Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #129: New England Weather, Bike Trail Radar, Suddenly Salad, etc.

1. The famous saying around here is ‘if you don’t like the weather, just wait 5 minutes.’ Last week, we had three straight days of temperatures well into the 90s with a heat index in the high 100s. It was no fun and left me looking forward to fall already. It was as if the weather gods said, ‘ok if you don’t like sweltering heat, we’ve got something different.’ To start the new week, it was the total opposite side of the weather. It was raining, and buckets of it. We went from a heat advisory to a flood watch in a matter of days. I’m not sure if I have to choose which of those types of weather I’d rather have, extreme heat or oceans of rain. My ideal weather is partly cloudy, mid-70s, and low humidity. Why some clouds? Easy, to make for a perfect sunset.


2. I finished and enjoyed all three seasons of Travelers on Netflix. It was on from 2016 to 2018. The show is about time travelers who come back to their past to try to change events to make the future a better place. After liking Dark, it was fitting that the next show I watched was another time travel show. With 34 total episodes, the show does a good job of expanding and solving all of its storylines. Even though it’s been finished for eight years, it still felt like there was room for a 4th season, but it is probably way too late for that. The travelers come back to the past by their consciousness entering the body of a living person in the present who historically dies at a certain time. That means the original person was going to die, and sort of still does, but their body remains and becomes inhabited by a totally new person. That’s a big part of the plot: the traveler trying to keep up the charade of being the person who they replaced. As usual, I am trying not to spoil much but give you enough info to entice you to check it out. Who knows what my next show choice will be? So far, I’ve liked every show I’ve chosen, so I have to keep my streak alive.

3. Perfect summer days need to be appreciated. Your definition of ‘perfect’ might vary. Mine is temperatures in the low to mid 70s, sunny to partly sunny, and low humidity. We had one such day this week, and oh boy, did I enjoy it. I finished work and headed to the local bike trail. I did some walking and a lot more running over the span of close to 3 ½ miles. It felt great to put more running miles on my legs than I have in a long time this week. I’m not saying that a return to racing is in my future, but if I can slowly increase my stamina, I won’t rule it out. Overall, my route on this perfect day was filled with sweet breezes, river views, quiet neighborhoods, and loads of other people enjoying the day. Yes, fall is my favorite season. However, when you get a perfect summer day, at least weather-wise, there are few things better.


4. Some investments are just stupid. One such investment is a radar speed detector on a bike trail. Yes, you read that right. I have seen two pairs of speed detectors so far, like you’d see on any road, located on a bike trail. I don’t know how much each one costs, but whatever it costs, it is a waste of money. Seriously, what the hell are you going to do if someone speeds? Are there cops somewhere to pull them over? It is mind-numbingly stupid. A better idea from these towns would be to put cameras up on the trails to catch the large number of motorized vehicles on the trail. I always see dirt bikes on the trail when signs are everywhere saying ‘no motorized vehicles.’ I say that, but even if someone got caught riding a dirt bike on the trail, nothing would happen. But seriously, speed detectors on a bike trail? Good lord, how dumb.

An incredible waste of money on the bike trail.

5. This week I wrote an article about a fascinating psychological phenomenon known as the ‘music reminiscence bump.’ It is how music from our adolescence registers with us more deeply than anything that comes after. It’s why we all say music was better when we were younger, no matter what our ages are now. For me, music from 1991 to 1994 falls into this category. I was aged 14 to 17. As a capper on my article, I decided to put my money where my mouth was and create a Spotify playlist featuring my favorite music from that era. It is still not finished, and already it is nearly 200 songs and over 13 hours of music. I was not shocked at just how many songs I loved and that needed to be on the playlist. I recommend everyone try it on their own. Find the year or years you feel music was best in your life, and then go craft a playlist. I am betting it will be much longer than you anticipate.


6. I’m sorry, but based on my age, I find the product Suddenly Salad to be one of the funniest names out there. Why? Little Shop of Horrors. In the 1986 version with Rick Moranis, there is a song that he sings with Ellen Greene called Suddenly Seymour. I have needed to write this down to get it out of my head because every time I see the box in the supermarket, I just want to sing the name Suddenly Salad. I can’t be the only one in their 40s who grew up watching Little Shop of Horrors to make that connection. Or maybe I am a special kind of crazy who will sing a random song because a pasta salad shortcut product by Betty Crocker has a similar name?

Cue the music

7. In an event that should surprise no one, this week I saw my first ‘back to school’ ads. Mind you, on Cape Cod, school got out less than 3 weeks ago. These greedy corporations are so geared up on squeezing every last cent out of their customers that they start promoting going back to school right after the last school year ends. I remember hating that so much as a kid. It’s like, just give us some time to enjoy summer before reminding us that it has to end and we have to go back to school. There must be a mandate with a lot of these companies, certain dates that mark when to begin promoting the next holiday or event. Before kids get back to school, you will see Halloween candy laid out. Time moves fast enough as it is without greedy bloodsucking corporations speeding it up by promoting things that are months away like they’re happening now. Oh, and by the way, it was Old Navy promoting back-to-school clothes for kids.


8. Every summer, we have throngs of tourists on Cape Cod. Most of them are fine. They come down, enjoy themselves safely and responsibly, contribute to our economy, and leave. Of course, when so many people come down, there are bound to be a small percentage of stupid people among them. That’s just life. What I don’t get is how some of these tourists seem to have no idea of how to navigate through life once they get over one of the canal bridges. For example, one-way streets. Are there no street signs where you come from? Unless you live in the most rural of small towns in the middle of nowhere, I’m figuring people have seen one-way street signs. Still there it was during a run this week, some idiot with their New York plate driving down a one-way street. Thankfully, nobody was going the other way. Like, I get the people who can’t seem to understand that dogs aren’t allowed on the beaches during the summer. There are signs, but they are smaller, and you could lie and say you didn’t see them and didn’t know. One-way streets have big signs at each end telling you to not go a certain way. So these people from New York were either totally illiterate or just smug, entitled jerks. I’ll let you decide which they were.

Yeah man that's really hard to understand

9. Something that means well but is pretty dumb is the sign that is seen in a lot of places on Cape Cod, and I’m sure everywhere. It says ‘walk left, ride right.’ Simple enough. If you’re walking or running, you stay on the left to face oncoming traffic. You ride on the opposite side. It makes sense, except for one major issue. If I am headed north on a road and running on the left side of the road, then when I am headed back south down that road, I would now be running on the right side. Left or right is all relative depending on which way you’re going. So, in reality, the well-meaning sign makes literally no sense. It should just say ‘walk wherever, ride wherever, just stay the hell out of the middle of the road.’ When I’m running on a road or bike trail, people just go wherever they want, so obviously the sign is pretty pointless.


10. There is something so soothing and refreshing about getting up early in the morning and sitting next to an open window as the summer air floods your senses. I’m not a fan of 90 degrees and humidity, but when you are sitting on a day off in a comfy chair, and it’s mid 60s with a sweet breeze trickling in all around you, it is magical. I am trying harder to take one day to fully relax and recharge. That means little to no content work. That means sitting outside and enjoying the weather (if it’s not boiling hot). After going all-out with my content work for over 5 years, it can be easy to feel burned out if not given a chance to actually recover. It was hard at first as I’d feel like there was work I could be doing and I was falling behind. Sitting in the early morning summer breeze, though, gives such a sense of peace that any sort of worry about work just falls away.



11. I am my own harshest critic. Most of the time, I feel as though I am not good enough. I believe that it goes back to my childhood when I had a neglectful biological father and an abusive stepfather. My mother did the best she could, but one ray of sunshine through the storm cannot keep you dry. Today I am chasing validation. I pursue success in creative fields on one hand because I enjoy creating things, but on the other hand, to show those who tried to snuff out my passion for life that they failed. Dreams of becoming an undeniable success in some sort of creative field kept me going through my darkest times growing up. I owe it to that younger version of myself who struggled with self-esteem and self-worth to not give up on the dreams he chased. That being said, there has never been any guarantee that success comes from chasing dreams. It’s where my criticism of myself comes in. I wonder if I should not have been stubbornly bushwhacking my way through the forest when there was a highway beside me. I chose the more difficult road long ago. It is a road where the successes could be great, but the failures could be more likely. So I keep working hard. Books, podcasts, videos, filmmaking, any sort of creative venture, I push myself to do more and more in the hope that the next thing is the thing that changes everything. I might be my own harshest critic, but I also know that I am at this point in my life for a reason. Dreams only expire when you stop pursuing them.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #128: Mall Rat Reboot, Heat Dome, Hey A Loveseat, etc.

1. Those of you who regularly read this blog know that over the last few months, I have had several dreams involving friends and family. The common denominator of these dreams is that they all have taken place at a mall. It feels like it was the Cape Cod Mall in the 1990s, at least in my dreaming mind. I mentioned after the last one that maybe the dreams were telling me something. Like maybe I needed to go to the mall to find an answer to some question. Well, this week I bit the bullet. While out for a drive, I took a detour and went to the mall. I wandered the corridors from one end to the other for the first time in years. Did I find some meaningful answer to some important question? Nope. Did I see anyone I knew? Nope. Did I stop and find some amazing deal on some product I didn’t know I needed? Nope again. I got some steps in, but all in all, it turned out to be me feeling old walking around, seeing mostly teenagers hanging out. It did make me happy that kids still carry on the tradition of being mall rats. Oh, and I did get some tasty Chinese food from a place called Ruby Thai, which I hadn’t had in a while. If that was the meaning of the dreams, then mission accomplished.


2. Maybe I’m different, but it’s never crossed my mind to take trash from where I live and go leave it outside somewhere. Sadly, it’s common to see full bags of trash left on the side of the road by people who are the definition of worthless. The ones that take the cake are those who bring furniture somewhere and just drop it off. Seriously? If it’s too much money to pay to bring it to the dump, maybe switch to cheaper beer or cigarettes. I guarantee people who drop a loveseat in the parking lot of an abandoned school have an open pack of cigarettes and an open can of some crap beer in the center console of their beat-up, rusty pickup truck. I say all of this because, yes, on Monday Runday this week, I found a discarded loveseat in the parking lot. Next up, it’ll be mattresses and televisions littering the school grounds.

Have a seat

3. Normally, Monday Runday is pretty self-explanatory. We run. We go home. That’s it. This week had a few interesting developments. I just mentioned the loveseat. Besides that, there was a conversation with an osprey. Where we run is a slowly decaying track at an abandoned school, as I mentioned. Located behind the school is a wooden platform commandeered by a family of osprey as a home. As I was running my first lap around the back of the school, I spotted one of the parents sitting in the nest and sharing many high-pitched squeaks. I made sure to stop and explain to it that I didn’t have any fish and also didn’t speak osprey, but sadly it didn’t understand. The second time around, I got to see a pair of the young ones. Their heads popped up and were bobbing all around. I had to be 30 to 40 feet away, plus the tower was probably 30 feet high as well, so I never felt in danger. Although when the other parent returned carrying dinner in its talons, I did make a hasty return to running.


4. My brain still believes I am 30, but my body will vehemently disagree sometimes. Monday Runday was a huge success. Granted, I only ran about half of the time, but it was 4 miles in total, and my body felt good. I felt the mix of exhaustion and energy that I love about running. The next morning though, I had to pay the piper. My body wasn’t really sore, just really tired. My knees, especially, felt like they needed a few extra hours of rest to work normally. I felt like a crushed bag of potato chips. I definitely don’t regret running more than I have in a few months. Still, I am glad that I was smart and held myself back during that run. If it were 7-8 years ago, I’d have run way too much since I felt good and ended up injured. Now I held myself back and yet still felt like a half-eaten rotisserie chicken tossed in a dumpster. Forgive me, I was trying to find the funniest food-related descriptions for some moderate soreness. I was gonna say a pizza flipped upside down on a hot street, but the chicken one was funnier, at least to me.

My body felt like one of these things

5. As the week got going, there was a foreboding sense of dread in the air in the northeast. Something called a ‘heat dome’ was approaching. Temperatures were set to be higher than they had been in many years. Predictions ranged from the low 90s to the mid-100s, depending on where you lived. I am very familiar with heat waves. They are prolonged stretches of hot weather that vary depending on where you live. I just find it kind of funny how language changes over the years. When I was a kid, there were no heat domes, there were no bomb cyclones. There were heat waves, Nor’easters, and blizzards. I know that things evolve. Maybe I am now the old man saying things were different in my day? I feel a bit like meteorologists think weather can be boring, so they invent new, scarier-sounding types of weather so that they get attention. Honestly, what sounds more impactful, a heat wave or a heat dome? It sounds like we’re going to be sitting in a rotisserie. Don’t get me started on other weird ones like atmospheric river and polar vortex.


6. Amazingly, despite it being in the low 90s to kick off the heat wave this week. We had two people signed up to use our infrared sauna at my work. The sauna is great for overall health, but not on one of the hottest days of the year. Of course, inside our office it’s a comfy 72 degrees, so it’s doable. I said that we should just put a lawn chair outside in the sun and place a sign next to it that says ‘sauna.’ Maybe we could shine red lights in their faces to make them feel more like a real sauna. Once it got up over 90 degrees, though, both people ended up calling in to cancel. I guess they built their own lawn chair saunas in their yards.



7. You don’t realize how much you depend on your phone until you go home from work for the weekend and realize that you forgot your charger in the office. There was no chance I’d be driving back into work to get it, so I decided to go the following morning and buy a backup charger. I know I’ll always need one. I went to Ocean State Job Lot since it was close and cheap. Just a reminder that it was Fourth of July Weekend, so everywhere was packed, and outside it felt like standing in an oven. I was thrilled to just get into the a/c and wander the aisles at Job Lot. Once it got to be ten minutes and I had wandered nearly every square inch of the store without finding charging cables, I broke down and actually asked an employee where they were. As you might figure, they were located in the one place I hadn’t checked. Oh well. Then it was option overload. Instead of choosing a typical cord, I got a fancy charging pad. Granted, it was $7.99, but still fancy for Job Lot. What I thought was that it was a pad with a plug so you could have it on your desk out of the way. In a way, it was. In another way, it was a pad with a USB cord to plug into a laptop. Of course, that defeated the purpose of the charging pad. It also came with the same USB I’d have needed for my phone anyway. I am guessing the charging pad will collect dust while I just use the cord. Nice.


8. Stepping outside into the soupy air on a day when the heat index got up as high as 107 is not fun. The sun was brutal even just walking across a parking lot. In fact, it was so unbelievably hot that the asphalt smelled like it had just been laid in certain areas. I was only outside for a handful of minutes on the hottest day of the bunch, but that was enough. It was capped off by seeing the hydrangeas outside of the front door where I live totally wilted. They literally looked like they had melted. Sadly, I wish I had gotten a photo of them when they were still fresh and alive. You can see for yourself the damage the heat wave did. The good news was that they recovered fairly well when the temperatures got a little more seasonable.




9. For all of the injuries over the years, I am at heart still a runner, and still foolish despite my increasing age. That meant that even though the heat index was over 100, I had to get some miles in outside on the 4th of July. It’s a bit of a tradition to run or walk to the water and feel good about myself because I can run faster than the cars stuck in traffic can move. This was not like other years, when I ran a lot of fast miles. I wanted to experience the full heat as safely as I could. This naturally meant running in the sun for stretches of my time outdoors. Even relatively early in the morning, it felt like I was inside a pizza oven. I never worried about myself, though. For years, I ran in extreme conditions, and to be honest, I kind of enjoy the idea of being out in weather others would avoid. I ended up doing five total miles of running and walking. There was a lot of beautiful scenery along rivers, and I made sure to wave to as many people as possible. Except not to those stuck in traffic, they were having a hard enough time as it was.


10. Every year on July 4th, they have the Nathan’s hot dog eating contest. That’s all fine and dandy as long as nobody tries to refer to people who gorge themselves on food as athletes. Training to eat dozens of hot dogs is not the same as training for anything athletic. I would never attempt to do a hot dog eating contest. I like hot dogs and could probably down several in a sitting without issue. My reason is that I want to enjoy my food. Jamming bread and meat into a glass of water to slide it down my throat doesn’t sound enjoyable. That being said, I did have my own eating contest on the 4th. My mom made her typically excellent pasta and meatballs. She made me a gigantic plate to take home. Rather than divide it up into two medium-sized meals, I figured, why not try to be a champion and eat all of it? The photo of my plate is below. All you need to know is that in the process of getting all of that food from the container to the plate, I managed to spill some on my table. It was quite a mess, but hey, that’s what soap and paper towels are for. Yes, I finished all of it and quickly fell into a food coma after. I might not have the ‘prestige’ of winning a hot dog eating contest, but I guarantee you the food my mother made was light-years better.




11. And then the bubble burst. After three days of 90+ degree heat and soupy levels of humidity, the heat dome finally cracked. The rain came pouring in overnight on Saturday. I was thrilled to wake up the following morning with the temperature only being 67. My air conditioner got to sleep in. To celebrate the heat wave ending, I took my tired legs out on the bike trail in the morning. Yes, it was still raining, but only lightly. Plus, after having dealt with a heat index of over 100 for a few days, running in the drizzle was heavenly. I chose to go down the bike trail extension, which when completed, will lead the Cape Cod Rail Trail from Yarmouth west into Hyannis. It is pretty much all paved, but the final step is the bridge set to be placed over the busy Willow Street. The footings of the eventual bridge have been built. I am figuring that they are going to wait until after summer or even until the end of the year before they finish the project. That’s my guess, although judging by the Barnstable town website, it might not be done until 2031. By that logic, it probably really won’t be done until the day after I die, yay.


12. I have been sharing and promoting the fundraiser for the feature film I will be producing called The Cabin. It’s been a month, and as of this writing, I am 1/3 of the way to the proposed budget. At this point, I am looking outside of the box for places to share the fundraiser. It had never dawned on me to look for fundraiser groups on Facebook. My friend, producer Frank Durant, suggested that, as he’s done it before. One such group has nearly 300K members. I’m not setting my expectations too high, but even a few new donors from that page would be great. The actual GoFundMe page on Facebook has 2.5 million followers. It’s a huge number, and you can message them to get support for your fundraiser. My issue is that even though this project is extremely important to me, it is not important in the grand scheme of things. What I mean is the fundraisers they share on the GoFundMe page deal with medical bills, housing, and things that are far more serious. I haven’t shared my fundraiser because, next to fighting cancer, donating to a small indie film fund doesn’t seem that meaningful. I’ve still got five weeks until I close the page. I’m thinking sometime in the second week of August to give me and the crew a little time to shore up all of the budgetary needs. It’s all new and out of my comfort zone, but that’s what makes it exciting.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #127: Monday Rainday, Business Cards, Relax or Else, etc.

1. Monday Runday was Monday Rainday this week. I will take a little rain over 85 and humid, though every day of the week. It was fitting, though, that after just over 3 miles of circling an old school track in varying intensities of rain, the water stopped. My legs were tired, so I had no plans to run to reach my desired 3 miles. I just had to walk faster and endure the rain. One thing I have been very happy with is the durability of my headphones. I have had the same pair of big red over-ear headphones for going on 8 years. I know that someday they will break and I will need a new pair, but that wasn’t the case on this day. The rain didn’t short them out, although I didn’t risk it, and when the rain got steadier, I took my headphones off and hid them in my shirt. Years ago, at my peak as a runner, I used to enjoy running in all sorts of inclement weather. I’d run in rain, wind, snow, whatever. I guess since I ran all of those races and ran in all of the different types of weather, I have lost the desire to do so again.


2. One day this week, I was training an 87-year-old client. She was brought by her daughter-in-law and also had her 7-year-old granddaughter in tow. I have known them over the years at my work, as the daughter-in-law is a patient at my work. The 7-year-old I have known since she was a toddler, and I give her free rein to come into the gym if I am training someone and she is there. On this day, she was just hanging out while I trained her grandmother. This was after she and I failed to find a rogue cricket that had been calling the gym home. Anyway, I was training her grandmother, and so she grabbed a dry-erase marker and started scribbling on our green dry-erase board. When she left, I saw what she wrote, and it was so sweet and cute that I decided to leave it up there. I won’t erase it, but there’s no guarantee it won’t be erased. The fun coincidence was that her other grandmother was a client of mine in the afternoon. She practically melted when I told her who wrote that sweet message. I won’t leave you in suspense. I did take a photo of it to share.




3. No matter how many speaking events I do for my books, I will always feel blessed and humbled. I am always happy that people, the vast majority total strangers, take time out of their day to come out and hear me speak. That’s why I do my best to make each and every event the best I can possibly do. This week I had an event at the Eldredge Library in Chatham. Despite it being a sunny, 80-degree day in early summer, there were close to 30 people who chose to come inside, sit, and hear me speak about my latest book. In Their Footsteps: The Interesting People, Places, and Events of Cape Cod History features 40 stories from the Cape, all in chronological order. It was a fun event, and I have a few more this summer. Come and see me on July 15th at 5pm at the Snow Library in Orleans, or on July 23rd at 6pm at the Dennis Public Library. They will both be great shows, I promise!

Coming up next!

4. This week marked the 250th episode of the In My Footsteps Podcast, which I have hosted since November 2020. It’s amazing to think that the idea I had once, my brain had cleared after giving up alcohol, would have such staying power. It began as a way to distract myself from the alcohol demons I was fighting off. It was just me talking about all of the subjects I enjoyed. Slowly, it morphed into my favorite thing I do. I actually love the research, planning, recording, and yikes, even the editing of these podcasts. A podcast is easily the best way to keep in contact with your audience. You can speak about anything you want, and I bet you’d find people interested. A lot of it comes down to time. Doing all of the work surrounding the podcast can be time-consuming. If you’ve ever thought of starting your own podcast, all you need is some sort of computer, recording software, a decent microphone, a topic, and the desire to create it. My show is now strictly GenX nostalgia, but that covers a ton of ground. It ends up being nearly anything that has occurred between 1960 and 2005. You can see why I believe that I can easily do another 250 episodes. If you’ve never listened, now is your chance to start. They are fun and breezy at around an hour each. Thank you to those who have listened, and here’s to the next 250 episodes!



5. What do you do with outdated business cards? In 2009, I created my first business card. It featured Chatham Lighthouse and simply described me as an author. This was despite not having any published books or even a blog. For some reason, probably because it was a better deal, I had something like 500 cards printed. They lasted me until 2017. By that time, I had 4 published books, so a change was needed. I bring cards to my speaking events because they are a way that people can possibly keep connected, even if they don’t buy a book. The most recent cards I had made were when I had 6 published books. I now have 10. I am currently in the process of designing new cards that I should have for my next event. The outdated cards are something else. Around the time I redesigned my author cards in 2017, I also created personal trainer cards. I thought I might be able to drum up business for in-home training if I had my own business cards to hand out. I might have had 100 made, and in the 9 years since, have probably handed out less than 20. That means I have a boatload of cards with a photo of me from 2014 promoting something I have no desire to do again currently, that being in-home training. Oh, but wait, there’s more. I also created cards for my podcast. Again, about 100 made. The problem is, since I printed those, I changed not only my podcast logo, but what the show is about in general. So those are even more useless than the training cards. Yay. I have something like 150 useless business cards. I might keep one of each and then send the rest through the shredder at work.


6. Family get-togethers used to be a regular occurrence when I was younger. Now they have become fewer and further apart. Despite having a pretty busy schedule for the most part, I try my best to make time if a family get-together is on the horizon. This week I was able to do so. I went to have dinner with my cousin Patrick, who was still on Cape Cod from Las Vegas. We were at our cousins Richard and Dale’s house. They are our 2nd cousins. It was a wonderful and worthwhile experience. The weather was perfect, so we all ate outside. I sometimes forget that Dale used to run a restaurant on Cape Cod decades ago and is an accomplished cook. She just casually whipped up a Bearnaise sauce, Greek salad with dressing, and fresh whipped cream like it was no big deal. I was tired from a busy day, but didn’t want the dinner to end. At this point in my life, I do realize that you never know when another family moment like that might happen. Even when the sun was starting to go down after 8pm, I stood out in the driveway with Patrick and just talked about anything we could. It was a battle between fatigue and genuinely wanting to stay and chat as long as my body would hold up. I am grateful for these moments today, when, as a kid, they were so common that I felt almost as if I could miss a handful and not miss a thing. Patrick says he might come back to Cape Cod next year, but you never know what happens, so I am glad we got a lot of chances to spend time together during this visit. If you are lucky, you end up with many family members that you would rearrange your day just to spend some time with. I am that type of lucky.




7. Every time I go into a certain local supermarket, if a specific employee is working there, they always say hi to me. Not ‘hi’ like they’re just going through the motions, but saying it like they know me. I see this guy who has to be maybe a few years older than me, going about his job, but nine times out of ten, if I pass by him, he stops and specifically says hello to me. He even occasionally asks how things are going. I am sure he is probably just friendly, and he does the same thing with other customers, but I don’t have any other employee at any other supermarket do that. Part of me wants to stop and ask if we know each other, but I doubt it. He never says my name or asks anything more specific that might make me think we have a history. Believe me, it’s not a bad thing. I’d much rather have someone go out of their way to say hi to me than the alternative. I could only imagine having someone shoot me a dirty look every time I was in their store.


8. When I was at my peak as a runner, probably 2015-2016, I used to run sometimes as much as 40 to 50 miles per week. I definitely had my share of aches, pains, and injuries, yet somehow I kept going year after year. Once I injured my right hip while training for a Top 10 finish in a 5K in 2018, things changed. The injuries tipped the scales, and slowly but surely, my running career faded. I kept trying, but it was an exercise in futility. A few years ago, I made a concerted effort to return to running races. I at least wanted to do one, even if my time was nowhere near what I used to be able to do. I competed in three races between 2024 and 2025. The last race I did, my time was something like 6 minutes better than I expected. My confidence was sky high. Only a few weeks later, I severely sprained my ankle and everything shut down. I haven’t run a race since and haven’t run much at all. In the last month or so, I started wondering if there was anything that I had done when I was at my peak as a runner that I might be able to add back into my life that might help me start running more. Two things came to mind. One was making BCAAs (branched-chain amino acids) part of my daily life. They help muscles recover from strenuous exercise. The other was adding more glucosamine to my supplement regimen. It helps with the lubrication of joints and overall joint health. When I was running 40+ miles a week, I took more than the recommended dose of glucosamine regularly, and my knees and hips always responded well. I figured it was worth a shot to try that again. It takes two weeks or so to get the full effect of any vitamin or supplement into your body, so I didn’t attempt anything before then. I have noticed in the time since I started taking 1.5x the recommended amount of glucosamine that my joints, specifically my knees, feel better than they have in quite a while. This came to a head this weekend when I went for a long walk. It was like my legs were craving running, so I gave in. It wasn’t like it used to be. There were no stretches of sub-7-minute miles. But I did end up running much more than I have in months. There were even points where I thought I should stop and walk, but my body was on autopilot like the old days. I just kept running and focusing on my stride. Only time will tell if this is a significant development in my running life or if it’s my brain tricking my body until something else breaks. Either way, it felt good to be running on a beautiful summer morning on Cape Cod again.


9. It’s amazing how a little dose of the old runner’s high can make a route I’ve gone down hundreds of times feel fresh and new. A favorite running route leads along a river to the beach. It’s through a historic village and is in total just over three miles from my front door to the ocean’s edge. When I was a competitive runner, I’d enjoy the route but be more focused on my pace. Now I can stop and take it all in at times. Little coves, flowers, loads of walkers and riders, historic homes, and ample beachfront views. I figured, why not create a little video of this route? You never know who might get inspired to check it out themselves. You can drive it if you want, but walking or cycling is better.




10. In recent weeks, I have started to try to make Sundays into a day when I don’t do anything major. I make it a day where I sit around and relax. No exercise, no content work, just mindlessly recharging my battery. It’s not that I’ve lost the desire to work hard on my content or enjoy some sort of exercise, but I have found that if I never relax, I feel like I am in a constant state of fatigue to start my new work week. My brain automatically goes to projects I should be working on. I admit I will do some minor work, like posting links to projects on social media. However, more involved things have to be put on the back burner at least for a day. There have been long stretches over the last 5 or so years where I have felt in a state of perpetual burnout. My energy levels crater, and I get agitated at that. A month or so ago, I decided to force myself to sit and relax all Sunday. I did this by binging several episodes of the Netflix series Dark. I felt for so long that if I wasn’t constantly working on something, I’d fall behind whatever imaginary metric there was to show my progress in creative fields. Now I have come to realize that if I don’t take at least a day to fully relax and recharge, it could lead to longer stretches where I just can’t keep that pace up physically or mentally. Not just for me but for anyone, make sure you take some time, some real time, to relax and recharge. It will do you a world of good.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #125: Class of 96, More Mall Dreams, Too Hot, etc.

1. It’s hard to believe that it’s been 30 years since I graduated from high school. At times, it feels like yesterday. That might be helped by the fact that I have the entire ceremony on video. I can see my old friends and classmates when we were all teenagers with our lives ahead of us. I can feel the promise of the years to come and not the weight of mistakes, missed opportunities, and ‘what ifs.’ I remember not realizing just how big a change was coming as I crossed the grassy field and took hold of my diploma. I think I was just itching to get out of the dress clothes on a warm late spring morning. Then again, way more often I feel like that day was a lifetime ago, and in many ways it was. I am now in my late 40s and most of the time feel as though I must have missed my exit on the highway we were all traveling. My mission now is to either find my way back to that missed exit or to keep going until I find something that makes the missed opportunities worth it. Yes, 30 years is a long time. I do know that I have many years left to fulfill the promise I saw lying ahead of me when I first held that high school diploma in my hand. Don’t get me wrong, I have seen a lot and done a lot in the last 30 years, but I feel it’s like comparing the sales of Michael Jackson’s Bad album to his Thriller album. Most musicians would kill to have an album sell like Bad, but only one in a million can sell like Thriller. Not sure if that makes sense to anyone but me.


2. I guess I shouldn’t expect too much from people. I put together four polls for my upcoming 250th podcast episode. I’m calling it Listener’s Choice because obviously, the people listening will choose what GenX nostalgia topics are on that particular show. I had people ‘liking’ the posts but not voting in the poll. How stupid is that? It takes literally the same time and effort to click one of the poll options as it does to ‘like’ it. I am grateful to the people who understood the assignment, and the podcast will be a good one. The others, though? It’s like they’re children getting mad at being asked (nicely) to do something to help out around the house. Don’t tell me to pick up my room, I’m going to make a bigger mess! Seriously, I was tempted to block everyone who liked the polls but didn’t vote, and I know because the polls show me each vote and by whom. But going back to the top, I guess I shouldn’t expect too much from people. That’s on me.

Coming soon!

3. It’s funny how a major anniversary or milestone can affect your mind. I mentioned the high school graduation anniversary. That same day was Monday Runday, which some of you might remember as the weekly meetup with my longtime friend and old classmate Mike. We run, or in my case, mostly walk, at a local track. I haven’t run much in the last few months as my left knee has decided to retire early. That changed this week. Perhaps I was inspired by the weather? No, it was the fear of being old. I decided to run more than I have in a while at the track. Now, granted, it was not much, but still good enough. Just the thought of it being 30 years since I finished high school was enough for me to need to prove to myself I wasn’t old yet. My body felt relatively good the next morning, so who knows, maybe I can slowly return to more running. Or I’ll end up crashing out the next time, and I’ll soon be walking with those Nordic walking poles.


4. My sister Ashley passed 14 years alcohol-free this week. If it sounds like a big number, that’s because it is. It was a hard road for her leading up to the choice to quit. There were times when it was really bad that some of us in the family thought the alcohol would be the end of her. But she defeated her demons and became stronger. She defeated her demons and became an inspiration to me. When my alcohol problem was out of control, I looked to her and thought if she could do it, so could I. For me, it will be 6 years without alcohol in September. There have been a few times when the alcohol nearly reentered my life, most specifically the death of my Uncle Eric. I remember that not only am I not drinking anymore for myself, but I am also doing it for Ashley because she impacted me greatly with her own battles. While I am speaking on deleting alcohol from lives, I want to mention another sister, Kate, who is rapidly approaching 300 days, and then a year, alcohol-free as well. Everyone’s journey and reason is their own, but I hope that Ashley and I helped to show her that it can be done. I am very proud of my sisters.


5. For the 3rd time in probably 6 weeks, I had a dream featuring me with a friend or family member hanging out at the mall. This time, I was with my oldest friend, Barry, just wandering the corridors and chatting. Why? Not why is Barry there. That makes sense because I haven’t seen him in a few years, and he has been a hugely important part of my life for 40 years. No, the question is why at the mall always? Am I supposed to go to the Cape Cod Mall and find some sort of answer to something? Do I miss being a semi-pro mall rat in the 1990s? Is it more about the people in these dreams and maybe needing to reach out to them more? I have no clue. Have any of you had a sort of recurring dream, or at least a recurring dream location? I have vivid dreams and lucid dreams, but they are rarely ever connected. I tend to have wild swings of plot lines of my dreams. Having hangouts at the mall come around 3 times in less than 2 months is weird. Especially specifically remembering them. I guess we’ll have to wait for the next episode of Dream Mall: The Series to find out what happens.

The mall of my dreams?

6. All it took was a few 85-degree and humid days for me to immediately begin dreaming of the fall. The irony is, it’s not even summer yet. The first day of summer is June 21st. The heat is one thing. I’m not a fan of the temperatures getting above 80, but you can cope when it’s not humid. That’s the thing that is the worst. The humidity just makes everything feel wet and soupy, which is uncomfortable during the day and just plain gross at night when you’re trying to sleep. I try to wait as long as I can to put in my air conditioner. I only have two windows where I live. Plugging one with a bulky a/c unit means that on days when the a/c isn’t needed, I don’t get any fresh air. This is another first-world problem since many people don’t even have the option of air conditioning. It is supposed to become nice and seasonable again in a few days. I’ll likely be able to hold out for a while longer but there’s only so many days when the ‘real feel’ is 100 that I can endure before the a/c goes in.


7. As luck would have it, a window fan I had for many years finally decided enough was enough. It died and left me roasting during the heat wave. I took a trip to the nearest Ocean State Job Lot to get a good, and cheap, replacement. This fan was a powerful window fan, and I was happy that it was relatively affordable at $40. I got home, and it was 85 and humid inside my apartment, so the fan was going to be a welcome addition. I put it in a window and turned it on, nothing. I was confused. I tried different outlets. I messed with the power switch. Still nothing. Now I was mad because even though the prices are pretty low at Job Lot, you still expect something to work when you get it home. I began getting the packaging together since I’d have to go back and get a replacement. I was angry and pouring sweat in the heat. Then I turned the ‘thermostat’ dial in the middle of the fan. Suddenly, both 9” fans sprang to life loudly and powerfully. It turns out the thermostat is really just an intensity dial for the fans. With it being turned all the way down, the fans wouldn’t move. Yes, I did feel pretty stupid. I will say this, though: better to feel stupid at home than to go back to Job Lot and have them find out I was returning a fan because I couldn’t figure out how to turn it on.


8. I have seen birds do some incredible stunt work when it comes to flying. The way they can change directions on a dime is pretty amazing. I see it a lot when they fly in front of vehicles, yet they can change directions to avoid getting hit. This week, I saw the ultimate in terms of bird acrobatics. I was behind an SUV when a bird came flying in from the left. I think it was a robin, or at least a bird of similar size. This bird flew in between the SUV’s driver’s side tires. You’d figure any animal that gets in between the tires of a moving vehicle is likely not going to survive. This bird not only flew between those tires, but it also managed to instantly cut a corner and fly out between the rear tires and off to safety. I have no clue how it survived. If they have a bird lottery, I hope that one went and bought a ticket because it had luck on its side. Who knows, though, maybe it used up all of its luck and immediately flew into a mailbox or something.


9. I canceled my subscription to a television show pitch website. I had written out a full treatment for a season of a show based on my experiences working in restaurants in the 1990s. I mentioned it many weeks ago in this blog. I’m not done pitching the show. I am just looking for alternatives that don’t cost me $39/mo. with no promises of any views on my work. I went and canceled the membership with a few days left on it. For some reason, a notification popped up saying that my membership would end on December 31, 1969. Yes, you read that right. Apparently, my subscription to that site somehow made its way onto Doc Brown’s DeLorean and was deposited in the past. Maybe that will be my next TV show pitch. I stumble upon a tear in the space/time continuum thanks to my subscription to some random pitch website. On a more serious note, what does that say about their website? If you cancel and it gives you a cancellation date over 50 years in the past, what other mistakes have they coded into that site? Maybe I got out just in the nick of time?

Soon to be delivering my cancellation notice.

10. Every now and then, the old me shows up in terms of exercise. I can’t run really much at all anymore. I have nagging joint pains creeping up more and more, so lifting is less fun. I do the best I can, but there are days when I feel like the best is behind me. This weekend I was feeling lazy. Oh, I spent hours writing, so I was productive, but I ate terribly for lunch and had no desire to do anything. Then the heat wave we have been having got to me. It was 85, and I was sweating. This irritated me. I decided if I was going to sweat, I could at least turn it into an exercise session. So out of nowhere, I got into workout gear and went out for a walk. Now, mind you, it was 3pm, 85 degrees, and I had eaten junk and been sitting around all day. My body survived almost 4 miles before it began to shut down. I would not be denied. I pushed through 5.3 miles, burning 715 calories, erasing the bad lunch, and coming in under my calorie limit on MyFitnessPal. It might not have been as dramatic as the Knicks 29 point comeback in Game 4 of the NBA Finals this week, but it was a nice come-from-behind win for the day. I hope that it turns into some momentum so I can start feeling like my younger self. I’d take even feeling like 42 at this point. Oh, and also congratulations to the New York Knicks on winning their first NBA championship in 53 years.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #123: A Classic Story, Birthdays & Graduations, Meteors, etc.

1. It sometimes shocks me to think that I have been a part of social media for 23 years. My first profile was created for Friendster in 2003. We’re closing in on half of my life chronicled online. This is all on Facebook, as nothing original from Friendster or Myspace exists anymore. I check the memories page on Facebook daily. It creates some fun snapshots of different chapters of my life. One rabbit hole that I fell down this week had to do with the last year of my Nana’s life. There wasn’t much of substance relating to her from 2009. However, a specific memory popped up this week. It involved someone hitting my parked car while I was at my Nana’s house. In short, the guy did a U-turn and rear-ended my Jeep, destroying the rear axle. This guy was a weirdo and wanted desperately to go inside and talk to my 85-year-old Nana. Why? To tell his side of the story? It’s like, dude, you hit my parked car, tell me the story, not my grandmother. Anyway, I went way down the rabbit hole of that accident story and turned it into a great blog (I think). It was the last classic story of my life while my Nana was still alive. You can read the blog here: The Final Classic Story From My Nana's Life



2. I was asked to do an author talk about my latest book for this summer at a local library. It was all set up with the date and time. Then the person who reached out to me about the event said the date they agreed to had already been taken. Funny how they offered it and agreed to it, but then went back on that. Okay fine. So I rescheduled. I filled out paperwork to use their conference room, which I’ve never had to do for any event I’ve ever done. Whatever, it was all set. This week, the same person reached out and said they needed to reschedule yet again. No reason given. So I sent in a pair of dates I could do, making this the third different set of dates for a show at this same library. I am not sure if they are incompetent. Maybe they think they can just jerk me around and I will continue to reschedule my talk, which, remind you, they reached out to me for? While I love to do these speaking events and I will be way more flexible than I probably should be, part of me wants them to not be able to accommodate my new dates so I can just tell them to take a hike. We’ll see what happens.


3. After writing the full treatment for a sitcom I am trying to get picked up, I joined a website where people post their shows in the hopes that television companies and execs will see it and possibly want to create it. I am hopeful but not holding my breath since I know that for every person like me, there are probably hundreds of others, many likely with good ideas as well. I want to make the best impression I can, so I shot a video and shared the full details of the proposed show. Any decent profile needs a photo, so obviously, I wanted to put a good face out there. That’s where the hiccups came. No matter what I did, the site kept saying there were issues with my photo. I tried several photos before finally contacting the website. I explained my issue and then also said I could send the photo to them, asking if they could just put it on my profile. Instead, they recommended changing the size, the DPI, and the file format of the photo. Each time it didn’t work, and I reiterated that it might be easier to just send them my photo. Finally, after three times of being given advice that didn’t work, they asked me to send the photo. Gee, thanks for listening. It only took a week and a handful of messages. I don’t think that I missed any opportunities in the week that my profile was up without a photo, but still, would it have taken more than five seconds to plug my photo in? It probably took 1,000 times more effort to write three emails than it would to click and post. Oh well, it’ll be worth it if the show gets picked up.


4. Despite creeping toward 50, I still enjoy playing basketball every now and then. I don’t play competitively; my body can’t handle that. I go to a nearby recreation area where there is a court that is almost always empty. I went this week to shoot around for a while. It was a perfect afternoon. Well, except for one thing. It’s pollen season. Oh boy, did that come into play. Every time I bounced the ball, a puff of yellow dust came up. I made it 15 minutes before I was getting gassed, but I pressed on. I needed to make it to at least half an hour of good cardio. By the time I hit that mark, I was pretty much choking on the pollen. I must have had a cloud of the stuff all around the court like I was Pigpen in Peanuts. My black shirt and shorts were coated in yellow like powdered sugar on a donut. That being said, it ended up being a good shoot around, and I burned over 300 calories. Not too shabby.

Me playing basketball this week.

5. I highly recommend The Burroughs on Netflix. I had been waiting for it since I saw the first trailer a little over a month ago, and it did not disappoint. Without spoiling anything, it is basically like a perfect mixture of Stranger Things and Cocoon. It centers around a retirement community that is a town in the middle of the desert. It stars several big-time actors like Alfred Molina, Bill Pullman, and Geena Davis. She is excellent, and there is a nod to Thelma & Louise in it. It is eight episodes, so an easy binge. Or you can be like me and savor it and only watch one episode per night. Even then, it only lasted a little over a week. It has been really popular on Netflix since debuting, so my hope is that it gets greenlit for a second season because there is a lot of room for more story. Go and check it out if you can.

6. A nightmare scenario almost came true this week. Since Memorial Day Weekend has passed, the beaches have gotten their porta-potties back. There is a beach I like to spend a few minutes at on my way to work most days. I took a little walk and decided to use the facilities before heading back to my car. A few steps from the porta-potty, I spotted what looked like a septic truck entering the parking lot. I figured whoever was driving saw me. Then I heard the beeping of it backing up. It dawned on me that they were there to empty the porta-potty. For a brief moment, I didn’t know what they were going to do. Bust in through the door? Strap the thing to the truck and take off with it? Even if they didn’t see me, I knew they weren’t just going to knock the porta-potty over to empty it. They’d have to open the door, which was locked. I don’t know why I felt this sense of dread while listening to the truck backing up. I stepped out and gave a wave to the driver, and everything was fine. I hope those guys get paid well. I have seen some of the most disgusting porta-potties, and knowing that people have to clean them is just nasty. So yeah, pay the septic people more, they literally deal with shit for a living.


7. This weekend, I was able to see my nephew Landon graduate from high school. It’s an interesting feeling to watch someone you’ve known since they were born taking that step into whatever the next chapter of their life is. I say this time around is interesting because next week marks 30 years since I graduated high school, so my mind has been back in those bygone days of 1996. At times, I feel like I have one foot back in my youth with the other foot trying to keep me moving forward into the future. There are times when I feel confused. How can the younger generation of family be moving on to the ‘real world’ when I feel like I haven’t firmly established myself? Luckily, I am not the only one. Everywhere I look, I find people my age expressing how they don’t feel like they’ve got being an adult down to a science. I kind of long for the days of having a textbook to follow when going through classes in school. Now all you can do is keep walking the path you’re on and hope that you’re going the right way.




8. Pontificating aside, the graduation was a fun family event. The weather was rainy and windy. It held off when we all arrived, but by the time we walked outside, the wind was kicking up, and the rain had started falling. It’s a shock to the system to be standing outside on the last weekend of May with wind chills around 40. A sunny and warm outdoor graduation would have been better, but I’m just glad I was there at all. I didn’t get to see my nephew Liam’s graduation, and my niece Emma’s graduation was during COVID. I did manage to see it from outside the fence at the high school, but it wasn’t the same. I wish we could have had a family cookout after, like we did for my oldest niece, Kaleigh, but just being with a good chunk of family was a pleasure that I don’t get nearly as often as I wish I did. We got some photos before the rain really kicked up to remember the day.


9. Staring down 50 in 18 months, I think, has made my sentimental side take over a lot in my life. I find that there are a lot of achievements, celebrations, graduations, and such that give me mixed emotions. I am happy to see and be around family, but then I end up feeling a bit empty and bittersweet. It’s not anything they do. It is the sad reality that we don’t all get together like we used to. I miss the giant holidays at my grandparents' houses. I miss big cookouts, family reunions, and hangouts just because. As we all go down the roads of our own lives, sometimes they can take us further from each other, even though we might not physically be too far apart. Jobs take up hours, and schedules don’t match. Other obligations can make it so that only when events like achievements, celebrations, and graduations come around can the family find a way to be together. It’s bittersweet because there are only so many of those types of events. If I could, I would have family get-togethers every week until we got so sick of each other that we had to pause them to recharge. Sadly, that isn’t in the cards for me currently. All I can do is check my calendar to see what the next event is that might result in another big family gathering.


10. There was a high wind warning this weekend. It was on the day of my nephew’s graduation. It really picked up in the afternoon with winds gusting 40-50mph. Despite the terrible weather, I needed to head out to the store plus to get gas. I could feel how bad the wind was while driving. It felt like my car was being pushed side to side at times. At this point, it was only in the mid 40s with wind chills dipping near freezing, at the end of May. I stopped for gas and didn’t pay attention to the wind. When I opened my door, the wind took it. The door ended up smashing into a trash can and sending it toppling over. I picked it back up, but it made the person pumping gas next to me look worried. I don’t know if she thought I was mad about gas prices and just karate kicked the garbage over. I figured I’d leave it a mystery rather than explain to her about the wind. She probably wouldn’t have believed me, or freaked out, scared, and taken off.


11. It’s not every day that a meteor comes flying into the Earth’s atmosphere. It’s even rarer when it happens only an hour from where you live. This weekend, we had a meteor rumored to be about three feet in diameter explode through the sky around Boston. The sonic booms were captured by all sorts of cameras. Apparently, the sound could be heard anywhere from Montreal to Delaware. It happened around 2:30 pm, and I was inside, so I have no clue if we could hear it. Reports said it landed in Cape Cod Bay. Not sure if anyone is going to try to find it or not. Plus, there was a rare Blue Moon that same night. So to recap, on the same day in Massachusetts, there were gale-force winds, snow, a meteor, and a blue moon. I love my home.

Radar picking up the exploding meteor(WWLP)

12. My niece Kaleigh celebrated her 27th birthday this weekend. It’s amazing how fast time can go. I fully remember my sister Kate being pregnant with her and having me drive my beat-up old Ford F-150 down the bumpiest roads we could find to try to induce labor. I have vivid memories of moving all of our stuff into a new house with my stepfather, Serpa, on the day Kaleigh was born. He and I were the last to the hospital to meet Kaleigh. I was 21 and had orange-yellow hair, an eyebrow ring, and a hemp necklace. It was the dawning of the full-on quarter-life crisis. I remember those early months being a travel trio with Kate, Kaleigh, and the numerous people who thought she was my daughter. My sister’s reaction was always priceless. I bring these memories up because, for as much as I am not a fan of getting older myself, I can deal with aches and pains and grays because I know I got to spend so much quality time with my nieces and nephews. The bittersweet feeling I tend to get around their milestones as they grow mainly comes from knowing that with each passing day, our roads grow further apart. I don’t have regrets about not spending enough time with them as kids because I actually did. In a world where I have had way too many regrets to count, the time I spent with my nieces and nephews is not one of them. I tend to get very reflective in moments like these. It was a good week for family and a good week to be reflective.

Initial Impressions 2.0 Blog #122: Record Temperatures, Dogs In Golf Carts, Nice Parking, etc.

1. Well, that escalated quickly. We graduated from a typical Cape Cod spring, meaning low 50s with loads of clouds, fog, and drizzle. In a snap, it was record-high temperatures. We hit right around 80 degrees with low humidity and tons of sun. I had a great time going for a morning walk in the perfect weather. I enjoyed it so much that I created a short video of my walking route. Granted, the record highs didn’t last. We dropped to more normal, but still nice, temperatures in the low to mid 60s. It was perfect for mid to late May. Much like the first snow of the season, the first hot day of the season is fun, but as it becomes more common, it gets less appealing. To me, perfect weather is low humidity, partly cloudy, temperatures in the low to mid 70s. If I could bottle that, I would. Now it is the race to see how long it is until I have to put in my air conditioner. Last year, it was early, maybe the third week of June. I am hoping to hold off until after the 4th of July, as I typically do, but I can’t control the weather.


2. The sirens wailed as I walked to my car one morning this week. I was headed to work. I hear sirens almost daily, police and fire. I see the vehicles go by the house every so often. On this day, one fire truck flew by, then another. I had to wait as a third flew by. I wondered where they were headed. It didn’t take long to find out. After not even a minute of driving, I saw the huge plumes of black smoke billowing up from the trees. It wasn’t a forest fire, though. Near the end of the road I live on, I saw the fire trucks congregated. There it was. A shed, a boat that was probably 20-feet long, and a back fence were engulfed in flames. The next-door neighbor was dousing their side of the fence with a hose to try to hold off the fire. Cars slowed but didn’t stop. I wondered all day about the fate of that house. On the way home in the evening, I slowed down by that house. The fence looked like it survived. The shed had a massive hole in its roof. I saw the front half of the boat, but I don’t know if the back end was a loss. Thankfully, the house looked fine, and I can only assume all of the people were okay. Cheers to the Yarmouth Fire Department for getting there so fast and getting the fire out.


3. Aging is a weird thing. It’s like mentally I feel like I am still 18, but that was 30 years ago. Certain songs or foods can immediately bring my mind back to how I felt as a teenager. Even when I look in the mirror, I don’t feel like I have aged badly. Yes, I have more gray than I’d like, but I have a full head of hair. Between 40-53% of men in their 40s are going bald, or are bald. That jumps to 50-85% of men in their 50s. Granted, I could start going bald in 11 years and still be in my 50s, but I have good genes. Physically, though, is where the differences are piling up. It wasn’t when I turned 40 that things started changing. It was actually after turning 42 in 2019. I had a bad hip injury from running, and also battled Covid and lived through it like we all did. Those things all seemed to turn the tide in a way I haven’t been able to come back from. I do well for a few months and lose 10-15 pounds, but then my energy and willpower just get sapped, and I fall off. I think recognizing it is a benefit, though. Every new day, you can try again to get it right. Is that a stricter diet? Lowering my caffeine intake? Reducing my workload so I can go to the gym more? A little of all of them? I have no idea. All I know is that, going back to those good genes, I am likely going to be lucky enough to reach my 90s, as many in my family tree have. That means I have 40-something years left. I can either keep working hard and have more healthy years ahead. Or I can just give up and have decades of a downhill trend. The choice is mine.


4. The heat wave in May in New England broke in spectacular fashion. It was as hot as 88 degrees with a real feel of 101. I decided to make the most of it by going for a walk in the afternoon when I got out of work. I was on the bike trail. It was not as bad in the shade, not very humid. I saw in the sky the thunderclouds billowing above the trees. I knew it wasn’t long until the rains would arrive. I walked 3.5 miles, so it took me an hour. When I parked my car at the bike trail, my car’s thermometer read 84 degrees. When I got back an hour later, it was 74. Dropping 10 degrees in an hour is pretty wild. In fact, the longer I walked, the more I could actually feel the heat breaking. It took a couple of hours, but the heavy rain and a few thunderstorms arrived. It was the ultimate example of ‘if you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait 5 minutes.’ We went from a real feel of 101 one day to low temperatures dropping into the upper 40s the next night. It feels like it might be a wacky, unpredictable summer weather-wise.


5. I don’t know what to say. I guess wild animals trust me. That is my thought process after this week. I was out for a run when I was passing a golf course and noticed a pair of cute little chipmunks running and playing near an open gate. One was lagging behind, and I got the sense that it might end up coming around the corner of the gate when I was walking by. Instinctively, I grabbed my phone in the hopes of getting a photo of one of them. The curious chipmunk not only came out from the fence, but it literally walked right up and sniffed my sneakers. I was able to get a few seconds of video of this tiny chipmunk by my feet before it ran off with its friend. Now, couple this with the foxes last week that seemed all too comfortable with me hanging around. Then go back a couple of years to a little bunny that wandered out from the bushes at a beach and literally climbed on my shoe and tried to eat my laces. I’m not saying I can go sit under a tree, and birds are going to land on my shoulders like pets, but I’ve had more wild animals get close to me recently than I’d expect. Soon, I will have amassed an army of creatures. Too bad it’s all bunnies, chipmunks, and baby foxes.



6. One day each week, I either wait with my youngest niece, Sylvie, for the bus or go with her to get dropped off at school. I look forward to it every time. She is so sweet and kind and always looks to give me something of hers. I have been finding new ways to ‘forget’ and leave them behind. Usually, when she gets dropped off, I get out of the back of the van and move up front, so her mom doesn’t feel like she is a taxi driver. Sylvie has explained to me before how to close the sliding side door properly. You tug the handle once, and it automatically slides closed. As she was getting out, she did that, and I couldn’t stop the door. Only when there were a few inches to go did the door stop. Then it began setting off a beeping to warn you that the door was open. We had to drive to a parking spot so I could get the door closed once the automatic function was turned off. I laughed because I said Sylvie told me how to do it right, but obviously, I am old, and technology will now be my enemy, I guess.


7. My Fitbit has a few times it will buzz to let me know of achievements. They usually have to do with heart rate zones. It also buzzes when I hit 150 exercise minutes per week, or 10,000 steps in a day. Whenever I hit those milestones, it’s a good feeling that I am being active and healthy. The only problem is that Fitbit has a tendency to track steps using arm swinging motions as much as actual foot movement. This came through one day this week when I was sitting at my desk recording my podcast, and my Fitbit started buzzing. I looked and saw I had passed 10,000 steps. But how? I mean, I was pretty close to 10K anyway, so it wasn’t a major glitch like I magically got 10K steps while sitting. No, I think I was gesturing too demonstratively with my hands while recording, and the Fitbit took that as steps. Despite sitting still, I somehow kept adding steps. I guess now I know that if I’m close to 10K but don’t feel like going for a walk, and can just wiggle my arm a whole bunch and get there anyway.


8. I never know what interesting things I am going to see when out for a walk/run. At this point, there really isn’t anything that could shock me. For example, one day this week, I went walking to a little neighborhood located right on Bass River near me. It’s one of those semi-private neighborhoods, not quite gated, with a sign at the entrance with some fancy name to it. This neighborhood is very relaxed; the only vehicles driving through it tend to be those who live there. Those who do live there venture around the roads not in their cars or trucks, but many of them drive golf carts. It is pretty unique. I was walking through the neighborhood and saw a golf cart coming around a corner. It was driven by a girl who couldn’t have been more than eleven. Her passenger was an adorable golden retriever. Just a young girl, her dog, and a golf cart. I just smiled and thought it was par for the course as far as things I see on my walks. Yes, the pun was intended.

Like this, but even cuter

9. Sometimes the stereotype fits. I drove to the Three Sisters Lighthouses in Eastham. There is a small dirt parking lot that can only fit a handful of cars. I pull in. There is a car parked normally, and next to it, some jerk parked diagonally, taking up 2 spaces. When there are dozens of spots, and you park diagonally, you’re a jerk, but it’s not as egregious. When there are like 5 spots, and you do it, you’re an inconsiderate prick. I looked at the New York license plate. My first thought was ‘typical New Yorker.’ I know not all people from New York are pricks, but you do see a lot of them. This jackass wasn’t even at the lighthouses. I am pretty sure he parked there and walked the ¼ mile down to Nauset Light Beach so he wouldn’t have to pay. I got some photos and videos, and when walking back to my car, I saw this idiot and his equally stupid wife getting into the car. A guy had to wait for this moron to back out and leave before he could pull in. Of course, the smug jerk couldn’t even look at any of us watching him leave. It took all of my composure not to just yell at him. The person pulling in asked if I could believe that guy. Needing to vent my anger, I said the guy was a ‘f*cking prick.’ Then I saw his young son getting out of the truck. I quickly apologized for my language, but he was cool. We laughed, and I left. Moral of the story: Whether you’re from New York, Massachusetts, or anywhere, just don’t be a jerk. It’s really not that hard...for most people.


10. For 5 years, I had been running my Facebook business/fan page entirely dedicated to my podcast. I finally realized recently that I was selling myself short. I spend so much time creating that it’s basically a second full-time job. One that I get paid considerably less for currently, but I’m working on that. The fact that I was only promoting my podcast on that page when I also have books, blogs, videos, photos, and film projects, was definitely downplaying all of the hard work I do. This week, I chose to revamp that page from being only about my podcast to everything I do. Fittingly, I renamed it The World of Christopher Setterlund. My plan is to post several times a day there, featuring not only current things I’ve finished, but also shining a light on some of my archived projects. I have a tendency to finish something, share it a few times, and relegate it to a metaphorical box in the back of my closet. I need to promote older stuff much more. The fact that I literally have thousands of pieces of content in various forms that I can pull from means that my back catalog feels totally fresh again. This will be a fun new way to share all of my creative work.