Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #110: Blizzard of 2026, Power Outages, Odd Captions, etc.

1. The Blizzard of 2026 came roaring in late Sunday night. By sunrise on Monday morning, we had power flash off several times, but luckily, it always came right back on. The funny thing was that I sleep with a white noise machine on, as I am a very light sleeper. Each time the power went off, the machine stopped, and I immediately woke up. The machine has several different sounds to sleep to. The default is running water. So when the power came back on, I was greeted with running water sounds. I would switch it back to the white noise only for the power to go back out a few minutes later. After doing this two or three times, I gave up and left the running water noise on. The white noise machine became my canary in the coal mine during the day. Since I didn’t need any lights on, I knew if that machine stopped, we had lost power.


2. Fittingly, during the day of the blizzard, I got nostalgic and watched a video I had shot with my camcorder of a blizzard we had on Cape Cod in 1996. That one was in the first week of January during my senior year of high school. We had 21” of snow from that. It was wild to see my siblings and me out shoveling during the peak of the storm near 11pm. We also scaled our roof with a ladder. Mind you, I was the oldest at 18, the rest were younger. It was a different time 30 years ago. While watching my brother and me driving around town during the storm in my mother’s blue station wagon, I noticed a few things. First, I was way more reckless with driving, doing fish tails, donuts, and getting stuck in snow banks. Second and perhaps more shocking was how much of an accent I had back then. Not sure if it was a conscious effort to speak without the Cape Cod accent once I started doing author events, or if it’s just something you can lose over time. It’s amazing how fast 30 years can go and not really feel like all that long.


3. One of the silver linings about the blizzard was that I could use shoveling the snow as a workout. I set my Fitbit up and got to shoveling during the height of the storm, around 12:30pm on Monday. It was hard-packed, cement snow, probably over a foot by that time. Despite it being heavy, it was not terrible to shovel since each scoop stayed on the shovel. I shoveled for about 70 minutes and clocked in roughly 715 calories burned. I felt really good about that and was looking forward to a hot shower and a bit of rest while the storm raged on. That was not to be though, as once finished shoveling, I found out that the power had gone out while I was outside. No shower, no hot food, just sitting in silence, slowly draining my phone’s battery. I guess I was foolish to think that power would stay on during one of the biggest storms in recent memory.



4. In total, it was close to 75% of Cape Cod that lost power during the blizzard. I believe at one point, the entire Outer Cape (Wellfleet, Truro, and Provincetown) was without power. I always say that at my age, I am old enough to remember growing up without the technology of the internet and smartphones. It was not some sort of a challenge, but we ended up there anyway. Unsure of how long power would be out, I tried to prolong the life of my devices as long as possible. I had a portable battery called PoweRocks that my mother had given me years ago. Smartly, I charged it before the storm. I used that to prop up my phone’s battery. Once it died, I plugged it into my laptop and drained that battery to slowly recharge the PoweRocks and my phone. When all else failed, I’d go sit in my running car with my phone plugged in. Surprisingly, that didn’t give me as much of a charge as I’d hoped. It was a game of musical chairs with my car, phone, laptop, and portable charger as I tried to keep some sort of connection to the outside world while the blizzard raged and then crews worked to restore power.


5. While out getting the lay of the land the morning after the blizzard, I had a fun adventure with my youngest niece, Sylvie, who lives nearby. I was out filming a video where I stood in a fresh snow drift to show people how deep the snow was when she spotted me. She was able to convince me to go for a walk with her mother and their dog through their neighborhood. It doesn’t take much convincing, though. My mother typically says Sylvie is my boss and can get me to do pretty much anything. The neighborhood we walked in wasn’t plowed at all, which made walking a chore. It was a fun time though, as Sylvie enjoyed diving into the snow and asking me to come and rescue her from it. Eventually, I offered to give her a piggyback ride back to her house. By this point, I had helped do a 2nd shoveling of the driveway on an empty stomach, plus done the walk, so I was tired. If I could have gone back to bed at 8:30am, I would have. Sylvie wanted me to hang out at her house, but I wanted to go home and collapse into a chair. She’s very convincing, but I had to say no. It’s hard because she’s smart and remembers everything. If I said I’d be back later, she’d hold me to it. I had to actually go home and relax, otherwise she’d call me out on it.



6. In total, we got somewhere in the neighborhood of 18-20” of snow on the Mid-Cape. The jackpot was a stretch from Plymouth, MA, down into southwestern Rhode Island. There, they got something like 3 feet of snow. The Blizzard of 2026 was breaking records set by the legendary Blizzard of ‘78. We had wind gusts of 80mph on Nantucket. I think Cape Cod got spared in terms of major beach erosion since the storm’s peak was during low tides. That being said, the videos of the Scituate shore were awful as they typically are during big storms. I have seen countless such videos of huge waves crashing into the sea walls and spraying into the air as high as the roofs of 3-story houses. I love Scituate, but it has to be a blessing and a curse for those who live there. You get beautiful scenery and shorelines, but also the threat of major beach erosion and storm surge damage. As of writing this entry, I believe that more than half of Cape Cod is still without power. It came back on where I live in the middle of the night after about 40 hours of darkness and cold. As I mentioned above, my white noise machine was my canary in the coal mine. I heard it turn on and checked the time. I hope that everyone else gets their power back soon. It’s no fun sleeping in a 55-degree room.


7. Once fully shoveled out, and once I felt the roads were passable enough, I took a little ride. I needed to try to charge my phone, so I figured rather than sitting in the driveway in my car, I’d go see how the area looked. It was an adventure for sure. The roads ranged from passable to totally unplowed. I drive a sedan, so my adventurous side is determined by whether my car can make it. I was more than willing to walk through deep snow to get cool photos and videos. The problem was finding a place where I could park. There was also the issue of downed trees and power lines. There were a few detours caused by trees across the road. I didn’t dare try to get any footage while driving, otherwise I’d end up in one of those ‘idiot driver’ fail videos. In the end, I went and grabbed some food at a supermarket that was open and called it a day. With no power for several days at my work, it left a lot of room for further adventures later in the week.


8. The difference in when certain areas of Cape Cod got their power back meant that, despite getting power back at 4am Wednesday morning, a lot of other places did not have it back. One such place was my work. I ended up with an entire week off from work. It wasn’t planned, and I couldn’t really enjoy it since half of it was under storm conditions. With half of the Cape not having power, all I could really do was sit around and relax, which is not my favorite activity. It’s amazing the luck of the draw where a select few never lost power during the blizzard, others (like me) got it back in a day and a half, while more had to wait 4 or 5 days. There was really no rhyme or reason, but it made me feel like I needed to apologize to those who had longer durations without power, like I had somehow paid off the power gods to give ours back sooner. You’d see a handful of people on social media saying it ‘must be nice’ to have power when, in reality, it was totally random.


9. After a long and cold winter, it’s amazing how good 45 degrees feels. I immediately grabbed my fall jacket to head out into the sun. As bad as the blizzard was early in the week, having several days of temperatures in the 40s did wonders for melting the snow. It also did wonders for the psyche of a lot of us in New England. It honestly has felt at times like winter was never going to end, but now hopefully (knocks wood) the worst is behind us. Those who live in warmer climates wouldn’t understand when we get a 40+ degree day and drive with our windows down and start drinking iced coffee. Yes, we’re kind of crazy, but in a charming way.


10. With my content being more visible on Instagram and TikTok in the last month or so, I am starting to try to put a little more effort into my videos. This means taking a few b-roll shots, doing camera cuts, and trying to turn a 90-second to 2-minute video into a short film. Sure, it might not make much of a difference in the long run, but it actually is fun and gets me some practice in a director’s sense and a layout sense. This video of the damage at Town Neck Beach in Sandwich is an example of what I’m talking about.



11. As I have said many times, when it comes to photography, I practice something called dedication to the craft. That is the idea of getting the photo you want, even if it means disregarding your own safety. Obviously, my risks are calculated, but they are still risks for a good shot. The older I get, the more my practical side starts to take over. I have always seen a few moves ahead in life, and now I have found that seeing those moves can stop me from doing something stupid. For example, and obviously you knew there was an example, this week I went shooting down in Chatham. While at one location, I noticed in the distance on a deserted stretch of beach, there was a grounded boat. I immediately knew I needed to get closer to it. I went to a place called the Monomoy Wildlife Refuge. It’s way out in the boonies of Chatham. From there, I could see the boat and knew a route I could take to get pretty close to it. Sadly, the last few years have seen this location decimated by erosion to the point where there is no beach access from it anymore. Well, technically. Here is the seeing moves ahead part. There is an overlook where you can see the ocean, but the stairs that used to lead you to the beach have been removed. If you walk to the edge of the bluffs, it’s probably a 10-15-foot drop down to the beach below. A few years ago, I’d have jumped off the bluffs, walked the beach, and gotten some sick photos and videos of the boat. Today though, the idea of jumping in the snow and sand and then trying to figure out my way back to the parking lot, all while hoping nobody who lived on the bluffs saw me and decided to make a scene, was all too much. If it hadn’t been winter, I’d have walked to an access trail a half-mile away, but the temperature and time of day wouldn’t allow it. I had to settle for a video from a distance, lame.


12. I like putting captions with all of my videos on social media. It helps people who might not be in a place where they can play a video with sound. As you’d expect with AI deciphering my words, there are lots of inaccuracies, specifically with proper names and locations. This week, I shot a video at the Cape Cod Canal. While I was there, a helicopter flew overhead, and I got a fun shot of it. When I went to add captions to the video, I noticed odd words appearing. While uploading it to TikTok, I noticed a few Arabic words in my captions. Then, when I put the same video up on Instagram, I noticed the phrase ‘oh my god’ was randomly thrown in. It took me a moment to realize that the AI was trying to make words out of the helicopter sounds. So apparently TikTok thinks helicopter noises sound like Arabic, and IG thinks they sound like someone crying out, ‘oh my god.’ Both random and funny at the same time. I did momentarily debate leaving those captions in, but ultimately took them out.


13. I got lucky and experienced a classic Cape Cod sunset on the tidal flats this weekend. All of the ice had melted away, and it looked like it does in the summer. I had a great idea. I would shoot a killer time-lapse video of both the tide rolling in and the sun setting. I used my selfie stick, which is also a tripod, and set my phone up probably 6-7 feet away from the water’s edge and let it roll. I had hoped that the water wouldn’t come in too far before the sun had dipped below the horizon. I watched the video recording, and the water rolled in. It started lapping at the tripod, but I held firm. It began trickling past the tripod, but I wouldn’t relent. I held out as long as I could, but once the water was 5 feet past the tripod holding my phone, I had to rescue it. If I had waited a few moments later, I don’t know if the water eventually would have knocked my phone over. The video was amazing, though. Probably 5 minutes of filming for less than 30 seconds of time-lapse.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #106: Neverending Winter, Going Viral, Being Stubborn, etc.

1. What a whopper of a snowstorm. On Cape Cod, we got around a foot of heavy wet snow, with nearly double that in some places off-Cape. With the way the roads were, I ended up with a day off from work on Monday. Rather than drive the slushy roads to the gym, I used shoveling the snow as a workout. I only had to do half of the driveway, and I ended up burning over 800 calories in more than an hour of shoveling. It was hard work but a lot of fun as I wore my headphones and played music while some flurries fell. Sadly, the weather shows that we won’t be getting much in the way of melting. It’s supposed to be around or below freezing for the next several weeks. Early in the week, it looked like we might be in line for yet another storm. Luckily, it was a bust, and we only got flurries.


2. After the snow ended, it was relatively warm, so I ventured out before dark. I figured run to the store and get home before it was dark and the really cold air returned. While I was driving, I had to avoid a couple of sidewalk snow plows that were taking wide turns into the street. That was fine. On my way home, I started getting a little comfortable. I thought the roads were nice and safe. Then I saw a plow stopped in the middle of the road ahead of me. It turned out that an SUV had rear-ended it. I don’t think it was a case of bad roads. I mean, they were free of any snow, so the plow wasn’t, you know, plowing. I am assuming that the SUV driver was going too fast, rounded a corner, and slammed into the plow, which was going slower. Seeing that immediately made me slow down and just concentrate on getting home in one piece.


3. I swear that if the people who own the building where I work could, they would not do any sort of upkeep during the winter. We have had the plow people ‘not show’ after one storm. Now, this week, it looks like they hired someone who had never driven a plow to push piles of snow all over the employee parking lot. It wasn’t cleared; the snow was just moved to other areas still in the way. Also, their idea of ‘clearing the walkway’ was literally clearing one shovel’s width of snow. I shouldn’t be surprised, I mean, it took them two years to fix our mini split in the gym so we could have consistent heat. At this rate, we’re going to have to park at the beach and get taken via shuttle bus to work. What a joke.


4. Dedication to the Craft. I was asked by a big Boston Instagram account to get a video of the slush waves for a collaboration. They have close to 350K followers, so I thought it was a nice chance to get some exposure. I went in the morning before work. The snow was packed, but as I trudged through it, I started sinking up to my knees. I pressed on and walked until I reached what I thought was about the edge of the water. I started shooting and started feeling my feet getting freezing cold. It turns out I wasn’t at the edge of the water; I was standing ankle deep in slush water. Still, I couldn’t stop until I got an adequate amount of video. After 30 seconds, I was done. My feet were soaked and frozen. My toes were numb for an hour. I got to work and immediately took off my shoes and socks to thaw my feet out. Nothing like walking around barefoot at your job. I legit had to microwave my socks; that was a fun experience. That being said, my Instagram video, I got for the collaboration, as of this writing, has more than 50,000 likes and over 1 MILLION views. It actually went viral, so I’d say it was a fair trade. Here is that video.



5. Finding out I have a bad case of Golfer’s Elbow (Medial Epicondylitis) is good in one sense because I can get some exercises and a brace and hopefully be good as new in a few weeks. It’s bad in another sense because I do not, and have never, played golf. I found out that my case of it is from doing what I’m doing now, writing at my laptop. A funny side note is that on the day I got my official diagnosis from my boss, my 13-year-old client came in to train. He showed me no mercy like he was a sensei at Cobra Kai. He wanted me to throw a 10-pound slam ball as hard as I could at him. I did my best, but he continued to call my attempts weak. I might be almost 50, but being called out still can work. So my elbow was sore after work, but I’ll never let him know.


6. This week I finished binging Cobra Kai on Netflix. For those who don’t know, it is a series based on the Karate Kid original trilogy. It literally has everyone who was in those movies as part of the 6 seasons and 65 episodes. As a fan of the movies, I absolutely loved the series. It’s the perfect mix of action, drama, humor, and heart. I was every bit as invested in this series as I was in Stranger Things. I won’t spoil much, but having finished the main character has to be Johnny Lawrence and his story arc, despite Daniel Larusso being a big part of the series. It has tons of amazing 80s music, which always gets an A in my book. On top of that, there are so many great characters. There are the kids being trained in karate. There are the characters you remember from the movies. There are tons of Easter eggs from the original movies that fans will love picking up on. What I really loved was that, despite there being good and bad people in reality, everybody was a shade of gray. Even the worst villains had things that made you feel for them or even root for them. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a show to get into.

7. I was chatting with one of my clients this week about how it’s been the snowiest winter in years, and I can’t wait for spring. She is heading to Florida for a vacation. I said it was good for her, but that we still had about 7 weeks of winter left. She said, ‘Oh no, actually it’s only 4.’ What? Spring starts on March 20th. According to her logic, it would begin about February 26th. Maybe she doesn’t know the actual first day of spring? She is in her 80s, so maybe she’s just making up her own calendar now? I just smiled and nodded and said goodbye. In my mind, I’m guessing that in those extra 3 weeks she’s lost, we’re going to end up getting at least one major snowstorm because she jinxed it.


8. I was born blond, so sometimes my brain doesn’t work at full power. I had plans one day this week to get done at work and go to the gym to use the treadmill for an hour. On this day, the temperature was in the low 20s, so my motivation to drive 20 minutes and then work out was low. Then it dawned on me. I work in a gym. We were closed, and I had the entire place to myself. I realized I could *gasp* work out there! I simply punched out, changed into my workout gear, and got onto the treadmill. In the time it would have taken me to drive to the gym, I already had put in more than a mile on the treadmill. All jokes aside, I think I choose to go to the gym so that I’m not just hanging around my job after hours. Like when I was a cook, I didn’t want to then change and go sit out front and have dinner. I just wanted to get the F out of there.


9. Over the last few years, I have felt less guilt about not reaching out to people I don’t hear from because communication works both ways. If I’m not reaching out, it also means they’re not. Still, there is an old friend I haven’t spoken to in over 5 years now that has been on my mind a lot recently. We were very similar personality-wise. This could be the best or worst thing. I tended to see a lot of myself in her, and some of her quirks were like holding a mirror up to myself. That can be hard to deal with. One similarity we have is extreme stubbornness. This comes back to the ‘not reaching out’ thing. We had a bit of a falling out. It mostly came down to my alcohol problems. I was not ready to accept my issues and instead cut her off. By the time I got sober, she was ready to move several hundred miles away. We never did reconnect. She also isn’t on any social media. However, I do still have her in my phone. Remember the stubbornness? I just can’t bring myself to text her. I don’t know if she’ll be happy to hear from me, or if she’s held onto the anger at our falling out. Knowing that we are similar, I think of what I would do. I honestly don’t know if I’d be happy or if I’d immediately go back into the last argument we had. So for now, I’ll share a few cryptic posts, hoping that another friend of hers will see and mention it to her. I thought I had left that stuff back in 2013.


10. When slush waves arrive in winter, it can’t be long until the icebergs return as well. It has been well below average temperature-wise on Cape Cod in the last month. We routinely have highs stuck in the low 20s or worse. On a day this week with highs in the mid-teens and a wind chill hovering around zero, I took a ride. I stopped at a popular photography spot, Bass Hole. It is on Cape Cod Bay, and sure enough, it was totally iced over. It looked, and felt, like I was standing on Antarctica. I lasted 5 minutes in the cold before tapping out. As much as I can’t wait until spring arrives, in 7 weeks, remember, I am glad I got these photos. You can actually feel the cold through them. Side note, it took close to 10 minutes for the tips of my fingers to get their feeling back.

11. The frozen over Cape Cod Bay has been a goldmine as far as photos and videos go. The last trip out this week was to Rock Harbor, which is a part of both Orleans and Eastham. I knew it would be a vast sea of icebergs. The issues had to do with the deep snow and ice. I wore sneakers, which work well on stable ground, ice not so much. The snow was playing jokes. I was walking on it, and it held just long enough for me to think it was solid, only to sink in up to my knees. It made it hard to walk out and back from my car. I also had a few fun times on the ice. I went down a couple of times, including a nice bruise on my right shin. My hands were pretty frozen as well. Despite it sounding like I hated my time out there, I loved every second of it, especially when I looked over the photos. Still can’t wait for spring though.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #105: Best Workout, Northern Lights 3, Snowpocalypse, etc.

1. I ended up being right. Where I am on Cape Cod got between 3-4” of heavy wet snow that was like cement. I didn’t feel like going to the gym, so I took this as an opportunity to burn some calories by shoveling the driveway. I made sure to turn on my Fitbit for a workout before starting. It turns out shoveling the snow was my best workout all week. I burned 440 calories in 40 minutes while shoveling. I was totally wiped out after. In all honesty, I probably didn’t need to shovel. It got up to 36 degrees, and the sun poked out, so we got a bit of melting. Still, I loved being able to get a great cardio and strength workout without having to go to the gym.


2. For the third time in 15 months, I was able to see and photograph the Aurora Borealis on Cape Cod. It started off cloudy. I wasn’t feeling good about seeing anything, so I decided to go out early, about an hour after sunset. Checking the radar, I saw clouds moving east, so I drove west. I got to Barnstable and found a great location called Scudder’s Landing. What made it great, besides the fact that nobody else was there, was the fact that there was no lighting to ruin the photos. I immediately got several amazing photos and was able to get creative with the shots since there was nobody around.

I will never get tired of this.

3. Since I was already out and about for the Northern Lights, I mapped out a few locations I wanted to shoot. One was the popular Sandwich Boardwalk. I hadn’t been there in several years, since a disastrous first date that we will move on from. I got there, and it was dark and cold, but the wind had picked up. I was using my selfie stick as a tripod, which works great when there is little to no wind. In the breeze, though, it made it almost impossible to get any good photos that weren’t blurry. I did my best. The highlight, or lowlight, was a group of several people who sounded like they were around 60. As I was staging photos, I could hear one of the men whining about the temperature and asking why they ‘don’t have Northern Lights in the summer.’ I would have mentioned that the Aurora happens all the time regardless of the season, but this guy sounded like he has enough trouble with 2+2 being 4, so I packed up my gear and moved to another location.

More muted colors at the boardwalk.

4. When is the right time to take down your Christmas decorations? I know some people have everything down by sunset on Christmas Day. Then others keep everything up until their tree begins to decompose. We are currently a month out from Christmas, and my decorations are still up. I don’t plan on having people over to judge me if my decorations stay up well into February, but there has to be a cutoff date, right? I mean, I don’t want to be tripping over Christmas stuff when putting my A/C unit in. Then again, my Halloween pumpkin is still going strong 3 months after I got it, so I might not have the best judgment when it comes to moving on. By the way, the pumpkin will likely survive well into spring and then be destroyed in spectacular fashion. Stay tuned for that.


5. In classic fashion, it is time for another New England winter storm in time for the weekend. I say ‘classic fashion’ because, as of several days out, it was reported that we on Cape Cod could get anywhere from a few inches to well over a foot. Not only that, but depending on where you went for your forecast, the amounts shifted drastically. The Accuweather app said 3-6”, which is no big deal. Weather Underground said 12”, which is a much different story. The snow won’t hit us until this blog has been posted, so I guess this is an unintentional teaser for next week’s blog. How much snow will we get, and how many calories will I burn shoveling? Stay tuned.


6. I’ve been through tons of major snowstorms in my life growing up in New England. One thing I’ve never understood is the ‘essentials’ that people are supposed to get at the store in anticipation. Bread I get, but eggs and milk? If power goes out, what the hell is the point of having eggs? You gonna eat them raw like Rocky did? Anytime I anticipate being stuck inside for an extended period, I look at getting water, bread, peanut butter, and jelly, maybe single-serve protein shakes. Things that don’t need power to be consumed. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. How many of you out there rush to the store for eggs before a snowstorm? I have never done it and am pretty sure I never will.


7. Maybe I’m now officially the old man, but I feel like a big reason why people seem disconnected these days is the fact that everyone wears headphones everywhere they go. I see way too many people inside stores with earbuds in. It’s your life, do what you want, but the fact that people go out into public and just have others tuned out is kind of stupid. What if some sweet old lady needed help getting something off a shelf, but you don’t hear because you can’t disconnect from your headphones for two friggin’ seconds? This week, I saw a scummy-looking kid walking down the aisles at a supermarket, earbuds in, singing a foul-mouthed song. There could be little kids around, and they have to hear that crap from some dirtbag? Like I said, maybe I’m the old man now, but it’s just a bad sign of society. Oh, and it’s not all young people, I see people older than me doing the same thing, so it’s everybody.


8. It’s amazing the things you remember from your childhood. There are certain phrases, lyrics, or orders of words that are embedded in your brain. Sometimes you have no idea what they are, what they mean, or even how they got there. Quick story time. I have a vague memory from the bygone days of the mid-1980s. It revolves around two children’s songs back to back, Bingo and Little Dutch Girl. One I know, the other song I have no idea how I know. For some reason, when I think of Bingo, Little Dutch Girl follows close behind. I figured it had to be from a commercial I had seen when I was a kid. While stuck inside during the winter storm, I decided to do a little internet detective work. I quite literally typed in ‘Bingo, Little Dutch Girl, children’s songs, commercial.’ Lo and behold, I found the answer to my 40-year-old earworm. It is an album called Children’s Favorites, released in 1978 and recorded by some group called The Jingleheimers. I found the commercial, and when I watched it felt like an old door was being unlocked in my memory. No, I’m not going to order that album for my collection, although it says there’s an 8-track which might be cool. I do enjoy the fact that even all of these years later, I can solve mysteries that my memory has been hiding for 40 years.




9. When I am not at my day job, on the clock getting paid, I do not think about it. I have many other projects that take up much of my free time. I am also not a paramedic, or some other job where I am on call sometimes 24/7. That means if I am not inside the walls of my job, therefore not getting paid by it, I don’t want to be sent work-related messages. It’s a boundary I need to set and enforce in 2026. Seriously, my free time is mine, not an opportunity to have some unimportant work stuff sent to me.


10. We had the coldest day in a few years this week. The wind chill was down around -15 on Cape Cod, and even lower off-Cape. I stayed inside as long as possible. Eventually, I got the courage to venture out. Surprisingly, it wasn’t as bad as I thought. The wind died out, and so the 16 degrees felt downright balmy compared to what I was expecting. I went on the hunt for slush waves, which happen at the ocean when it’s been particularly cold. Sadly, I guess it hadn’t been cold long enough because the ocean was just as it always was. I was actually a bit disappointed. Then I saw that the temperatures are going to be at or below freezing for the next few weeks. I feel like I’ll have slush wave overload by the time February is over.


11. The flakes started flying by 10am on Sunday as the biggest snowstorm in 4 years hit New England. It was too cold to go for a morning walk before the snow started, so I hit the gym. Unfortunately for me, so did everyone else within a 10-mile radius. The gym was set to close at 11am, so everyone got in their workouts. It was so cold, about 20 degrees, that I wore track pants to the gym instead of shorts. That’s a rarer occurrence than seeing a four-leaf clover. 


12. The New England Patriots are going back to the Super Bowl for the first time since 2018. They beat the Denver Broncos in a wild AFC Championship Game 10-7. Drake Maye actually did something Tom Brady never did, and that was win a playoff game in Denver. The weather was crazy. Sunny to start and then a blizzard by the end. The snow was so bad that the announcers weren’t even sure where the ball was on the field. The Patriots’ white uniforms might have actually helped them since Jarrett Stidham, Denver’s quarterback (their backup), threw an interception late, and who knows if he could even see the defense. Now we wait to see if it’s the Los Angeles Rams or the Seattle Seahawks. Ironically, the Patriots have beaten both teams in the Super Bowl, so either team would be looking for some revenge. Either way, this feels like the beginning of another long run of high-level play from the Patriots after a few years of retooling.




13. I’m finishing this blog at 7pm on Sunday night so I can get it up for my usual Monday morning. As we speak, there is likely about 8-9” of snow on the ground. I was out helping do a little preventative maintenance shoveling at 5pm, and we had close to 6” then. Luckily, it was light and fluffy, but I still burned 100 calories in 15 minutes of shoveling. Cape Cod is supposed to get a mix with rain overnight, meaning the snow will get heavy and wet. Shoveling will be a load of fun on my back. I have already been given a snow day at work since I have a sedan with front-wheel drive. I love my car, but it doesn’t do well in more than 3” of snow. 53 more days until spring.