Episode 3: Left on Shakedown Street

SPEAKER_03 0:00

In a world where everyone has a podcast comes the most courageous audio experience of a generation. One man sitting in a room by himself, talking into a foam circle about stuff he saw on social media. They said it couldn't be done. They said it shouldn't be done. But he did it anyway. When America needed a true hero, all we could find was Peter, the Drain Battery Society. Stream it today. Or don't.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

Can we all agree the first sign you're getting old is not the random pains, but the noise? What noise, you ask? The noise you make when you sit down. You know the one. And the one when you stand up. Oh, God, it hurts. When did every chair become a CrossFit exercise? Last week I injured myself putting on a sock, which probably doesn't surprise anybody listening. Thing is, I wasn't even bending over. And that's why we're here. Welcome to the Drain Battery Society podcast. Barely charged, fully opinionated. Hola, thanks for buying a ticket on the internet's version of the Titanic. I'm your host, Peter Conway, a nearly 60-year-old Navy veteran with a microphone and a very low tolerance for the way things are today. This is a show in which we address the shared challenges of modern advanced adulthood. As we have in the last few episodes, let's start this week with the battery check. I'm sitting at about 27%, and here's why. Last week I took off for a little getaway. There's a flurry of work that people do before they leave, so they can blissfully ignore their email for however many days they're gone. I didn't have a whole lot of work to do because I kind of worked myself right out of a job, which is a blessing and a curse at the same time. Right before I left, though, there was actual work to do. And the odd part is I couldn't believe how excited I was. Normally I just see work as a means to an end, right? I do this for you, you pay me, I go do fun things. Yeah and pay bills. But it was challenging to see how much I have forgotten about doing my job. Sadly, wasn't enough. I managed to get it all done and still leave on time. I'm not sadly about leaving. Anyway, now I'm back and day one was time to pay the piper. More than a hundred emails, employees thinking on their IT help desk. Corporate people with way too much time on their hands thinking of ways to get involved in my job. 200 applications to go through. It was an all-day evolution, and I'm thinking tomorrow's gonna be more of the same. The point is, I'm not sure I'm excited about my job anymore. I want to retire and go have fun somewhere else, anywhere else. I want to move to Portugal because I can. Everyone with any responsibility who's taken a vacation and come back, uh came back, uh knows that they should just stay on their email the entire vacation. Sure, time off is a benefit. What is not a benefit is coming back to five days of missed work plus today's stuff. That is what is draining my battery this week. Let me know what's draining yours. The email address is battery drain at drained batteriesociety.com. Makes sense, right? I'll keep your identity a secret, though I will require you to wear a mask to help me. Head over to the new website, drainbattery society.com, and let me know what you think. I think the tagline for this thing is going to be the website I mean is gonna be we'll get there eventually. I'm always open to suggestions. Clearly, I need them. Before we dive into the weeds, today's episode is brought to you by Underwhelming Growth Partners Financial Services. Underwhelming Growth Partners doesn't believe in chasing unrealistic returns. That's how people get excited. And frankly, the partners don't think that's healthy. Their experienced advisors specialize in portfolios that grow just enough to keep hope alive while never becoming interesting enough to brag about at family gatherings. Whether you're saving for retirement, a second retirement, or simply trying to recover financially from buying that boat you insisted was an investment, they can help you achieve financial progress that's technically measurable. Friends, comparison is the enemy of joy. Underwhelming growth partners is here to make sure you never have anything worth comparing. Underwhelming growth partners, your retirement is probably adequate. There are times okay, days that end in a why, that I feel like an old person who was around for the invention of the Model T, but in today's world, I'm trying to figure out electric vehicles. You know what I'm talking about? Technology has passed me by, and I'm not sure when that happened. I used to be the guy old people came to for help with things like that. Now I am the old guy. You remember being the first in your family to learn how to program the VCR? Like Johnny Carson would make a joke about the VCR clock blinking 12 o'clock, and your first thought was, not in my house, it doesn't, Johnny. But now my daughter asked me why my phone has 17 tabs open and why I'm yelling at the TV because Apple's hidden the search feature. Seriously, though, I used to teach people how to use technology. I helped convert my old radio station from AM to FM. I think you know how now how old I am. But anyway, now I spend my afternoons proving to my phone that I'm not a robot. I know I'm not the only one either. We went on a mini vacation, as I said, um recently. That was our annual trip to Midcoast, Maine. We went with good friends, a couple that we've known for several years. They're both very smart people, both over 50, which I think is a qualification to belong to my street gang of mobility scooter riders. He can predict a micro burst within two minutes. Meanwhile, I can't predict which pair of glasses I'm going to lose first today. His wife and I have that brother-sister relationship where we send each other memes of middle fingers and other stuff. The needling is constant and it's awesome. I think her husband and Beth have just learned to accept it, which I appreciate. We go back and forth while they smile and think silently that we are a lot. And they're right about her. I'm kidding. We love we love them, and they are super fun to travel with. I really, I'll rent them out to you and you'll see what I'm talking about. Anyway, we stay at the same place, and this year we used the senior citizen checklist and went midweek to avoid the traffic, the young kids, and weekend price spikes. And you know what? Laugh if you want, but it worked. The trip up and the trip back were blissfully traffic free, as much as that's possible in summer in Maine and New Hampshire. But you know why? It's because Drain Battery Society Universal Truth Number Four. Beat the traffic is now part of your planning, all the way down to avoiding something you want to see because it doesn't involve a right-hand turn. The first night we spent the afternoon at the pool and then went to a remarkable restaurant north of us. It was fantastic, and we'll talk about it shortly. My friend, by the way, is also a pilot, and he's very much attuned to the weather. So while I was making fun of his short wife not being able to stand with her head above water in the waiting pool, he was reviewing cloud and wind patterns and reporting the intermittent rain to within a minute or two. I think it was fun for him, but believe me when I tell you, we had the attention of all the other tourists within earshot, and by we, I mean he. The second day was beautiful, right up until the micro burst happened, which my friend called right on time. Five minutes before it happened, we were packed up and making our way to the main building to rest and get ready for dinner at five. So late, but it was the first reservation we could get. I happened to sleep through a storm that knocked trees and signs down, and no kidding, ripped a small cruise ship off its mooring a few towns over. I could hardly believe it. I saw it on the news and I just I was in awe that I slept through it. I don't sleep through anything. So, anyway, we get in the car and we head to our reservation. There were closed roads all over the place. This is a pretty rural area we're talking about, and the trees are like right up on the road. So, you know, it really could have been a lot worse. Anyway, Beth and I are in the back, my friend's driving, and my sister from another mistress in the passenger seat. He plugs in the address into the nav quicker than anyone over 50 should be able to, and he gets a great playlist going. So we're cruising up the road, I'm singing, mostly in my head, and we're discussing the relative merits of the little river band when The Grateful Dead come on. Jen's trying to help navigate, and she looks at the screen and yells out, Oh, it's coming right up, right here. Take a left on Shakedown Street. She thought the name of the song was the name of the road we needed. That story, friends, is now on her permanent record. We laughed about it all the way through dinner. She claimed she got confused with all the information on the display screen. I was in the backseat trying not to wet my pants. I may have failed. I don't know. But none of us question the screen, do we? Forty years ago, if we had GPS or nav, if it told us to drive into the Atlantic Ocean, we'd think the map had serious problems. Today, though, we blindly follow the map and do everything we can to make GPS happy when it scolds us for not taking a right where it told us to. We just assume it knows something we don't. If you've ever been questioned by a passenger about why you're going a certain way when you're driving, and the answer is because you trust Google Maps, you know exactly what I'm talking about. So we fast forward a few days to my niece's birthday party at my brother-in-law's and sister's house. I had no idea who was coming, but I suspected it would be the usual suspects. I wasn't terribly wrong. My niece had some of her friends there, which kind of made it weird to not be the youngest hippist dude there. I mean, my sister and brother-in-law both are younger than I am, and so is Beth, but it wasn't gonna happen anyway, but I do want to point out that using the word hip uh automatically disqualifies you from being one of the cool kids. I I really think that, you know, if you're gonna use the word hip in a sentence at this age, it should come with the word replacement shortly after it. Anyway, I tried to sit there silently amongst the cool kids and and just be thought of as Funkel Pete, like the cool aloof dude. I am reasonably sure I failed. Uh, and here's why. Around me uh were my almost 95-year-old grandmother, who can't hear much anymore, but doesn't let that stop her from doing anything. My almost 75-year-old mother was out there only a few weeks after open heart surgery, and she's there with her younger sister, my 73-year-old aunt, at least I think she's 73. So the youngins went inside to have a conversation, probably about cool things. People my age were inside telling what seemed to be fun stories based on what I could see of the conversation. Outside, we were not talking fantasy baseball or even the Westminster Dog Show. I was cornered on a porch sectional, mired in conversations about the pros and cons of extra pairs of glasses, hearing aids, not bending over, and prescription sunglasses. Friends, this was a twenty-sixth birthday party. I expected more. I swear my mother and my aunt were seriously debating the merits of slip-on sketchers when I added that I had a pair of Olikai slippers on which the heel actually folds down. You'd have thought I invented the color blue. Sure, there were hints of youth sprinkled around at this party. The gluten-free pasta salad and cake were but two. There were something like seven guys there named Evan. I started thinking about a nap. It was loud, it was raining, and we had to get going. There was no partying going on over this five-day stretch, I want to be clear. There was actual stretching. Lots of club soda, sparkling water, fancy non-alcoholic drinks that cost just as much, if not more, than the fully leaded versions would. That's the kind of stuff that went on over this five-day stretch. A good afternoon was measured by how many sailboats we're gonna float by and by how many times some stranger would approach me and ask if I wanted to go out for a sail on a massive catamaran. The number was zero, by the way. That one's always zero. The overall measure of a good trip, though, is hoping we time our departure right and hit no traffic. For the record, it was said more than once that next year we're gonna add one more night to the trip and absolutely leaving midweek and returning on a Friday. Hear me now, believe me later. Add the extra day and travel midweek. One not so fun part of technology is going to a restaurant. Instead of being able to focus on taking a break from your phone for an hour and a half, you're told the food and the drinks are accessed through the QR code on a flimsy plastic sheet on the table. They no longer hand you a menu, they hand you homework. My car has so many sensors and bells and whistles now. I I feel like I'm basically being judged by an Xbox. I remember when electric dashboards, sorry, electronic dashboards came out, and we heard our parents voice their concern that if something went wrong, the whole dashboard had to be sent in. You didn't bring the car to the garage, you sent it in. Like you had to put stamps on it. I distinctly remember my mother saying, Oh well, at least it makes it harder for the crooks to roll back the odometer. Seriously. My TV constantly needs updates. It tells me I can still enjoy programming while it updates, but the update screen stays up on top of the TV show, and after the update completes, I have to solve an escape room just to catch Ginger Z doing the weather. It's all too much. Somewhere between GPS that judges you and turns you into a Jeeple pleaser, which is well, that's my word for people that want to just please the GPS and do whatever it says. Jeeple pleaser, QR code menus, social media algorithms. I am living, drain battery society universal truth number 28. With each passing day, I become more technologically incompetent. I quietly, stealthily stopped being the guy who knew how everything worked, and somehow became the guy who has to ask his niece how to turn the captions off because I want to watch TV, not read it. Let's be honest, you were looking for an excuse to walk away. This is it, but we'll be right back.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

You might have noticed your toaster needs a firmware update. When you get out to the car, you find out the door lock is currently downloading a security patch. And back inside, your refrigerator just locked you out because you didn't read the new terms of service. Isn't the future grand? You paid us thousands of dollars to turn your home into an annoying IT department, and we succeeded. Neonist, connect everything, control nothing.

SPEAKER_00 16:19

Nova is black charcoal toothpaste that turns your mouth into a terrifying gothic boiled body brush. Does it whiten teeth better than a $2 tooth from the grocery store? Absolutely not. But it does ruin your enamel and it looks incredibly edgy on your TikTok feed. And that's the real measure of dental health.

SPEAKER_02 16:42

Nova toothpaste, found exclusively in the lawn care section of Dollar Stores Everywhere. Is it your birthday? Consider this your present. We're back from the break. We turn now to the weekly feature I call Nobody Needed This, the segment in which we honor the brilliant minds who looked around at the state of the world and said, you know what this country really needs? And then crickets. Today's featured product brings two worlds unnecessarily together at long last. You've probably guessed it already, but of course, I'm talking about AI and sliced bread. In a contribution to the artificial intelligence craze, welcome the William Sonoma Revolution Instaglow R180 Connect Plus Toaster. Jeez, forget the AI. With that name, I feel like I'm calling an NFL play in the huddle.

SPEAKER_03 17:36

I am Tom Brady.

SPEAKER_02 17:38

Woo! I wish. William Sonoma is not the only company foisting this idea onto society. Breville and Revolution Cooking are joining in too, hoping AI bread browning isn't a bridge too far for the public. Low budget Timu stepcousin Teen Dow has also built an AI toaster whose quality appears to match its $79.99 price. For $450, though, William Sonoma and Revolution will provide you with preferred browning levels in half the time of standard toasters for a fraction of the energy. It toasts more than 40 types of bread, including gluten-free bread. You know, because regular toasters see gluten-free bread and flat out say no. William Sonoma uses a smart toasting algorithm with a temperature sensor and three toasting modes, fresh, frozen, and reheat, which is actually amazing because all my toaster will do is use the bread, bread, and bread modes. At this point, I'm convinced appliance makers have all hired the same consultant who has exactly two things on his mind and two things only touch screens and gluten-free bread, and he's gonna make it happen if it kills him. Your new William Sonoma toaster comes with an adjustable touchscreen that displays time, weather, and up to 24 photos, which is helpful. When I make toast at six in the morning, I pay no attention to hunger. All I can think about is how nice it would be to see my aunt Tilly, and then she appears on my toast like Jesus does in Mexico. But I digress. This toaster also lifts and lowers your bread. For the record, friends, toasters have been doing that since the Eisenhower administration. For the same $450, the Revolution Cooking R180 Connect Plus Smart Toaster only toasts 38 bread types at seven brownless lewnness levels. I I feel cheated somehow. There is, however, the photo album time, date, and weather. Because at breakfast I always wonder if I should wear a jacket, and then instinctually I ask my toaster. I have long wished for an appliance to do everything my phone does at 15 times the size and half the cost. If only the pants pockets manufacturers would get on board with this, I could be carrying this bad boy to the movies. Imagine the announcement before this film starts. They show the movie, let's all go to the packy, and then say, please silence your phone and dim your toaster. I'm not even going to get into the Teen Dow toaster. I would imagine it comes with a VHS tutorial and a complimentary house fire, but that's just me. And and what happens when your toaster goes into update mode while it's cooking your breakfast? Seriously, friends, we are moving ever closer to a Bluetooth potato. Mark my words. Congratulations though to William Sonoma, Revolution Cooking, and Teen Dow, leaders of the AI Toaster Movement and recipients of this week's Drain Battery Society Solution Seeking a Problem Award. Because somewhere along the way, we stopped asking whether we should make something smarter and forgot to ask whether toast was ever the problem in the first place. As part of my court-mandated community service, and I'm kidding, if you think I'm actually being serious, I want to do you a favor and send you to northern New England armed with some travel knowledge. As evidenced by the cloud of profanity still floating over Portland and the York tolls, 99.9% of Massachusetts residents pack up the black Yukon or the Benz and head to Maine every summer, one month out of the fall to Leaf Peep, and to New Hampshire every weekend after the snowfalls to ski. Whenever you decide to brave it, get yourself up to Midcoast Maine. That's Rockland, Rockport, Camden, Lincolnville, and Belfast. You can go further, and it gets just as, if not more, beautiful, but my recommendation ends in Belfast this week. On our way back from Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor, Maine, a few years ago, we were hungry and we were looking to get off the road for a bit. So we drove down Maine. Main Street in Belfast and found Delvino's Grill and Pasta House. They were open for lunch, and even though it was long past lunch, uh we decided to try it. We were not disappointed and swore if we were ever up that way again, which of course we would be, we'd go back. And we'd been raving about it to the friends we recently traveled with, and we were silently hoping that our great experience wasn't a one-off. It was not. They're not on resi or open table, so you have to call or text for a reservation, which I thought was pretty cool. Um it's a tiny hole in the wallish place with as much ambiance as you could ever hope for. The drinks, alcoholic and non-alcoholic alike, were uh perfect. I mean, the non-alcoholics, apparently the the alcoholic drinks were perfect as well. Um they brought bread and oil, and we ordered the burrata with the pesto and bruschetta, bruschetta, I can't remember, uh, for the table. The table was, by the way, 100% over 50 years of age. So we decided each couple would split the entree and salad. The only thing missing was the four o'clock reservation and sandals with black socks pulled halfway up to our knees. And by hour, I mean, you know, probably mine. My significant other and I got the meat lasagna and our friends got the chicken parm. Both dishes got the sit-up straight with eyes wide open reaction because they were so good. Like just one bite. And you're like, oh, the service was fantastic. And Del Vino's uh didn't make fools of us for overpromising a great meal and a great time to our friends. In fact, we went somewhere fancy the next night. That's Shakedown, uh left on Shakedown Street there uh that night. Uh all we could talk about that night was stopping back to Del Vino's for dessert just to get a fix. When your night ends with it was good, but it was no Del Vino's, you know you did something right. And and since a few times, it's been like Del Vino's really ought to open up a restaurant down this way so we could go, like a little satellite office. I can't argue, I'm actually thinking about sending an email. Not even angry. Uh, you know, I I want to be like, uh man, I just want to help you guys and myself. Anyway, uh speaking of that dessert, we got two for the table: a chocolate mousse topped with roasted coconut and a Meyer Lemon blueberry cake. Neither lasted long. As it would happen, our server's mother made the desserts and the lasagna. So if you find your way into Belfast, Maine, about 25 minutes north of Camden, make sure you leave room for something from the menu at Delvino's. Five stars from each of us, so that's 20 stars. Hold on. Yep, 20 stars. Let it be known that I math hard. That is this week's Drain Battery Society recharge recommendation. Try it now. Thank me later. I spend a lot of time trying to understand social media. I see on Instagram a lot of ChatGPT prompts, some of them interesting and some of them look like a colossal waste of time. But I saw one recently that said, if you've been using ChatGPT for a while, ask it to write a dear me letter. So at first I ignored it, but the other day I went back and reread it as I was cleaning out useless one-off prompts like educate me about Icelandic monkey migratory patterns. Anyway, uh it seemed to resonate for this group, so I thought I would read it to you instead of listener email this week. Um it might apply to both of you listeners right now. Here it is. Dear me, you've spent a lot of your life carrying responsibility for work, for expectations, for other people, for keeping things moving even when you were exhausted. You became good at functioning, producing, solving, adapting. So good, in fact, that people probably assume it comes easily to you. It doesn't. There are days you feel overlooked, misunderstood, or stuck in a version of yourself you outgrew years ago. Days where frustration comes out sharper than intended, days where you wonder whether anyone notices how hard you're trying to hold everything together while also trying to become someone better. But they don't see the full story. They don't see the part of you that still wants connection, peace, creativity, laughter, adventure, and meaning. The part that still gets excited about learning new things, about riding further, building a life that actually feels like yours instead of one you simply p manage. You are not behind, and you are not finished. You are not trapped in the worst moments of yourself. Growing at this stage of life is strange because it rarely looks dramatic. It looks like choosing patience instead of escalation, taking the ride instead of staying inside, reaching out instead of isolating, letting yourself enjoy things without guilt, and learning that strength is not the same as hardness. You do not need to become a completely different person to have a better life. You just need to stop abandoning the parts of yourself that are still alive and trying to speak. There is still time for new friends, still time for better mornings, still time to feel proud of your body again, still time to laugh harder, still time to build something meaningful, still time to be softer without becoming weak. And maybe most importantly, you are allowed to want more from life than survival and obligation. Keep going, keep rebuilding, keep becoming. The future version of you is already grateful you didn't quit on them. And that's it. I hope this helps someone because next week we're talking about bunions. That's all for this week. I hope to produce a recurring 30-minute episode called Things Nobody Admits, starting soon. You know, everybody has that one thing that they wouldn't tell another soul. Well, I am Peter. I'm your friend, and we're all in this together. So I promise you are not the only one, and you don't even have to keep it clean. Just one of the benefits of having an adult-oriented podcast. Send it on in to me at mailbag at drainbatteriesociety.com. If I use your submission, I'll send you some Drain Battery Society merch when I get some. You'll see some of the more mundane stuff up on the website when I start stocking up, but contributors are getting highly coveted hard-to-comey society items. It's kind of like a grab bag, but higher quality. Let's be honest, free is the real draw here. Also, if you're interested in becoming a recurring contributor on the show, let me know at hello at drainbatteriesociety.com, or I suppose you can go with mailbag. If you've been saying out loud for the last half hour, I'm better than this guy. You might be right. And honestly, I'd like to find out too. We can do a demo show and see if the chemistry's there and just put the rest together as we go. The majestic and award adjacent throat vibrations you heard today belong to the man who challenged his smart thermostat to an honest to God duel, Sean Q. Delaney. And your friend and mine, Aaron M, is still trying to get the taste of Nova toothpaste out of her mouth. If you want to voice some parody spots, drop-ins, or promos, shoot me an email. The address again is hello at drainbatteriesociety.com. Theme music this week was brought to you by the National Association of People Who Just Sat Down. It's always a long day. Our feet hurt, our backs hurt, and yet you somehow need the moment of our greatest pain to do something for you. Guess what, Chuck? It ain't happening. We're in for the night. The National Association of People Who Just Sat Down. Don't ask us to get up again. I'm not too proud to ask for help, so I want to ask you if you uh would ask a friend to subscribe or download the podcast, tell people on social media how I drooled my way through the podcast and a bowl of cream of wheat, but despite that, they should still listen. In the meantime, three final things. Get off my lawn, keep your battery between 20 and 80%, and keep your expectations low. Thanks for listening to the Drain Battery Society. Barely charged, fully opinionated.