Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #98: Med Ball Tossing, Xmas Light Car, Stupid Bots, etc.

1. I have a 12-year-old client whom I train. Anyone who has kids, or is around kids, knows that trying to get a 12-year-old to do anything they don’t want to do is next to impossible. I have had sessions with this kid where it’s like pulling teeth to get him to do anything besides walk the treadmill or sit on our whole body vibration plate. That being said, when I do find something he enjoys, I run it into the ground. This week, I put my old bones to the test. Little did I know that he would enjoy throwing a 10# slam ball back and forth. It’s a softer, slightly larger medicine ball. Rather than try to get him to do other things I had on my list, we just kept tossing the ball, and tossing, and tossing. In total, we must have spent nearly 25 minutes of our 30-minute session throwing that medicine ball. My heart rate peaked around 130 according to my Fitbit, and I burned 164 calories. I only stopped him when his heart rate climbed up around 170. I only know that because even though he said he wasn’t tired, I could see it. I think I ended that session more tired than him. Oh, and if you’re curious, he came in a second time this week to train. We tossed the same ball this time for the entire 30 minutes. I burned 212 calories this time.

My Fitbit stats from the Weds. workout

2. December has begun, but I still managed to have a second Thanksgiving this week. It consisted of the leftovers my mom gave me. Rather than draw it out over two meals, I crammed all of the turkey, ham, stuffing, and mashed into one giant meal. I even bought myself a little jar of turkey gravy. I was on carb overload. Somehow it made more sense to have all of the food in one shot and eat sensibly for a while, rather than eat two meals on different days. Also my self-control when it comes to food is the lowest it’s likely ever been, so there’s that as well. Generally, I am really healthy, especially as I swan dive toward 50, but I need to work on my self-control. Otherwise, 2026 will be filled with blog entries where I whine about my lack of self-control until people think I’m just replaying the hits. The leftovers were amazing though.


3. It took until December 1st, but I finally broke down and put on my heat. Now in full transparency, I have this neat wall heater that I can turn on and off if I need to heat up my place for a while. So I wasn’t freezing when it got down in the low 30s recently, but I also didn’t trust that heater enough to sleep with it on. The recurring joke I tell is the fact that I set my heat lower in the winter than I set my A/C in the summer. True story. I set my heat at 65 which is perfect for me since I run hot with my Northern European blood. I set my A/C at 68 during the summer. Most people I think would have those flipped but for me they work just fine. Now, much like in summer with A/C, it’s a countdown until I can shut the heat off and open the windows back up. Likely it’ll be around the first of spring.


4. Tis the season officially. I haven’t yet gone to all of my favorite holiday light spots but that is coming soon. By the time this blog goes up, my Charlie Brown-like faux Christmas tree will be up and decorated. There might have already been someone who won the Holidays though. While driving home in the dark I spotted some Christmas lights up ahead. It took me a second to realize they weren’t in someone’s yard. No these were moving. Someone was driving a white sedan, not too unlike my own, but the entire vehicle was wrapped in string lights. It was wild to see. They definitely wouldn’t distract the driver, but I did wonder how they had them lit. Most likely plugged into a USB port, right? I have also found out it is illegal to do that in some states so be careful.

It looked like this.(WNEP.com)

5. I can be both happy and shocked with the New England Patriots being 11-2 on the season. After wrecking the New York Giants this week, the Patriots officially passed my prediction for wins, which was 10. They also lead the league in salary cap room for next season, meaning they will likely be one of the best teams in football for the foreseeable future. The shock is more of the fact that I thought they’d be this good, but not until next year. They’re a season ahead of where I thought they’d be, but I am not expert. The experts have them as one of the Super Bowl favorites, and QB Drake Maye as the favorite for MVP. The NFL had its chance but the kings are ascending back to the throne they had for 20 years.


6. I could post this every single week but I try to space them out. I hate LED headlights and curse whoever thought it was a good idea to help a driver out by blinding every other driver on the road. They should either be illegal or every car should have window tinting put in for free at the expense of the car companies who use LED headlights on their vehicles. I am shocked that there aren’t more accidents caused by these people blinding other vehicles. If you have so much trouble seeing at night that you need a pair of suns on your car then maybe you should stay home, or get an Uber. This will inevitably come up again in the future but I’ll let it rest for a while.



7. Welcome to the Frozen Tundra of Cape Cod. This week winter arrived a little early. There was a day this week when the low dropped to 15 degrees. With a howling wind, the real feel was in the single digits. Yes I know we’re in December and live in the Northeast but still that first day that the temperatures crater like that are just brutal. Luckily that morning I didn’t have to leave the house until close to noon. By that time it was nearly 30 degrees, downright balmy. The best part? We still haven’t gotten any snow on the Cape. So yeah, there’s still that to look forward to. Can you hear my sarcasm?


8. The CAPTCHA system, or ‘proving’ you’re human on some of these websites has gotten ridiculous. I’m all for hitting that stupid check mark to show I’m human. Once I’ve done that shouldn't that be it? In doing some research on an online newspaper archive I had to check that stupid box. Then I started scrolling through the pages of this newspaper when after 5 or 6 clicks that frickin’ box pops up again saying ‘our internal servers think you might be a robot.’ It’s like hey you moron bot, I literally just clicked the box 10 seconds ago. What do you think? That I am an AI that became sentient literally within the last few seconds? There are not enough synonyms for ‘stupid’ to make this make sense.


9. One thing I’ve noticed during my recent times of watching tons of funny cat videos is how many people would rather sit and film their cat breaking something rather than get off their lazy butts and stop them. I have seen tons of people filming while a cat is slowly nudging something fragile toward the edge of a table. They just sit and film and say ‘no’ or ‘don’t’ until the object falls, and breaks, and they get all pissy at their cat. It’s like, hey, it’s a cat. What did you expect? Get up, walk five feet, and grab the glass, or whatever it is before the cat breaks it. You’re not going to get enough views to earn enough to even replace that broken object so use your brain. I guess that’s asking too much.


10. It pays to double-check. I had plans over the weekend to take a drive to the local community college library. I find that when I am there my creative juices really get flowing. I had checked to make sure that the library was open. It said Sundays they were open from 1-5p, great. I got everything packed and ready to go but something told me to just look again. This time instead of a generic internet search I went right to the college website and it said they were closed on weekends. I was naturally disappointed. Then I triple checked. The ‘closed on weekends’ hours start on December 20th. So not only can I apparently not read correctly, I also seem to not know what day it is. I’m one step away from having warm milk and a nap as my height of excitement.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog - #48: Christmas Tree, Old TV, Dolphin Noises, etc.

1. I finally got myself a little Christmas tree. How I got it was a process. I can’t fit a regular 6-foot where I live. Plus I don’t want all of the clean up so I wanted a small artificial one. Going out less than 2 weeks before Christmas to find a tree was a challenge. I ended up visiting several stores over a few hours. I was hell-bent on getting a tree that night so I ended up with a 3-foot artificial tree from Ocean State Job Lot. It’s small and thin but it fits exactly what I wanted. Think of it like Charlie Brown’s tree, except artificial.

2. I ordered copies of a Christmas card I made to give to family and some friends from Walgreens. Their website said they’d be ready in about two hours and I checked the box to get a text or email alert that they were ready. I went to the gym to kill time and then headed to Walgreens where my cards were ready. All good. The next day more than 24 hours after I placed my order I finally got the text from Walgreens telling me my cards were ready. I was tempted to go in and ask for them and play dumb but I decided to be a good boy.

3. I decided to get rid of my Nana’s old CRT television as I mentioned last week. It was still working and even had the remote. I left it by the road with a ‘free’ sign on it and figured it would be taken within hours. Wrong. I guess with flat-screen TVs being affordable nobody wants to lug a 50lb, 20-year-old CRT television home that they found on the side of the road. I gave it a few nights which consisted of me getting home from work after dark, hiding the television behind some bushes, wrapping it in a tarp and bungee cord, and then moving it back to the road before I left for work. In the end, I paid to take it to the dump, boooo.

This was basically what I was doing(AI)

4. For Christmas gifts I ordered a few gift cards from a local movie theater in the town of Chatham, Massachusetts. It’s about 20 minutes from me. Being lazy I had them mailed to me. The interesting thing is that when the cards *finally* arrived they had a postmark from Providence, Rhode Island. That’s nearly an hour and a half from me. It must just be protocol but seriously there’s no way to send something local in the mail without it going 5x as far away from me? Oh well, I can’t complain since they at least arrived before Christmas.

5. One of the funniest and most wholesome things I’ve seen in a while happened late in a shift at my day job. A man came in with his daughter who was probably about 4. She was super cute and not shy at all. As they were checking out he mentioned that one of her new favorite things to do was laugh like a dolphin. She then proceeded to make loud dolphin noises (think Flipper for those old enough). The sounds echoed off the walls and I had to walk away to laugh. I didn’t want to encourage her. The dad seemed a bit embarrassed but he never said anything to her because I don’t think he wanted her to feel bad which was really nice.

6. During a walk around the supermarket there was Christmas music playing and holiday decorations everywhere. It was a very fun and festive atmosphere. I had the biggest smile as I walked around and I figured a lot of people assumed I was enjoying the holiday season. I didn’t want to ruin the illusion but little did they know I was so happy because I found the horseradish sauce I wanted. It’s not as magical as the holidays but I’d be happy with it under my tree.

Yay, horseradish sauce!

7. We got the first snowfall of the season on Cape Cod. I’m not as big of a fan of snow as I was when I was a kid but the first snow is always fun. I grabbed my camera and headed out. I stopped at one particular spot in Dennis, the next town over. The photos and video were great but the roads got bad fast. Driving a Toyota Corolla means more than a little snow makes it a bad time. The last mile or so of my drive home saw me barely able to get to 20 mph as the roads were packed with slushy snow. My traction control light was on almost nonstop. As much as I loved the photos I was glad to get home in one piece.

8. My sister Ashley has a dog named Buddha. He’s a mix of a lot of things but looks mostly like a fluffier German shepherd. A fun fact is that he will not sit on any couch with her. In fact, he will get off the couch if she tries to sit with him. I say this because he goes out of his way to sit with me on the couch at my mom’s. This week not only did he lie down next to me but he fell asleep. To top it off he let me rest my arm on him like a big old rug. It shocked my mom and sister mostly because if she tried to sit next to him and pet him he’d walk away. She says it’s because he’s suspicious of her that she’s not petting him but checking for problems because she’s his parent.

9. A recent thing I’ve noticed on social media, more specifically Threads, is an influx of polite bots. They’re either bots or incredibly stupid people. I’d like to think bots. For example, I went and got a nice video of a church in the falling snow. There were wreaths, a manger scene, and a decorated Christmas tree under a gazebo. A comment on the video mentioned nice ‘traditional religious decorations.’ The kicker was when they asked if I had built them myself. Did I build the church and gazebo? Another one a few weeks back asked if I had built the boat I got a video of that had a small Christmas tree in it. Mind you I put a caption of where I was and what I was filming and the comments basically reworded my caption into question form. I’m hopeful these are bots because if it’s real people I mean wow stupid times a million.

Someone asked if I built all of this.

10. As Christmas draws near I am back to debating whether I should bother wrapping gifts or use bags. There was a time for a few years when I’d pile presents for the family into one big bag and hand them out because I just didn’t want to spend the time to wrap them. I guess I figure that the wrapping paper is wasted energy since very very rarely in my life have I ever heard someone rave about a gift wrapping job. That being said I do have my wrapping paper and tape ready so I guess I’ve answered my own question.