Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #117: Used To Be Young, Price Update, Double Entendre, etc.

1. I try to remember that I was a kid once, and so was everyone else. I don’t want to become the old guy who is always suspicious of younger people. I say all this because this week, when it was time for Monday Runday, I had to put that to the test. I run with a longtime friend at a school track. The school has been closed for a few years and is likely to be torn down in the next few years, but the track is still in one piece. I pulled into the parking lot, and standing near the front door of the school were two teenage boys. They were just hanging out with their bikes. I did my best to remember I was a kid once, but I had my eye on them the entire time I was there. They stayed huddled by the front of the school for a good 45 minutes while I was on the track. They only left a few minutes before I got done. Of course, as far as I know, they didn’t do anything except hang out, but my old man eyes were fixed on them anytime they got in my line of sight.


2. There is an old 1990s song by a band named Everclear called ‘Everything to Everyone.’ The title has always stuck with me because I feel that is my lot in life. I’ve always hated to let people down. For too many years, I’d say yes to things that I wasn’t 100% into because I wanted to be liked. In some ways, it’s noble to want to have the ability to do whatever you can for others to help them. However, when you constantly try to please everyone, the one person who ends up being not pleased is you. In my 40s, I’ve done a lot more of saying no and setting boundaries. Not being a jerk, but when whatever it is doesn’t 100% jive with what’s in my heart and mind, I have to decline. There are obviously levels to people pleasing. Small things, I am still apt to say yes to, but my level of extension out of my safety and stability grows smaller with each passing year. I feel bad when I have to say no to people, especially loved ones, but I also feel like the things I’ve declined haven’t been unreasonable. I’m sure those who’ve asked feel differently, but you can’t please everyone, and you shouldn’t try.


3. I love Netflix. Ever since I signed up for it again last year, I have posted about the shows I have been enjoying all over this blog. That being said, they are, at the end of the day, a greedy corporation looking to squeeze every cent they can out of their subscribers. They know that they have loads of great shows and movies and that the more than 320 million worldwide subscribers will pay for their service, even as they continue to raise their rates. I had to laugh this week when I got an email from Netflix. In it, they mentioned their rates being raised. I have the lowest tier with ads, and it’s up to $8.99 per month, up from $7.99. The laughing part came from how they phrased it. They called it a ‘price update.’ Update? It’s not like a new Windows download or iPhone software. It’s a straight money grab. I’d have had more respect if they just said, ‘Here’s info about the latest price increase.’ It’s not like I’m going to cancel, but I had to laugh at how they frame their making more money off of us. Please don’t piss down our backs and tell us it’s raining, Netflix.


4. This week saw the first 70-degree days of the year on Cape Cod. After the terrible winter we had, it was an amazing feeling to step outside in short sleeves and feel the warmth of the sun. It was 70 degrees at 9am, which was perfect. Of course, the first 70-degree day was also a work day, so there was a tinge of sadness. I was driving to work and had to stop off at the beach. This is the time of year when it gets warm, but the humidity is still a way away. This is also the time of year when it gets warm, you can be outside, and the flocks of tourists aren’t here yet. I joked to myself as I walked along the sand that I must really like my job because I was choosing to go to work inside when the wide open beach was staring me in the face. The most ‘New England’ thing about the warm weather goes back to last week, and saying that we have 12 seasons here. Well, next week our highs drop back into the upper 40s for a few days because, of course, they do. I’ll just keep a heavy coat and maybe an ice scraper on hand for another few weeks just in case.


5. A couple of eye-opening things happened at work this week. Our new CA (chiropractic assistant) tech is learning a few therapies that she didn’t know of at her previous job. One that she’s learning is Myovision. It is a quick way to measure muscle tension in the spine. This, in turn, shows where muscles might be compensating. Things that typical X-rays don’t show. It is done at 3 areas along the spine. When my hip area was measured, it showed a major compensation on my left side, which made sense since a right hip injury several years ago ruined my running career. We tested again, and it was a little better. Then I was asked to take my shoes off and do a third test. To my amazement, the left hip compensation was gone. I was then curious about how much my shoes, and more specifically, my extra insoles in them, contributed to hip and knee issues that have been plaguing me. We moved on to the bilateral scales. I’ve mentioned them before, but in short, they are two scales side by side. You step on each with one foot, staring straight ahead. It then shows you which side bears more of your weight. Without shoes, I was nearly 10 pounds heavier on my right. My left knee has been an issue for the last week or so; it made sense. Then I stood with only the extra insoles under my feet, no shoes. It flipped, and I was nearly 10 pounds heavier on my left. With shoes, I was basically even. My mind was blown by how much those insoles negatively affected my legs. They were immediately thrown in the trash. I guess it was kind of lucky that we did the Myovision test, or else I might have kept doing damage to my legs with those insoles. Oh, and I also found out I am down 14 pounds in 2026, so it was even better news.

An example of the Myovision test results

6. This is the 4th year that I have helped my buddy Steve install and remove a dock in a lake at a couple’s summer house. It’s good money for relatively short work. Granted, it’s me on one end of each of the three dock pieces with two people on the other end, but that’s fine. I am the only one who doesn’t need to get into the water to put in or remove the dock. We install it in April and usually remove it in November. This year, the weather was great, low 60s and sunny when we arrived around 5:30pm. We installed the dock in 15-20 minutes, which included carrying each piece down two sets of stairs. I mention this because the next day at work, I trained a 13-year-old. I have found that if I do the workout with him, he stays engaged. This means I end up burning a fair amount of calories while being paid. What am I getting at? Well, at least for this time, I burned more calories training my 13-year-old than I did installing the dock. Not sure what that says about either situation, but I found it funny because you’d think the dock install would be harder work. Nope. Training a 13-year-old is.


7. A Not Safe For Work but hilarious story. When training any of my teenage clients, I never assume that they have absolutely no knowledge of fitness. Before showing them an exercise, I will ask them: ‘Do you know what...is?’ It could be bird dog, Bulgarian split-squat, pallof press, etc. Typically, they don’t know, so then I go on to explain while I demonstrate. This week I had a 19-year-old in the gym. As I said, I asked him if he was familiar with Exercises A, B, C, etc. Then we came to a bit of interval training to help him with his cardio. I asked him ‘Do you know what a snatch is?’ He did not. It is a legit exercise using a dumbbell or a kettlebell. But in my mind, I immediately thought of the 90s slang for, well, you know. Or maybe not? A female body part. Being 19, he wasn’t well-versed in my GenX slang, so it flew right by without a cross look. I thought that it sounded like the way some 1980s Afterschool Specials would start. Some kid coming home and telling his parents, ‘The teacher asked me what a snatch was today.’ The funniest part was that I told the story to a pair of coworkers. The one who is in her 40s, like me, immediately started cracking up. The other, who is in her early 20s, had no idea what was so funny. Then we had to explain it, which was another hilariously awkward conversation. Stupid exercise. I guess it could be worse; instead of it being called a snatch, it could have been named a cooch or some other slang term from my childhood.




8. I’ve had credit cards, debit cards, gift cards, supermarket rewards cards, Sub Club cards, and so many other random cards. Now I can add a laundromat card to the list. I’ve been doing my laundry at a laundromat for the last few months. No big deal. You go in, pay, wash, and leave. Sure, it’s more expensive than I remember, but what isn’t? This week, I went to do my laundry when I noticed two things. First, the cost of a load of laundry went up $1, which immediately sucks. Next, there was no slot to insert money into the washer. Suddenly, the man who owns the place came up and explained to me the card system. There is a touch screen where you enter cash, and it, in turn, puts that amount on your card. Then you place your card on a reader on the washing machine and hit start, and the washer starts up. You got all that? If not don’t worry, it is needlessly complicated, and I have no idea why a laundromat that looks like it still exists in 1985 needs a touch screen card system for their machines. That flippin’ card system is likely why we’re all getting charged more per load. It just makes me laugh because as this guy was explaining the new system, all I could hear in my head was ‘Why?’ The dude will probably be driving a Porsche in a few months thanks to the ‘new system.’

All that sweet laundromat card money...

9. Flattery will get you everywhere. This week at work, a patient was there who hadn’t been in over a year. She was sitting in the therapy room while I was standing at my desk. I said hello to her and asked how she had been. Then she won the day in my book by asking if I had lost a ton of weight. I haven’t lost ‘a ton,’ but as I mentioned earlier, I have dropped 14 pounds in 2026. But since she hasn’t seen me in over a year, it makes me wonder if I was even heavier the last time she saw me, and if I have dropped more weight? Not sure on that, but another day this week, my mother remarked that she could tell I’ve lost weight, so that means it is noticeable. Despite that good news, I feel like I’m about halfway to what I want to lose, so I’d say another 16 to get me to 30. First though, I’ll make the push for 20.


10. I mentioned in a blog months ago that I am so old now that visiting supermarkets, which I don’t go to often, is considered exciting. This was not the excitement I had in mind. I stopped at a supermarket, which I visit maybe once a year at most. I won’t name them because it is not a good story. I was looking to grab something quick for dinner on the way home from a video shoot. While walking the back wall, near the freezer section, I spotted something out of the corner of my eye. It was something small and brown, and it was scurrying its way along the floor. Yes, it was a mouse, out in plain view in this store. Now, I’m not saying this is a reflection on their cleanliness because it could have just been a one-in-a-million moment. But I will say in my life, I have visited probably dozens of different supermarkets in a bunch of states. I have never, not once, seen a mouse ever, anywhere else. This was the first. So maybe it is a coincidence, maybe I have been around mice in other supermarkets and not seen them. Or maybe this place needs to hire an exterminator and be glad I didn’t whip out my phone and film it and then tag it online, because the mouse was visible long enough that I could have.


11. Although the weather has been the typical bipolar spring we get on Cape Cod, things are starting to bloom. I ventured to a church garden I like to go to for flower photos and videos. It’s not as great as it will be in a month or so, but the daffodils were starting to spring up. I had an idea to use my selfie stick to create a unique perspective. I would hold it low to the ground and navigate it through the field of daffodils from underneath. My experiment caught the attention of a woman and her two granddaughters. They were really nice and actually asked if they needed to be quiet. I laughed and said I had started taking photos at the other end of the garden so I wouldn’t bother them. I showed them my raw video and explained what I was doing. The two girls, who were probably 6 and 8, didn’t care much. After they left, I became obsessed with trying to get a video of an elusive chipmunk that kept coming close but then running away when it saw me. My solution? Set the camera on a tripod and stand as far away as I could, where the Bluetooth shutter would still work. I ended up with about 5 seconds of footage of it running to and from my camera, but now I want to try to get nature spy shots like that of more creatures. Knowing my luck though, a hawk will think my phone looks like food and swoop down and grab it.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #101: Unexpected Guest, Christmas Fun, 30 Year Search, etc.

1. This was a short work week with the Christmas holiday happening Thursday. I ended up working two days and then getting to enjoy 12 straight days off. That doesn’t mean that there was a lack of interesting stories. The main one came in the form of an unexpected guest in the gym. In the early afternoon, my boss happened to lay eyes on something in the corner of the gym near the exit to the hallway. It was a dead mouse. No idea where it came from or how it got into our gym, but there it was. I was tasked with removing it, so I grabbed a pair of gloves and picked it up by the tail. I apologized to it as I tossed it out the back door into some nearby woods. The interesting part of this story is that where the mouse was found was next to an area I had planned to use with a client that morning. She ended up having to cancel her appointment. If she had been there, she’d have been doing planks on a mat right there, and no doubt would have seen the mouse and rightfully flipped out. So I guess it was a good thing that her schedule changed. Fun fact: In the last year or so, we have had a mouse, a frog, and a squirrel in our gym.

An average day at the zoo, I mean, the gym.

2. A sad realization, or an aha moment? I was at the supermarket one evening this week and was craving pizza. I was trying to get through Christmas before trying (again) to get my health on track. Anyway, I saw an ex of mine there. I didn’t speak to her, just saw her. She didn’t see me. The moment I am talking about comes from the fact that when I knew her as a friend and girlfriend, she was my fitness muse. She made me want to be the best version of myself physically, and I was. I felt that old mindset bubbling up inside of me, but the current version of me stamped it down. Maybe that’s why I didn’t go talk to her? I didn’t want to have that healthy voice speaking to me again. It’s a sad realization that what used to be second nature for me, my health and fitness, seem like foreign concepts. I am planning on using my extended break from work to try to get this under control, but it failed on this night. I still went and got pizza.


3. The town where I live doesn’t allow the sale of individual plastic water bottles in grocery stores. They’re allowed in most towns on Cape Cod, though. One of the items on my list to bring for Christmas was a case of water. Because I waited until the last minute, and because it was snowing more than expected on Christmas Eve, I chose to stick close to home to get the water. Even though I couldn’t get a case of water in plastic bottles, I did find several options for canned water. I don’t know why this amused me so much. Cracking open a nice can of water just made me laugh, so of course I got that. It beats water in boxes. I mean, what is that foolishness anyway? You might as well sell water in bags.


4. Every year since 2009, I have paid a visit to a local beach that my Nana spent lots of time at on Christmas Eve. I did it that first year because she was near the end of her life and couldn’t go and enjoy it. She passed a few days after Christmas in 2009. I make it a point to be there around sunset. Whether it’s sunny, cloudy, rainy, snowy, cold, or less cold, I am there. It allows me to purposefully spend a few moments with my Nana front and center in my thoughts. I truly do feel her spirit there. As the years have passed, I have lost several more loved ones. I now use this Christmas Eve tradition to remember them as well. It is somber and bittersweet but also invigorating. I feel all of them in my heart at that time, and it makes me feel lucky I had people that important who still bring those emotions long after they’re gone. But also, it makes me appreciate those who are still here who give me those same emotions. It was cold, windy, and snowy this year, but I was still there and still walked out into the elements to get a photo.

The view at my Nana's beach on Christmas Eve.

5. Christmas was filled with family, food, and fun. The times of family gatherings can be fewer, and further between the older I get, so I always look forward to them. It’s funny how time goes. I can remember my nieces and nephews from the day they were born. Yet here some of them are as teens and young adults, and I can talk and laugh with them in different ways. Sitting and eating my mom’s amazing chicken stir fry while talking about 90s music was a blast. We all were in a food coma by 4:30, but that didn’t stop us from grabbing copious amounts of to-go containers' worth of leftovers. It was a great day overall.


6. One funny thing this Christmas was my surprise that nobody knew this classic Honeycomb cereal commercial from the mid-1980s. We were watching The Princess Bride, and I was mentioning how, at this point, Andre the Giant was probably at his most famous. He was Fezzik in the movie, and around the same time, he was in a Honeycomb commercial. I was shocked, especially that my sister Kate, who has a better memory than me, didn’t remember the commercial from when we were kids. I sang the jingle first, which was embarrassing enough. Honeycomb’s big! Yeah, yeah, yeah! It’s not small! No, no, no! Then I showed everyone the commercial, which they liked but still didn’t remember. I’ll share it here for any fellow GenXers, but maybe my memory is better than I thought.




7. It’s interesting how the week between Christmas and New Year’s is such a dead zone. It’s like I know there are seven days in there, but all I want to do is hurry through them, get past New Year’s, and then speed run my way to spring. I have said numerous times that the period from Labor Day through the end of the year is my favorite time. That being said, my least favorite time is from January 2nd through the first of spring. It’s one long Seasonal Affective Disorder session. It’s made all the more glaring because at my day job, we have the week between Christmas and New Year’s off. This year, we also have an extra week off in January, oh, and there will likely be another week-plus break in March because my boss can afford to shut down for long stretches. He can, the other employees can’t, but that’s why I keep working hard on my content, so I hopefully don’t have to worry about it too much longer.


8. I finished up the continuing education credits to renew my personal trainer certification. I took a course called Business Progressions Level 1. The thing about this course is that the vast majority of it was stuff I already knew. It was a lot about sales and marketing, including social media stuff. That’s literally what I do in my spare time: market and sell my work. So, rather than spend something like 12 hours watching webinars about stuff I already knew, I skipped around, sought out the answers I needed for each quiz, and got my 10 CECs in less than half the time. But shh, don’t tell anyone, I’m sure they’d have preferred that I played by the rules and watched it all.


9. When I was in high school, my sister Kate became friends with a foreign exchange student from Ukraine named Anna. She was this super cute blonde who enjoyed wearing denim overalls. I had such a big crush on her, but I was terrified to say anything. I was even more scared to tell my sister to see if maybe she could put in a good word. Don’t get me wrong, anytime I interacted with Anna, it was good. She was sweet and seemed to find me funny, which was a plus. The universe works in mysterious ways. The time seemed right to grow some guts and make a move. There was going to be a party coming up. She would be there, and I would go. Everything seemed to be falling into place. Then, out of nowhere, Anna was gone. It was like she vanished, but in reality, she had gone back to Ukraine. Now the stories I have heard can’t be verified. I had heard that something had happened to her father, or some member of her family back home, and she was forced to go back and essentially go into hiding. For me, what’s worse is that I learned after the fact that she did indeed like me. She thought I looked like one of the members of the group All-For-One. They did ‘I Swear.’ So not only did I not get the chance to say anything to Anna before she left, but she has been MIA since then. That was 1995. Every now and then, I try to search for her, but I get stuck. I am trying again now since it’s been 30 years. I found a mention of her in a newsletter about exchange students in the state of Massachusetts. The company, MATSOL, still exists. So I went to their website and emailed them to see if there might be any avenues I could go down to try to find Anna. It is highly likely to be a dead end, but you never know. I mean, I failed at finding my great-grandfather’s biological family for years, and then suddenly, new information was available, and it was a success. We’ll see.


10. Being the end of the year, it’s time for New Year’s Resolutions. In the past, I’ve had grandiose declarations of achievements I wanted to accomplish. There’s nothing wrong with setting the bar high. For 2026, I have a big goal, yet also one that is hard to define. I want to rediscover the best version of myself. What does that mean? I’m not totally sure. In all honesty, I haven’t felt like the best version of myself since probably 2019. Even then, I was battling alcohol problems and mourning the death of my hero, my Grampa. Giving such a broad and undefinable resolution might be seen as a cop out, and you might be right. How will I even know if I am the best version of my current self? Maybe it comes down to a feeling? For the most part, in my life currently, I feel unfulfilled and incomplete. I work nonstop on projects like books and podcasts because, in many ways, I am trying to prove my worth to the world. In reality, I think it will come down to the feeling of being happy and satisfied with where I am and, most of all, who I am. Will I achieve it? Who knows, but I’ll spend 2026 trying to find it.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #40: Frozen Mouse, It Was Our Destiny, Bees Like My Car, etc

 

1. Before opening a new document to begin this week’s blog I spent several minutes trying to diagnose what was wrong with my wireless computer mouse. It had the green light on so I knew it was working. On-Off, On-Off with the power switch, nothing. Finally being super smart I looked and realized the adapter was not in the USB port, it was on an end table. This blog begins with that foolishness, hopefully, it will get better.

2. In what was a fun adventure I went out to Race Point Beach in Provincetown this week. I was meeting my friend Frank who is a film producer and his friend Bryan. They were replicating part of Henry David Thoreau’s hike along Cape Cod’s outer beach. We were meant to hike the final 2+ miles out to Race Point Lighthouse together only that didn’t happen. After they had hiked about 7 miles their bodies gave out. I got a call from Frank and had to drive to where they had crossed from the beach to the main road and pick them up. We plan to finish the hike in March.

3. Skipping out on the hike to the lighthouse freed us up to do something else. As we have done many times before we paid a visit to St. Peter’s Cemetery in Provincetown. Here is where Ruth Marie Terry, aka the Lady of the Dunes, is buried. In what could only be described as a wild coincidence we happened to arrive at the cemetery as they were having a ceremony for the unveiling of a new marker. Ruth Marie’s son was there and I got to finally meet him. In a fun twist, he is writing a book about his experience and he said that Frank and I walking up during the ceremony was the perfect ending to his book. For those who have no idea, Frank produced the Lady of the Dunes documentary that helped spur law enforcement to finally solve the nearly 50-year-old cold case. It was a full-circle moment that wouldn’t have been possible if the original hike hadn’t fallen through.

The new marker for Ruth Marie Terry

4. Hey, what kind of idiot gets a sunburn in late October? This guy. So I guess being out in the bright sun for 5 straight hours with no sunscreen is not good, even in mid-Autumn. I honestly thought once the calendar flipped to October that sunburns would be on hold until summer returned. Only when I got home and looked in the mirror did I see how red I was. So there, you can get sunburned in October. The more you know.

5. LED headlights on vehicles should be outlawed. I bet that in 5 years we’re going to have loads of people with vision issues from having to stare into these terrible inventions coming at you on the road. It’s like either make them illegal or make it legal to coat your windshield with an extra tint so you can drive at night and not feel like you’re staring into the sun.

6. I am now in the ‘do a big overhead stretch and pop a rib out’ stage of my life. I stepped out of my care at work in the morning did a big stretch and breathed in the fall air. It was a great moment until I felt a pop and immediate pain. What felt like an ice pick under my left shoulder blade turned out to be not 1, but 3 ribs out. Luckily my boss is a chiropractor among other things and he was able to adjust me and get those ribs back in. Getting older is not my favorite thing.

Me in a few weeks trying to train someone after more of my body explodes.

7. Having to ‘prove I am human’ on the ChatGPT website is an irony that is not lost on me. I guess it’s to make sure that AI is not conspiring together to end the human race. Of course, that’s what AI would want you to think, that you’re protected.

8. An interesting phenomenon that has been happening to me recently is that a collection of yellow jackets has started hanging out on my car at work. I am thinking it is due to pollen or other goodies being dropped onto my car from the trees I park under. Typically there are a dozen or so walking all over my hood and windshield. The other day once I was in my car I shot a video of one of these bees walking on the windshield and it was then that I got such a cool closeup video and it looked like the bee was licking the windshield. Also when I start my car and leave I don’t use my windshield wipers or anything to kill them. I drive until the wind blows them off. The last time I had the bee experience one of them hung onto my windshield for close to a mile while I was driving, most impressive.

Objects might appear larger than they are.

9. In a shocking admission I am not a fan of people who drive fast and don’t pay attention in a parking lot. I know, it’s crazy. You’d be amazed at how many times I see people flying through a parking lot, driving diagonal through parking lanes, looking at their phones. One night this week a woman nearly ran me down. I didn’t dart out in front of her but I was slowly walking. Luckily I kept my eyes on her because she didn’t stop. She had this look on her face like I had jumped in front of her on the highway. I might have shared a few 4-letter words as she passed.

10. As my birthday grows closer and I drift into my late 40’s I feel like a saying I heard somewhere is getting truer each day. As you get older you have to work twice as hard to get half as far. 10 years ago the thought of redesigning my diet and training regimen would have been easy, or totally unnecessary. However staring that prospect down now is daunting, and very necessary. It’s a weird feeling to see yourself slipping backward. It’s like I know exactly what to do and have the tools to do it but there is some sort of a disconnect. It’ll be a battle but I’ll figure my way through it.