The Life of Riley is a weekly post that details my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 84)

Figured out who the girl was who died in the house we saw a couple of weeks back. Got creeped out when we found pictures of her bloody clothes and toe tag on the web. Went to look at some houses. Watched a decent movie, and I read a snarky book on business until bed.

Monday (Day 85)

Noticed that someone from Alaska visited my site. I threw my arms up in the air and yelled “ALASKA!” as if I had won something. Even though no one was around, I felt stupid about it. Got my writing for Sunday through Thursday done. Discovered a bug in my site that caused SQL errors when site searches included an apostrophe. Tracked it down to an outdated version of Ultimate Tag Warrior and resolved it. During the investigation, I realized that I was missing both my Related posts and Share This additions. I Checked several backups and couldn’t find the missing code. I must’ve messed up the code during my recent template change and then backed up the bad code. Added the code back manually and made some fixes that involved line height and other minor details.

Tuesday (Day 86)

Prepped Friday’s post. Looked into more affiliate programs. Tweaked some minor issues with the site that were not lining up correctly.

Wednesday (Day 87)

Went to the beach for the day and then went out to a nice dinner. On the way out of the restaurant, we swore we heard Frank Sinatra singing “I’d even punch out Mr. T for you”. Google says we did. It turns out that Sinatra ad libbed the line in his 1984 recording of the song “Until the Real Thing Comes Along”. Went to the beach and listened to Junior Brown on my phone while watching the moon rise. The quality was surprisingly good on the tiny speakers, but drained the battery pretty quickly.

Thursday (Day 88)

Drove down the Cape on Route 28. Stopped at South Cape Beach, which offers a pretty good view of Martha’s Vineyard. Noticed that the sand on The Cape wasn’t nearly as fine as Nantasket’s, but the water seemed clearer. Picked sneakers for #1GF!’s brother in West Yarmouth because they were impossible to find close to home.

Stopped at the Pancake man in South Yarmouth for lunch. The sign was a lot more fun than the lunch. I had apple pancakes wrapped around sausages and topped with spiced apples. It sounded like pigs in a blanket on crack, but ended up being worse than anything I’ve seen served at Denny’s. Next door is our favorite taffy place where we spent about $9 on over a pound of taffy. This is what happens every time: I jump out and get the bag from the girl and run ahead of #1GF! filling the bag with all the good flavors before she can fill it with flavors like mint and cinnamon. The bag is full before I hit the three quarter mark leaving no room for the “gum you swallow” flavors. I didn’t buy any pina colada, and really stocked up on the fluffernutters as I warned myself to do in a previous post.

We walked around Chatham and I tried to figure out why I thought that all the people looked like they were wealthy. I couldn’t figure out if it was their clothes, their height, or their angular faces. While trying to resolve that question I did figure out what makes Cape stores seem so Capey: If you took down the signs, you’d never be able to tell any of the stores from a typical neighborhood house. Stopped into The Caped Cod Record Store and went through half of the used inventory before giving up. It was hot enough that I was sweating and the records were made for 50 year olds with a taste for thirty year old easy listening favorites. The prices ranged from $3 to $16, and I probably won’t go back until I hit 55 and really start loving Carly Simon.

From there, we drove all the way to Provincetown. Provincetown looked like it was bustling, but the streets were narrow and crowded, so we didn’t bother stopping. Everyone knows that that Provincetown is gay friendly, but there were more rainbow flags and shirtless, hairless, muscular dudes there than I’ve ever seen in one place. Once we got out of the crowds, we stopped at a beach for a little bit before heading back. If we stayed a few hours, we could’ve watched the sunset over the water (which is a rare thing on the East coast), but we opted to eat some taffy and get a jump on the two and a half hour ride back.

When we hit Hyannis, we accidentally stopped in to Spinnaker records, who looked like they’ve boosted their inventory a bit. I went through their used inventory in about an hour while #1GF! checked out some of the other stores. During that time, I had to listen to a guy wandering around singing partial classic rock songs into his cell phone as if I was going to turn around and offer him a couple of bucks for being so entertaining. I only found one CD, and I was as interested in it as I was listening to the singing guy, so I threw it back and we headed home. We got home at around 9PM.

Friday (Day 89)

Got up and cleaned the bathroom. Went out to see some practically haunted houses with our broker. Made a little map to aid the people who were coming down to the beach on Saturday. Ate lunch. Went to Walmart. Did the food shopping. And those were the highlights.

Saturday (Day 90)

Got up and made 24 sandwiches while #1GF! loaded the cooler with root beer, coke, water, and lemonade, 24 bags of chips, apples and cookies in case we ran across a small army who was starving to death. We got to the beach at 8:30 AM and I rearranged the blanket chairs and umbrella about 50 times while waiting for the first people to show up. After a while, I just started doing handstands to make #1GF! laugh.

In total, we had fourteen people show up, and it was a really good time. If you bagged, I hope you make it down next time. We played a few games of Kubb, I lost a frisbee by testing the claim on it that read “DOES NOT FLOAT”, and we built a giant wall to hold back an angry and encroaching tide.

What I learned

• I should invite people down to the beach more often.
• Fun signs do not necessarily indicate good food.
• Making money on the web is discouraging.
• I still get excited by traffic that comes from new places.
• A pound of cheese, a pound of ham, a half pound of salami, and three loaves of bread will make 24 sandwiches.
• They sell chips in 24 packs and bread in three loaf packs. I had no idea.
• People think that other people would call grape jelly their favorite, but themselves tend to prefer strawberry or raspberry, if given the choice. This means that people think you are right to make more grape jelly PBJ’s, but don’t actually want to eat them. There is some sort of Grape Conspiracy going on and someone needs to get to the bottom of it.
• Building sand walls to hold back the tide can work if you keep plugging away at it. I hope that’s a metaphor for something.
• Give three middle aged guys a frisbee and they’ll act 20 years younger, but for a shorter time.
• If you play Kubb on the beach, old men will congregate. At least one will suggest making Kubb sets as a business.

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Posted in Happy, Leisure