into New York, it changed. Showers became sheets of rain. It was like a whiteout to the point where my windshield wipers were almost useless. The final straw for me came when I came up on a ramp after stopping at a rest area. I was merging, but the rain was so dense I could hardly see the semi truck barreling down. I was in the middle and didn’t know whether to slam on the brakes or gun it. I gunned it, and that truck was coming up fast. All I thought was, ‘man I should have gotten the insurance on the rental.’ I was sure the truck was going to knock me into the guardrail. Luckily, I sped up enough, and the truck driver was able to get into the other lane, so a tragedy was averted. That incident convinced me to pull over and wait out the heaviest rain. My thoughts of arriving in Pennsylvania early went out the window. But hey, I arrived alive, which I think is more important than arriving early. The rain ended up staying moderate much of the way, only really stopping when I was within an hour of my destination. Naturally, as soon as I parked at the motel, the first sound I heard when stepping out was a loud boom of thunder.


7. To answer a question I asked after a 450-mile drive in one day, yes, you can get symptoms similar to jet lag when driving. It’s known as travel fatigue, but oh boy did I have a bad case of it upon arriving. Driving that far, stopping only 3 times, and having to white-knuckle miles of road due to serious rain left my brain resembling a fried egg when I got to my motel room. I texted my mom at first so she wouldn’t worry. Then I texted Mark, the director of The Cabin, so he knew I arrived. He wanted to meet up and start going over logistics of the shoot. My brain was trying to escape through my ears by this point, but I mean, I was in PA for the movie, not a vacation. I was hungry and a bit dehydrated, so trying to listen and formulate thoughts was tough, but I did my best. It was mostly catching up, going over the shoot dates, and planning some of the smaller minutiae that might fall through the cracks. Lucky for me, the following day was basically the one ‘vacation’ day I’d have. We didn’t have plans to do anything related to the movie until later in the afternoon. This gave me plenty of time to hydrate and relax. I don’t know for sure, but I think that it was the most I had driven in one day since I drove to Florida in 2005. On that trip, I got into Southern Virginia in one day from Cape Cod, which I think is over 600 miles. I was so hell-bent on beating the time that MapQuest had said for my arrival and was way ahead until the rain hit. Now I am gleefully anticipating the drive back home, part of which will be at night, and I am sure full of jet lag the next day. Oh wait, sorry, travel fatigue.


8. Travel fatigue made the choice of what to do for dinner much harder. My brain didn’t want to form coherent thoughts, so I did a lot of staring at local maps and various restaurant websites. In order to get the blood flowing again, I needed to just get moving. A half-mile away was a Sheetz, which is a convenience store chain in the Northeast. I decided to walk down there, which allowed me a cool view of Lamb’s Creek. There are more than 800 Sheetz locations, but none in New England, so when I am out in their neck of the woods, I stop in. It’s the same thing with Wawa. Not sure why, but visiting stores I can’t regularly see on Cape Cod is thrilling to me. Their claim to fame is having an actual cooking line there to make food. This isn’t like reheating pizza slices or microwaving egg sandwiches. No, this is an actual line with people working. I say all of that and didn’t order anything. I grabbed typical things, drinks and snacks. I did make sure to get enough stuff that they had to give me a plastic bag with their logo. Yes, they had branded merch in the store, but that costs money. It’s far easier to have them give me a bag that I can keep and eventually forget where I got it from. I am sure before I leave, I will be back to Sheetz. I saw a few brands of things I want to try. Yay, visiting a convenience store is exciting to me now. Man, I’m old.

9. My mind was set on having Chinese food the night I arrived in Mansfield. There were two places close by; it was just a matter of deciding which one. Mark made sure to let me know that the one located a block away, Lucky Star, was the better one. By this point it was dark out, but I had only had a protein shake during my 450-mile drive, so I needed to eat before I crashed out. Rather than drive literally 500 feet, I again just walked. No, I didn’t have PTSD from driving in the rain; these places are literally within walking distance. Mansfield is a college town. A very small college town with a population of under 3,000, but it is a college town nonetheless. So it has a walkable Main Street with lots of stores clustered together. When I went down to order my food, the streets had a charm to them. There were string lights on either side, and even though it was now September, there were still families and groups of friends out walking. I felt right at home. Two things about Lucky Star: their food was great, and the price was lower than similar places on Cape Cod. It was a win-win. I got sesame chicken and also a take-out menu as a souvenir. The portion size was also amazing. Lifting the bag was like a mini workout. I will say that the travel fatigue was a killer. I was eating and expecting to immediately feel 100%, but I was just a puddle. I was able to eat and stayed up until maybe 10:30pm, but my body was desperate for sleep. I was so tired that the bed, which was a little too firm for me, didn’t hold me back. I crashed and enjoyed the one day of being able to ‘sleep in.’ The rest of the week would be earlier wake-ups and longer days than a typical workday on Cape Cod.




10. The rain continued into the next morning. In fact, it was more heavy thunderstorms. My plan of walking a nearby bike trail went up in smoke. I used that extra time to go to the closest Walmart and gather supplies for the crew that Mark had laid out. This Walmart was a big one. It was made more impressive by the rolling hills surrounding it. As I walked toward the entrance, a huge bolt of lightning streaked across the sky, followed by a crackling roar of thunder. A guy walking out asked loudly, ‘Who angered Zeus?’ That was pretty funny. Inside, it was a typical Walmart, although larger and cleaner than most I’ve seen. The people, though, fit right in with what you think of as Walmart folk. Not all, mind you; most of them were just ordinary people, but you had a good group of stereotypical odd folks wandering the aisles. I think it was the most I’ve ever bought at Walmart with food and drinks for the next shooting day or two. I went to self-checkout because, of course. A woman was working there, or more like watching me check out. I don’t know if she ever even looked at me while I was there. When I rolled the cart away, there wasn’t even a sound. I guess she’d have noticed if I stole anything, so why bother to interact with customers?


11. An interesting, and probably fitting, thing I’ve noticed since I started my journey off Cape Cod. The sights and music remind me of people from my life. It’s like I have been driving through previous chapters of my life as I am on this road to a new chapter. There were tons of moments like that on my drive up to Pennsylvania. Passing places that somehow sparked memories of old friends or family. Sure, I was playing my music on the drive, but it still seemed to capture the right emotions of this journey. It culminated while I was in Walmart. My favorite Grateful Dead song, Eyes of the World, came on. It’s an 18-minute jam, and a fairly odd choice to play at a Walmart. But it reminded me of an old friend, Dan, who I worked with for years cooking. He was a writer, and he pushed me to be a better writer, mostly to stop his trash talk. That never would work. That really put the icing on the cake for the symbolism part of this trip. I am fulfilling a dream, shedding parts of my old self, and also trying not to lose the essence of who I am. It’s having one foot in the future while keeping one eye on the past. I wanted to make sure I noted this phenomenon before I forgot about it in a sea of filming days.




12. As soon as the rain stopped, I was itching to get outside. I went to a nearby ‘bike and hike’ trail. One thing I noticed was how it immediately got insanely humid as soon as it wasn’t raining. It was still cloudy and maybe 75, but I was sweating pretty good after only about fifteen minutes. In total, on the trail, I walked a mile. There were more spiders than people. I did manage to spot a cute brown cat but only got a fleeting glimpse of it. I think it lived in a house right off the trail. The big thing I wanted to explore was an abandoned old bridge that crosses the Tioga River, which the trail runs along. I wasn’t desperate enough to walk the 2.5 miles in each direction, though. Nope, I drove out to where it was to hike down. Seriously, it was in the middle of nowhere. I passed vultures and crows eating a dead deer. There is an overgrown road leading down to the bridge. It’s now referred to as the Graffiti Bridge and has been closed since the mid-1970s. It is obviously covered in graffiti, which is where the name came from. I was hoping to see a live deer along the riverbanks, but sadly only that poor dead one along the road. The walk was totally worth it, and I got tons of photos and videos of it. I briefly thought of not walking onto it but figured if I didn’t I’d regret it the instant I got back to Cape Cod. It was very peaceful and way less creepy than expected based on the photos.




13. We unofficially got down to business around 4pm on Wednesday. Mark came and picked me up from the motel, and we went to his house located in the next town over. The plan was to start formulating a plan for the movie shoot while awaiting the arrival of the rest of the cast. I quickly made friends with Mark’s dog named Django. He was very old and had limited mobility. Mark even said that this past spring his family thought they were going to have to put him down. But he was there, still kicking. For me, filming a movie was all brand new, so I made sure to sit under Mark’s learning tree and ask loads of questions. One thing that hammered home that I wasn’t on Cape Cod anymore was the wildlife. To save money on the budget, we planned on using a beautiful larger shed in Mark’s backyard to stand in for a location in the film. So I am looking out of the back door and thinking about whether deer ever come through the yard. As if he were psychic, Mark mentioned that he gets a lot of deer in the yard. I laughed and then jumped back when I spotted a lone deer walking out from behind that shed. I don’t think the deer is psychic, but stranger things have happened.


14. Dinner was an event. I went with Mark. We picked up his son Anthony, who lives a few minutes away. The plan was to go meet a few others from the cast who had arrived and were staying in another hotel in Wellsboro. As we all got acquainted, or reacquainted, in the parking lot, we decided to go eat at Pizza Hut. It was convenient because it was literally a block away. For a moment, I thought Mark had said ‘Frog Hut,’ which got me intrigued because it was a place that, when looking for food on this trip, looked interesting. It was right across the street from Pizza Hut, so from our table I could see it. I hadn’t eaten at Pizza Hut since I was in high school, so it was very full-circle on this trip. There were six of us at a big table; the rest of the restaurant was empty when we got there around 5pm. The server was really friendly, and we all ordered. Then the positive coincidences continued. Someone ordered a pepperoni pizza. That’s not the coincidence. No, the server came out with a large pepperoni pizza that someone had made by mistake, and she asked if we wanted it for free. Well, you can guess what we said. There we are with all of our meals plus a free large pizza. It ended up becoming part of the food for the film crew the next day. As we laughed and told stories, the server came back and said they had made a mistake with someone’s food. She brought the mistake out, and the person who ordered took it, but then she also said they were remaking it. In the end, we got two free items. It was as if they knew we were making a movie and they wanted a positive write-up in my blog. In reality, it was one cook who made mistakes. He actually came out and apologized. We were all fine with it since it resulted in free food.

The Frog Hut

15. The Cabin wasn’t just the title of the film. It was also the largest shooting location. In order to have the film appear as isolated as it needed to be, Mark found a cabin in the middle of nowhere. I don’t use that phrase lightly. To get to it, we had to drive 25 miles north, near the New York border, to a very small and very rural town called Osceola. When I say ‘rural’ I mean like sparse houses, and of the ones you’d see, half of them looked like the people would shoot you and turn you into a skin suit if you put a toe on their property. It was one-part terrifying and one-part exhilarating. The cabin itself is owned by hunters, and oh boy could you tell. There had to have been more than 20 stuffed deer heads and deer skulls, all over the walls and on various tables. There were also stuffed squirrels, a turkey, a black bear, and probably other animals scattered about. Our job on that first trip out was to clean it enough to make it camera-ready. This meant some sweeping, covering up objects that didn’t fit with the movie’s theme, and blocking areas to fit upcoming scenes. Blocking just means getting the scenery set, like moving a bed back so we could get a clear shot of the bed where the main character in the film is supposed to be sleeping. It probably took us longer to drive out to the cabin than we were there cleaning. It was a mix of rustic, modern, confusing, and horrifying. It would prove to be home for us all for the entirety of two days of the movie shoot.

What the buck is going on?

16. We ended up making that long and lonely drive out to this cabin three times. The first time was the most memorable. It was around 6:30pm as we got deeper into the drive. I kept hoping I’d see a deer, or even a bear. What I got was lightning, and lots of it. When the rain had stopped that morning, the humidity began building. By the time dusk rolled around, it was in the mid-80s. As Mark explained it, heat lightning was a common occurrence in that area due to a similar weather pattern. On the drive out, as the sun sank behind the surrounding hills, I became fascinated with the lightning. I shot video and photos trying to get bolts of lightning. This lightning never let up. It was literally like 15-20 flashes per minute for probably three hours. That is not a stretch. It was amazing. As we got near the end of cleaning the cabin, I again wanted some lightning photos. Behind the cabin is a pathway that leads to a big clearing up a hill. There was a birdhouse on a high pole, and I thought a photo of the lightning behind the birdhouse would be money. None of the photos captured the lightning bolts. It was around this time that all of our phones got the emergency alert: tornado warning. Here we were in the middle of nowhere as it got dark, and now there was the potential for tornadoes. I turned my back to the lightning and shot a video of me explaining what we were doing and the tornado warning. All the while, the pink sky behind me was exploding with lightning flashes. It ended up being one of the best, and most surreal, experiences of my life. Once we had cleaned the cabin to Mark’s satisfaction, it was time to leave. We drove the dirt road out as the lightning made the sky look like a movie special effect. If I didn’t have the videos, I wouldn’t have believed it. There didn’t end up being any tornadoes. We also didn’t see any weird people out there, at least on that first day. The first day of the movie shoot came next, and we all had to make sure to be at Mark’s house by 8:15am. Luckily, the first scenes to be shot were inside his house, so it was shaping up to be a good way to ease us into filming The Cabin.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #111: First, Film Business, Three Things Sir, etc.

1. Over the past 5 weeks or so, I have seen a huge uptick in the number of followers I have across social media. This began with a video of slushy ocean waves at a Cape Cod beach that went viral when shared by a much larger Instagram account. In the time since, I have had tons of shares, tons of follows, and tons of comments. It wasn’t until this week that I had a seminal moment that comes when one’s social media presence starts to grow. First! That was it. Does anyone remember when a larger account would post something, and the first few comments would be people racing to comment ‘First!’ It was like it was a badge of honor, or bragging rights for something that really didn’t matter. My social media presence is not that large. It’s more than doubled in a month, but still not on the level of most influencers or celebrities. That being said, having someone on TikTok comment ‘first’ on a video I shared of a sunset made me feel next-level. I can now put that on my creator resume: Had a guy comment ‘first’ on a video. I have finally made it. Now, where is my blue check mark without me having to pay for it?!


2. After a week off from work due to the blizzard, it was hard getting my head back in the game. It was like I needed to remember exactly what it was that I did for work. It took an extra energy drink just to get me through the day competently. Sadly, it wasn’t like returning to work from a fun vacation. It was returning after being wailed on by a once-in-a-decade snowstorm and then spending the rest of the time either without power or in a daze, trying to get my bearings back. It was as if I needed an extra day off to fully recover from my week off. With spring less than 3 weeks away, I can only hope that winter is starting to lose interest in beating the hell out of us in New England.


3. I immediately contradict that last entry with this one. The slush waves returned to Cape Cod for a short engagement. Temperatures in the teens at night allowed the phenomenon to happen at a few north-facing beaches in the town of Brewster. I was beside myself with excitement. They looked so cool in the bright sun. The slush piled up in a neat semi-circle on the beach, creating a makeshift barrier between the ocean and land. I would have stayed and watched them for as long as I could, but I had to get to work. That evening, I ventured back down to the same beach. By now, the tide had gone out. The slush waves had led to the return of the ice chunks, although in far smaller form than they were a few weeks ago. I had thought I had grown tired of walking through ice and snow and soaking my shoes, but lo and behold, there I was again up to my ankles in snow trying to get the best angles for photos. Hey, when it’s 90 and humid in August, I’ll be living in the photos and videos of those cold winter days.



4. Welcome to the film business. I learned that things aren’t always smooth sailing when it comes to movies. Longtime readers know that last summer and fall were highlighted by the work I did on the When Henry Met Henry short film. It is a fictional meeting between famed authors Henry Beston and Henry David Thoreau, co-produced by Frank Durant, who wrote the screenplay. We filmed in mid-October, and everything went well. Being that it is a short film, we expected that it would be totally wrapped and edited before the end of 2025. We routinely asked the editor how things were going and rarely got clear answers. My hope is to enter the finished product in at least one local film festival. Those things have deadlines. I needed to know when this film would be done so that I could plan accordingly. This past week, I heard from the editor. He asked if I could at least double what he was getting paid for editing. I was caught off guard but also pretty pissed off. Here he was more than four months after wrapping filming without a finished film, and to top it off, he was asking for more money. That being said, I was kind of caught between a rock and a hard place. I want that film done, and if I balked at the editor’s demands, we might get a poorly done job, or we’d have to edit it ourselves. So I agreed to double his pay. It is technically within our budget of what we raised for the film, so it’s not back-breaking. Still, it was kind of a dick move. I have learned to expect the unexpected when it comes to the film industry. To wrap it up, I hope to have the finished film within a week or two, plenty of time to enter it in a festival I’m interested in. It’ll all work out in the end, hopefully. Except for the editor, I won’t ever do business with him again.


5. This week saw my youngest niece, Sylvie’s 7th birthday. She is, without a doubt, one of my favorite people to ever walk this earth. I am lucky that I have probably at least a couple of handfuls worth of people that I can give that distinction to. They are mainly family and a few close friends. I have always been seen as the ‘fun uncle.’ I never called myself that until my nieces and nephews and their parents gave me the distinction. With Sylvie being the youngest and almost guaranteed to be the last of this generation in my family, I take full advantage of the time I have where she still gets super excited and hyper when she sees me. My mom says she owns me, that I am wrapped around her finger. That’s 100% true. I pretty much do whatever she wants because I want to be associated with fun memories when she grows up. For this birthday, it didn’t disappoint. I had butterfly hair clips in my beard and was fully made up. Eye shadow, lip gloss, eyeliner, the works. I had needed to go to the store after the birthday party was over, and was joking that I just wouldn’t go all made up. The thing is, Sylvie did a good job with the makeup, meaning I didn’t look like a clown as I feared. So I still went to the store in all my made-up glory. It was another present for her birthday. Someday, Sylvie will grow up and not think I am cool anymore, so I cherish all of the moments I can make while she still does.


6. I passed 2,000 days alcohol free this week. It’s amazing how, when you get so far out from a big change in your life, you can almost forget the journey that it took to get to where you are. September marks 6 years since I kicked alcohol the F out of my life. It was a big problem for a while, so I want to make sure that I take every opportunity to celebrate the accomplishment. For too long, I felt I needed alcohol to cope with life and to make me feel better about who I was and where I was at the time. The last thing I wanted to be for younger members of my family was a cautionary tale of things not to do. I have found now 2,000+ days away from my last drink that I am a little of both. The cautionary tale is not to let alcohol become your master. Also, the redemption, if you are down and feel like you might never get up, just keep moving forward and never stop trying. I had days where it was like my brain was on autopilot. My car would seemingly drive itself to the liquor store every day. It was a battle to get out of that habit, but once I was clear of the addiction, I could look back and realize how lucky I was to get away from it. My father is the biggest alcoholic I’ve known in my life, and my greatest fear was ending up like him. The one and pretty much only thing he taught me was that a weak man lets his demons run his life. I chose to be stronger and better. 2,000 days and counting.



7. I got a bit of confirmation this week on something I thought was true. Back late in the summer, I got my car’s oil changed at a Jiffy Lube I had gone to many times. They informed me that, for some reason, they could not get my oil filter off to be replaced. This was even though they were the ones who put the filter on in the first place. I left there thinking they were just incompetent and/or lazy. I would get my answer the next time I needed an oil change. That came this week. I chose to go to the nearest Valvoline spot, which was about 40 minutes from me. The entire process was great. Tire pressure checked, fluids topped off, oil changed, oh yeah, and the filter removed without issue. So, needless to say, it was incompetence and laziness at Jiffy Lube. I don’t think I’ll ever go back there. I’d rather drive 40 minutes each way for a guaranteed positive experience. Thank you, Valvoline. You will see me again.


8. My newest show I’m obsessed with binging is Yellowjackets. The show is about a high school girls' soccer team whose plane crashes deep in the Canadian wilderness and their attempts at survival. It’s a little like Lord of the Flies, but with mostly teenage girls. The show takes place in two timelines. The past is 1996 when the crash happened. I love that because it means the girls would have all been my age, so I immediately relate to them more. Plus, they play a lot of great music from then. But then there’s the other timeline, which is present-day, where the survivors of the crash are trying to cope with the trauma of the events. I won’t spoil anything, but just know it’s far more gory than you might expect. I just finished the first season. There are three out so far, with a fourth that’s supposed to debut soon. It’s also got Christina Ricci and Juliette Lewis as the older versions of two of the characters, which makes the show even better. It comes highly recommended.

9. Going to Walmart is always double the fun. You get to shop for some cheap stuff, and you also get the extra bonus of people watching. Several times in previous blogs, I’ve mentioned the wacky people I’ve come across when visiting Walmart. This time was a slight disappointment. There were no weirdos inside, well, maybe besides me. When pulling into the parking lot, though, I was cut off by some idiot in her SUV. Like she couldn’t wait one extra second for me to pass? She just had to whip out in front of me. I handled it coolly. I followed her around the parking lot until she eventually kept driving. I can’t say if she left and didn’t come back because I found a spot and went in. If you’re gonna be a jerk and nearly cause an accident because you’re jonesing for some Walmart goodies, I’m going to be just as petty and tail you around the lot. So I guess in a way, I was the person today that I would have been looking for to write about when visiting Walmart. Who would have seen that twist coming?


10. My oddest interaction this week was not at Walmart but at the grocery store. At one particular store, there is a 60-something-year-old man who fetches carts. I can tell he doesn’t like his job based on what he mutters to himself as he walks around. This visit to the store ended with me walking outside. There was some idiot who had parked their car in the fire lane and left it running unattended. I walked in front of it and stopped to make sure there weren’t any cars coming. The cart guy, out of the blue, says ‘okay sir there are three things.’ I turned around with a confused look. I said ‘excuse me?’ Then this guy finally did what a normal person would have done and asked if it was my car. When I said no, he apologized. I said, ‘okay well that’s one thing.’ I then walked away, not giving him the chance to say or do anything else weird. I have no clue what his three things were or whether he waited outside for the jerk that owned that car to come back.


11. I walked the nearby stretch of the Cape Cod Rail Trail for the first time in nearly two months. That part was great. Getting to walk five miles outside, even if it was drizzly and 45 degrees. However, I wasn’t ready for the sheer number of downed trees scattered across the bike trail. I spotted at least six good-sized trees along the trail in about ½ mile. I can only assume it’s the same or worse throughout the rest of the bike trail. Even as much of the snow from the recent blizzard has melted away, it will take a lot of work to remove what must be many dozens of trees from the trail. Spring is next week, and yes, you’ll be able to ride or walk the bike trail, but it will be a while before you can do so without having to stop and navigate around fallen trees.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #89: Cart Crunch, I Knew It, Annoying Subway, etc.

1. Who’s at fault? I watched an old man driving a pickup truck that’s way too big for him. He was pulling into a handicapped parking spot. Either he didn’t see or didn’t care that there was a shopping cart sitting up against the curb. I saw it coming and waved my arms, but it was too late. The crunch was super loud as he sandwiched the cart against the curb. His bumper didn’t fall off, but it was definitely damaged. A mother and daughter got out of another car and pulled the cart away when he backed up. Of course, the man blamed whoever left the cart there for being lazy. So again, who is at fault? The lazy person who left their cart in a handicapped spot? Or the man who just plowed into it? I’d say maybe the guy should buy a smaller car so he can see, but what do I know?


2. I don’t know about you, but I find it disgusting when someone blows a snot rocket in a public place. I also find it disgusting when a woman does it. So when I stepped outside of the gym and saw a woman blowing a snot rocket on the sidewalk, you might say it was the worst of both worlds. Don’t worry, there will be no graphic details. I’ll leave that up to your imagination. All I’ll say is that when she turned around, she definitely looked like the type of person who would do such a thing. Just low class, no regard for others. It’s like, at least go behind the building to do that, since I’m sure you’re used to hiding behind buildings to do things anyway.


3. So I did a thing this week. I published my 10th book. In Their Footsteps: The Interesting People, Places, and Events of Cape Cod History. It is obviously a history anthology. It features 40 stories in chronological order. I had been working on this for many months in addition to several other projects. I even crafted a simple landing page for people to get more information and to order the book in either paperback or ebook form. I self-published it mostly because I didn’t want to wait 18 months for it to be published traditionally when all of the materials were done. That’s like making a fancy dinner but not being able to serve it for months. If people enjoy this book, I have enough material to make two more volumes, but I’ll have to wait a few months to see if the interest is there. I am stretched pretty thin as it is so I need to be certain before I spend another big chunk of time on a project. Here is the landing page, by the way: In Their Footsteps Book


4. Typically, when I drive to Walmart, it is low-hanging fruit as far as content for this blog. I tend to see several people or incidents that immediately get made into a note in my phone. You can imagine my disappointment when I drove nearly an hour to Walmart only to have *gasp* a normal experience. I even did 2 full laps around the entire store just in case I’d missed something. Nope. It was all normal. Now granted, there was a lady who had a giant labradoodle in the store for some reason. There was also a guy older than me with a bright purplish/blue haircut, but these are not the types of craziness I was hoping for. I wanted people rolling on the floor fighting over the last box of Velveeta, not people happily shopping and getting along. Weak.

So disappointed....

5. While driving back in sadness from my Walmart trip, I stopped at a place I hadn’t visited in over 10 years. The Waquoit Bay Reserve is in East Falmouth. It overlooks the bay, naturally, and has loads of scenic trails, a cool cemetery, and the visitors center is filled with educational material. I did a walk on my own and decided to take a few minutes to sit at a picnic table and enjoy the moment. While I was there, a group of people came out of the visitors center with an employee giving them some historical information. Once they went walking on the trails, the employee stopped and we chatted for a while. He used to work at Plimoth Plantation, so he had loads of info about the Pilgrims, etc, which I enjoyed. I also particularly enjoyed when he’d slip into Olde English to talk about certain topics from the 1600s. What I thought would be a quick hello ended up being closer to a half hour, and I loved every second. It was fitting and funny that when he was going back inside to close up, he said, ‘Sorry, as you can tell I hate talking about history.’ I smiled and said back, ‘And you can tell I obviously hate hearing about it.’ He gave me some stories that might make good future blog posts, but I need to research them first.

The boat house at Waquoit Bay

6. There’s nothing quite like the mini heart attack you get when you’re sound asleep and you hear a crashing sound in your room. I woke up and looked around in the dark and saw nothing. I figured it must have been a dream that was too real. Then it happened 2 more times. Finally, at 4am I got out of bed and stood in the dark in the middle of my room waiting for the sound again so I could figure out what it was. It turned out that the wind had picked up so much during the night that it was blowing my blinds, which then would crash into the window frame. At that point, I just closed my window and went back to bed. Of course, I was so wired from the noise that it took me forever to go back to sleep. I’d have almost been better off just staying up. Oh well, at least it wasn’t a killer waiting to jump me in my closet.


7. There was a bit of an ‘I knew it,’ moment when I went to get my haircut this week. I always go to the same place. The person who I prefer to cut my hair is someone I’ve known for years and who always does an excellent job. However, because he is so good at his job, you need to book an appointment, and he is often booked out for weeks. The last time I had no choice but to do a walk-in and have one of the others on staff do the cutting. This guy talks way too much, bragging about how good he is going to make you look. It’s off-putting. During the haircut, he left to go into the backroom a few times and seemed to not be paying as much attention as he should to a paying customer whose hair he was cutting. I left there feeling like I got ripped off. It wasn’t short enough, and it looked uneven in a few places. Flash forward to this week, and I was right. The barber told me he needed to even things out because it was a bit of a mess. It’s all fixed now and looks great, but that other guy is a big mouth hack, which is why I’m not giving names here.


8. In the weekly cuteness alert, I mentioned last week that my youngest niece, Sylvie, gave me a blade of grass to keep when I was waiting for her school bus. This week I got another gift. It was a random stick that she wanted me to keep. Knowing that she’s smart and will call me out on it if I say I kept it but threw it away, I brought it with me on my walk. I was 2 miles into my walk when I shot a quick video for social media showing me with the stick by the water. So I had proof I kept it...for a while. Once the video was over, I left the stick on a bench. Luckily, she won’t know about that until she reads this blog in the future. But who knows, I might be long dead by then, so I won’t have to feel bad.


9. This weekend, I took a drive out to an area of beach that we plan on using to shoot the short film called When Henry Met Henry, my directorial debut. It was location scouting so that the rest of the crew could get a feel for where we’d be without having to actually drive there. I lauded this beach for being very secluded during the off-season. I walked about 1/3 mile to the specific spot where we will film, which is a beautiful trail over the dunes that leads into the woods. There was nobody around, well, except for one couple. Do you want to guess where they ended up going? Yup, right up the same path where I was going. Out of the miles of open beach, the only other people I saw went to the exact same place as me. I ended up having to wait by the water until I figured they were deep into the woods. I still got the video I wanted, but I had to shake my head. We’ll be filming early in the morning, so hopefully there won’t be any onlookers. With my luck, there will end up being a crowd just in that one spot.


10. For me, having lived on Cape Cod for so long, it’s incredibly rare to find an area that I am not familiar with. As luck would have it, the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary was one such place. Now, I have been there before, once, over 10 years ago. However, when I was there, I didn’t do much walking. I just found the first clearing I could and got a photo of the sunset. This time, I hiked nearly a mile out to the ocean. It was incredibly isolated. Loads of chipmunks and squirrels couldn’t have cared less about me walking by. I made it out to a boardwalk for sunset photography. It was well worth the walk. The part that made perfect sense for my life was that as I was approaching the ocean, I spotted a couple coming my way, headed back to the parking lot. The woman was a patient at my job. So I only saw two people my entire time at this spot, and one of them knew me. For anyone else, it would seem like a wild coincidence. For me, it was like ‘of course.’

The sunset at Wellfleet Bay.

11. I don’t know why this irks me so much, but it does. I created an account for Subway a long, long time ago. I do enjoy me some Subway. The info I entered as a profile is all the same as today, except for the fact that I had an AOL email address because it was like 15 years ago. For the last however many years, I haven’t used that AOL email; I use a Gmail account. I changed my account info on every single site I had a profile with to reflect the change of email. Subway will not allow you to change your email. These people will let me change my actual name and my phone number, but not my email. Their stupid app says your email is ‘how we know it’s you.’ How do you know it’s me? How about my friggin’ name and phone number? When I try to sign in, they send a confirmation code to my AOL email. The issue is I never use that email, so when I go there AOL then sends me a confirmation code to my Gmail. It’s so stupid. I have never heard of a company not allowing you to change your email. Well, I did what I had to do and deleted my account and then created a new one using the Gmail address, so the joke's on them. Or it’s on me since I went through all of this trouble for a sub shop.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog: #37 - Hidden Moth, Grocery Store Fight, Podcast Ads, etc.

1. I don’t know what’s worse. Swatting a giant moth in your house, splattering it everywhere, and then having to clean it up? Or swatting a giant moth and thinking you’ve killed it without knowing where it went? Then it’s like a double surprise when you find a giant dead moth in your shoe or somewhere else a week later. That is the hell I am currently dealing with. UPDATE: I found it the day I published this blog in the corner of a window sill, it has since been flushed.

2. While walking to my car after leaving a store a woman heading in and said something out loud to me. I thought she said ‘you look like the coolest guy ever.’ Surprised I stopped and politely asked her to repeat that. She said ‘it looks like the coolest sky ever’ about the clouds. We talked for a moment and then she left. Thankfully I didn’t say something foolish like ‘yes I am the coolest guy ever.’

3. It never dawned on me just how many people have likely never been up close to a lighthouse. When visiting Nobska in Falmouth I watched as every other person who visited while I was there went over to the entrance to the light and tried to open it, as if lighthouses are left unlocked. Every, single, one. By the end, it was pretty funny.

4. A trip to the supermarket was insane from the jump. I hadn’t even made it all the way inside when a screaming match was all around me. From what I gathered a very large man had grabbed a container of danish and was eating them in the bakery section near the front entrance. A female customer saw this and called him out saying he needed to pay for his items before eating them, and that he appeared to be trying to leave first. The man screamed at her that he had diabetes and was going to pass out if he didn’t eat them. An employee came over to diffuse the situation. He thanked the woman who left and got the man a motorized cart to ride instead of pushing a regular cart. The rest of my time in the store was very mundane because it easily peaked with that craziness before I’d even made it all the way inside.

It might be AI but this is not far off from what happened.

5. A friend went this week on a fishing trip out around Minot’s Ledge Light off of South Shore Massachusetts. We’re both huge lighthouse fans and this was a photo trip that squared us as I had been lucky enough to visit Point Gammon Light on the highly secure Great Island on Cape Cod. To make up for the jealousy I felt over his awesome adventure I took my camera and headed out. I ended up in Falmouth at the Knob and also Nobska Lighthouse. In true ‘dedication to the craft’ fashion I managed to stand on railings that were so unsteady that if my weight had shifted a little I’d have gone down and broken something. In the end, the great photos, and risking life and limb for them, didn’t soothe my jealousy over my friend visiting Minot.

Risking life and limb for a good photo

6. As the sun starts to rise later in the morning I find myself driving in the dark to work a few times a week. That means more of a chance of running into wildlife. It’s typically rabbits, squirrels, maybe a coyote, and sometimes deer. Today it was a deer. In a fun moment, I spotted a young male deer on the right side of the road. He had some nice antlers. My thought was do I stop to try to get a photo. Then as he stared me down as I approached I feared he might dive in front of my car, or charge it, so I left him with no photos and the deer staring me down.

7. After nearly 4 years I’ve finally crossed the threshold where I can have paid advertisements on my podcast. Now, just because I can doesn’t mean I’ll immediately accept any ad that comes my way. In fact, I’ve already turned one down. It was a Bible and Constitution podcast. I figured that content doesn’t jive with my fun Gen-X nostalgia podcast. Am I wrong?

8. The perfect combination of fun and also feeling old is waking up the next morning after running and playing with my 5-year-old niece at my mother's the previous afternoon. The running was fine, it was more the carrying her on my shoulders for 20+ straight minutes while she controlled me like Ratatouille. But neck soreness aside those types of moments mean more than anything, especially knowing that someday I won’t be able to carry her around like that. That just means that maybe when I’m old she’ll push my wheelchair around, or use me as a bowling ball to knock things over. Who knows?

9. I am a creature of habit. I know this. However, I think it goes far deeper into my subconscious. This manifests a lot in the places I go to take photos. In a scenario that happens far too often, I choose a place, seemingly at random, to go get some photos. Then the next day in my social media memories photos of that same place from years past pop up. It just happened again this week with a sunset shoot at Stage Harbor Light in Chatham.

Stage Harbor Light in Chatham

10. Speaking of that sunset shoot at Stage Harbor. It was far more impactful than I could have thought. I walked the mile over soft sand out to what is a ‘headless’ lighthouse, meaning it has no lantern. With my trusty selfie stick in tow, I got some great photos. The impactful part comes two-fold. One, I had not been out to that lighthouse since July 2020, two months before I quit drinking. Two, on the way back in the twilight I walked slower until I finally stopped. I sat up in the dunes and played some Hawaiian music on Pandora, enjoying the scenery and thinking of my Uncle Eric who passed in January 2023. The 2^nd song that was played was a song titled Pele Kane by a band named Maunalua. It is a song that reminds me of him as he used to play it a lot at family gatherings. It was more emotional than I expected as it felt like he was letting me know he was there in the dunes with me at that point.

Pele Kane - Maunalua

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #36: Haircut Savings, Dryer Sheets, Astro What?, etc

 

1. I have noticed that the cost of a regular haircut at most of the chain stores (Supercuts, Great Clips, Procuts, etc) is in the neighborhood of $23 and up. I had to figure this out. So since 2010, I have used my own pair of clippers to buzz my head weekly. I’m just not a fan of my own hair. Anyway, in the last 14 years, I have bought 2 sets of clippers, both from Walmart, and likely totaling $45. Now, how much money have I saved if the average person gets a haircut every 6-12 weeks, maybe 4-8 times per year? At $23 a pop if you get a haircut every 12 weeks in the last 14 years you’d have spent nearly $1,400. Every 6 weeks? It’s nearly $2,800. That’s a lot of cash to save. Now I’m not saying everyone should buzz their own hair like me, but hey at least my odds of screwing it up are slim, plus that extra money would come in handy.

2. It’s amazing how weird it is for me to see that the Tupperware company has filed for bankruptcy. Their food storage products have been a huge part of my life all throughout growing up. Honestly, I think the quality of the product might have been their undoing. Think about it. Their name is literally synonymous with the product they made. The product was of such high quality that they last seemingly forever unless you drive over it like Kip in Napoleon Dynamite. So in the end the consumer ended up buying fewer Tupperware products because they lasted so long. I don’t know if this bankruptcy spells the final end for Tupperware, hopefully not, but their products will still be in use long after they’re gone.

3. I know they are just doing their job, but sometimes it gets a bit obnoxious how quickly salespeople run up to you when you walk into a store. I went to get a new wireless mouse for my laptop at Staples and you would have thought I was some kind of celebrity with how fast the person nearest to me came flying over. They asked if I was looking at computer accessories and I tried to be as polite as I could when I said ‘No, I’m just looking around.’ They left me alone after that but I bet if I had glanced for more than a second in their direction they’d have been running like a dog wanting a treat.

4. Boy summer decided to get out of here fast in New England. The last week before fall started was filled with tons of rain wind and chilly temperatures. Fall is my favorite season but I do like to ease into the change. This was like an anvil on the head. We ended up getting somewhere between 6-9” of rain over 3 days. Of course, you do know soon is the point in the year where you think summer is dead but like Michael Myers, it will rise again and, uh, strangle you with warmth, and stab you with sunshine.

Summer's final scare,

5. I am blessed that as I get into my late 40s my eyesight is still really good. That being said I do have a tendency to misread things, at least initially when I look at something quickly. The latest addition of this had to do with an energy drink. While in Market Basket I was looking at energy drinks and I saw a new flavor of the Celsius drinks. The flavor is Astro Vibe and I guess it’s a sort of raspberry. When I first saw the can I thought it said it was Astro Glide. That is definitely not an energy drink and is a far different product. I don’t recommend trying to drink Astro Glide if you had any desire.

It's Astro VIBE

6. The nearest Market Basket to me is a little over 20 minutes away and that’s over the highway. I don’t go often and this week I chose the perfect time to go. I say that sarcastically. I guess they were doing inventory during the evening. I thought they announced it was the annual inventory but I might be wrong. All I know is that there were dozens of employees there, it was like every person who worked there had been called in, and then they called all Market Basket employees from nearby locations and brought them in as well.

7. Do you ever think you’ve found all of the dryer sheets as you’re folding your clothes only to have one sneak into one of your pant legs? This foolish occurrence happens every so often to me. It’s typically pant legs, although sometimes it’s in long-sleeved pullovers as well. One time I pulled a dryer sheet out of my sleeve inside of a store but luckily nobody saw. That sort of event would have been horrifying while in school. I’d have been known as Dryer-Sheet Boy forever after that.

8. I bumped into a woman at the beach who had a dog that reminded me of the dog the family had when I was growing up. Patty was a yellow lab, the quintessential ‘good dog.’ One that you could take for a walk off-leash and never have to worry about her running away, or attacking someone. This dog I saw was an older yellow lab, not quite as heavy as Patty was though. In her last years, she looked very much like a Twinkie with a head. This yellow lab at the beach was named Chelsea and had her own step to help her get up into the back of the woman’s SUV. It brought back lots of good memories.

A reasonable facsimile of a good memory.

9. I saw 2 guys in the supermarket. 1 was normal, and the other was wearing the following: shorts, flip-flops, and a gigantic oversized blue trench coat with large gold buttons. This coat had obvious stiff shoulder pads and was a XXL when this guy needed a medium or large at most. It looked like something that a Disney character would have worn in the 1950s. I quite literally did the shocked double-take that you see done on TV shows.

10. I had a day this week that began with a horrible migraine headache. I did not want to go to the gym. After getting angry at myself, and having a good dose of caffeine and ibuprofen, I dragged myself out for a 4-mile walk. I have been listening to the audiobook of David Goggins Can’t Hurt Me. His life story is incredible and highly recommended for inspiration. I was at the point in the book where he lost over 100 pounds in 3 months, yes for real. I willed myself through my walk after that because if Goggins could drop all of that weight for a chance to be a Navy Seal surely I could do a leisurely walk along a bike trail. They’re equally challenging, right?

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #26: 90210, The Entitled Karen Show, Turkey Fighting Mailman, etc

1. Sadly this past week actress Shannen Doherty lost her battle with cancer. She was only 53. It’s especially jarring being someone who used to watch Beverly Hill 90210 with my sister Kate to see now that both Shannen Doherty and Luke Perry are gone. Both Brenda and Dylan. So sad, rest in peace.

2. Well it only took until July 14^th to see the first Back to School ad. This was for Walmart. Now I understand that some schools in other areas of the country start the year earlier, but where I live it’s the standard week after Labor Day. Making it more than 7 weeks until kids go back to school. In fact, I think most kids got out of school about 3 weeks ago meaning that they’re way less than ½ way through their summer vacation and already being reminded of going back to school. Soon companies will start their back-to-school campaigns before the current year even ends.

Coming soon to a school near you.

3. In the latest episode of the Entitled Karen show I was at 7/11 grabbing a drink on my way to work. There was a decent line for registers but nobody was using the one self-checkout register. The woman ahead of me in line shouted out to see if anyone was going to use it and when everyone said no she went up. She was in trouble when she tried to scan a 12-pack of White Claws at the self-checkout. It needed her to show an ID to someone. Naturally, she got frustrated at such inconvenience. Eventually, she groaned and yelled out that she ‘gave up’ to one of the cashiers and walked out. She left all of her stuff there like a jerk of course. I went up, scanned my drink, and handed the White Claw case to the cashier, and was done in 30 seconds.

4. It was so flattering to hear from an old friend who was working at a library. They said a woman came in looking for books on historic Cape Cod places. When my books were recommended not only had she read them all, she was a regular listener to my podcast, and wanted to be a writer herself. I’m not saying I am an inspiration to her but it’s humbling to think maybe something I’ve done in my career is driving someone else to do something in theirs.

5. At the Stop & Shop supermarket chain they charge you 10 cents for paper bags. No biggie, I have a pile of reusable bags so it doesn’t affect me. I see loads of other shoppers bringing their own recyclable bags with them as well. However this week on back-to-back days I saw 2 different people bring in a cardboard box and use that for their groceries. They literally walked around the store holding a cardboard box. It’s one part clever, one part stupid as hell. I found myself laughing and shaking my head at both of them.

6. A woman came into my work needing shockwave therapy on a sore plantar fascia and calf. The Cliff's Notes is that shockwave therapy is a non-invasive treatment that stimulates the body’s natural healing process. It can relieve pain and promote healing of injured tendons, ligaments, and other soft tissues. Anyway, she came in with this cute little puppy that adored her. Unfortunately, the shockwave therapy machine and the process are relatively loud. Rather than having the puppy watch its owner getting this treatment and possibly yelling as it can be a bit painful to start, I chose to have the puppy kept outside of the room. No need to scar a puppy for life if it can be avoided.

7. I can’t watch ‘Best Kills’ of the Friday the 13^th series before bed and then pretend to be surprised when my dream consists of me having to defeat Jason in a sort of living video game. Luckily in this dream, my 2 weapons that did the trick were shining a bright light in his face, and pushing him out the door, and locking it behind him. Why didn’t any of those teens in the movies try those?

In my dreams Jason can't use doors apparently

8. Speaking of dreams, does anyone ever have a dream about a person they hadn’t seen, or even thought of, in over 30 years? The other night I dreamed I was at a party but the host was a kid I went to elementary school with. I hadn’t thought of him or heard his name in probably 30 years, but now it’s front and center in my brain. Maybe I should find him and reach out?

9. I noticed this week that one of the Shaw’s supermarkets on Cape Cod has put up a sign banning dogs from the store since it’s a health violation. My first thought was ‘do people really need to be told not to bring pets into a grocery store?’ This was never an issue all throughout my growing up. Dogs stayed in cars or at home. Service dog? Maybe. Regular pet? You might need therapy because you’ve got some bigger issues.

No longer to be seen at Shaw's

10. I never thought a specific automobile could make my Enemies List if I had one, but it happened this week. I was driving home and while making a left turn was cut off by a gray Volkswagen Tiguan SUV. It whipped around me and was so dangerous that the car in front of me pulled over and waved those jerks to let them pass. No more than 5 minutes later I was going straight at a light when a car in the Right Turn Only lane swerved in front of me because they were too stupid to know how to read traffic signs. That vehicle was another gray VW Tiguan. That’s right 2 of the same exact vehicle cut me off within 5 minutes. Do dealerships sell those SUVs specifically to certain types of people?

11. I had a great speaking event at the Osterville Library this week talking about my book Cape Cod Nights. The library parking lot was full though thanks to an art show on the front lawn. I ended up parking on the next street over. Even though I was told I’d be fine there during my event there was a little part of my brain expecting to either have a ticket on my windshield when I went back out, or my car would have just been towed. No worries though, everything was fine.

12. In a fun bit of local celebrity meeting one of the people that came to my event in Osterville after the talk revealed himself to be the legendary mailman whose truck was attacked by turkeys on camera back in 2011. It went viral and he was a sensation for a while. So now I can say I’ve met the turkey-fighting mailman and the guy who got swallowed by the humpback whale. What a life I live.

Turkey Attacks Mail Truck