Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #59: No Shocks, Old Lady Gangs, Dreams of Comedians, etc.

1. New this week. From the person who brought you vacuuming without the hose attached comes another foolish adventure. This time I had someone lying on our PEMF (Pulsed Electromagnetic Field) mat. It has many benefits including reducing pain, accelerating healing, and much more. Anyway, I was turning it on and the person mentioned it didn’t feel too intense. So I turned it up and turned it up again. Well, it turned out that the wires connecting the mat to the power source were not attached. Instead, I had another device hooked in. So yeah I had them lying on the mat while another piece of equipment was getting the current. It only took me a few minutes to figure it out.

2. I am in the *long* process of creating a website for my podcast. One of the arduous tasks in crafting it is making a comprehensive list of all of the links I’ve shared on all 185 (so far) episodes. What’s crazy is how many of these links I’ve shared, some in only the last 2 years, have been closed down. I mean it makes it a lot faster to create the link page, but wow the turnover is really fast on the internet.

Coming soon...

3. I walked into the gym one afternoon this week. It was quieter than usual which was great. It allowed me to more easily scan the crew that was there. My brain must not have been working well. I looked at an older lady riding an upright bike. From a distance, it looked like she had a tattoo on her forehead. My first thought was ‘why did this old lady get a forehead tattoo?’ It was only after seeing another older lady with the same mark that it dawned on me that it was Ash Wednesday. No there is no gang of old ladies with face tattoos.

4. To me if you wear a mask indoors that is your choice. If it makes you feel safe, or if you have a compromised immune system you should do it. I’d never give a cross look to someone wearing a mask, especially after what we dealt with in the pandemic. That being said, if you are inside and wearing a mask under your chin, the chin diaper look, you are a complete moron. Also, if you repeatedly move the mask from over your nose and mouth to under your chin you’re a double-dip moron. Are you immunocompromised or not? If you are then putting your mask under your chin has exposed you to all sorts of germs. If not then why are you wearing a mask? A fashion statement? Man, just dumb.

5. I have a skill I guess for being able to have and remember vivid dreams. I’ve written several short stories based on dreams I’ve had. This week was not a story type dream, but it was memorable. I dreamed I was walking around a mall in California. I was fascinated by the food court, more specifically a Cape Cod themed burger place. While I stood outside of this restaurant I heard a voice say my name. It was famed comedian Norm MacDonald, one of my favorites who sadly passed in 2021. He said ‘Hey I like that restaurant too.’ Then he gave me a classic Norm one-liner. He said ‘you know what the best part about it is? You can actually go inside.’ Meaning that he was making fun of me standing and staring longingly at this restaurant from the outside when I could actually go in and eat. It was pretty funny.

6. Few things in life make me as happy as I am when I get to spend time with my youngest niece. Her 6^th birthday was this week. I loved getting to go over after work and have dinner and celebrate on her actual birth date. My mother makes the joke that my little niece basically owns me. She can get me to do whatever she wants. That was on full display when she proceeded to dress me in pink leg warmers, wristbands, and a headband like I was in a 1980s Jazzercise class. I don’t regret a moment of it though.

7. It took me a few years but I finally got to watch Coming 2 America. The original is one of my favorite movies ever. I can pretty much recite it word for word. I know the reviews of the sequel were middling but to me the movie was perfect. It had so many callbacks to the original. It had everyone they could get from the original. It was a bit sad to see 4 people in the film that have since died. James Earl Jones, Louie Anderson, John Amos, and Dikembe Mutombo. I recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the original.

8. A first for me happened this week. I was headed for the self-checkout lines at the supermarket. There I saw 2 women with 1 full shopping cart. They were dividing up the groceries and using 2 registers to check the stuff out. All the while there was a line of us waiting while these Karens hogged 2 machines. It took all of my dwindling restraint not to say something. The older I get the less I care about what I say and to whom. Just a pair of selfish suck bags.

9. I have found a perfect way to have an energy drink I enjoy and save a lot of money in the process. I have liked the Celsius drinks since they debuted in 2005. Part of that is because they were first sold in a small store near where I lived in Delray Beach, Florida at the time. I feel like I was in on the ground floor with them. Anyway, at Shaw’s they now have packets of Celsius in powder form. You typically get 14 packets for $11.99. Quick math, a can of Celsius sells usually for between $2-2.50. If we go low that means 14 cans is $28. So even on the low end I save about $16. On the high end it’s $35 and I save about $23. I love Celsius even more now.

10. With my Etsy photography shop back in business for the first time since 2017 I have decided to really make a go of it trying to sell some prints. This means trying to craft a good, and affordable, ad on Google. It does take a few minutes to get it right, but I’m hopeful it will be a good risk-reward trade. The funny thing to me is that I have done Google Ads before. In fact all of my campaigns I created are still listed. They’re inactive but listed. When did I last create a Google Ad? 2009. Yes, several years before I had my first book deal I was making ads. For what? Promoting my ebooks and my new website. That’s all well and good but it also means I haven’t done a single Google Ad for any of my 9 books, or my podcast, or my YouTube channel, or my website (at least not since 2009). So we’ll see. Maybe I get a few sales and keep the ads going. Maybe I don’t. At least my budget is very low. Hey, I have to be smart. Just because spending $100 a week is ‘recommended’ doesn’t mean it’s smart.

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?