Category: Holidays

October Recap

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10/01 (Sun) – Picked up some mums for $6 each at Meijer. Only got two this year – orange and “purple”, which really ended up being more of a magenta color. Between my neglect, the squirrels, and the cold weather, they didn’t do well this year. I think next year I will get one orange one and leave it at that.

Later in the day I added a new bird to my life list – a Belted Kingfisher!

10/02 (Mon) – Had a very unpleasant experience at Dollar Tree where the cashier shoveled some candy into her mouth, practically licking her palm, right before fingering my merchandise. Gross!

10/03 (Tue) – Got freaked out by the cans of Wookie’s wet food I had recently purchased. Luckily it was just a weather related thing that had made the fat rise to the top and congeal and it wasn’t spoiled. I did end up exchanging the unopened cans with new ones though.

10/04 (Wed) – Decorated for Halloween inside

10/07 (Sat) – Bought a 50 lb bag of black oil sunflower seeds at Menards and set up a hanging platform feeder in the hopes to draw in birds. The squirrels have been relentless trying to get into it, but it’s also attracted sparrows and house finches, as well as two woodpeckers thus far. The dark-eyed juncos won’t go inside it, but they do hop around underneath looking for scraps.

Had to end our 30 day streak of not needing to run the HVAC at all and turn on the heat. It was good while it lasted!

10/08 (Sun) – Finally saw warblers at the arboretum!

10/10 (Tue) – Was washing my hands in the kitchen sink when I spotted a red-tailed hawk in the tree right behind our house. For a split second I thought it was an owl, but it was exciting nonetheless. Luckily I’ve been keeping my camera on the dining room table so I was able to quickly grab it and take a ton of shots before it flew off. Our new patio door is so nice and clear. I never would have been able to get good shots through the old one.

10/12 (Thu) – Picked up a new delicious dip from Costco – Buffalo Style Chicken by Good Foods.

10/13 (Fri) – Tried McDonald’s new limited time sweet & spicy jam. It’s delicious! It’s just flavored corn syrup, though, so I probably won’t get it again anytime soon.

10/14 (Sat) – Went to Trader Joe’s for the first time in quite awhile and went a bit crazy. We’re really loving sautéing peppers with cubed potatoes for breakfast, amongst other things.

10/17 (Wed) – Great horned owls in the backyard.

10/22 (Sun) – Toured 8 Halloween decorated homes in Carol Stream. We decided to forgo the Gallery of Ghoulish Homes Tour in St. Charles this year. It’s a lot of driving that we were just not up to, especially with how much energy we expend during the day hiking forest preserves.

10/25 (Wed) – The neighbor in the building perpendicular to ours finally turned off his patio light for the first time in weeks. It is so bright at night and since I’ve yet to choose a blackout shade for our new windows, the drapes I have up were not stopping it from making the room rather bright. My sleep seems to be improved since he turned it off.

Also found out Bibibop will soon be opening a location way closer to our home than the one we go to in Oak Brook. Yay!

10/28 (Sat) – Finally saw a Great Horned Owl thanks to a new friend I made who frequents many of the same spots we do. She was kind enough to meet up with us at a local forest preserve and show us where it and its mate like to roost.

10/29 (Sun) – Jolted awake at 12:30 am by someone popping off fireworks. Why are people so inconsiderate?!? Lately if I wake up in the middle of the night I cannot go back to sleep easily. I was up for an hour and a half after that. Thanks, shitty neighbor.

10/31 (Tue) – Got a group of 10 trick-or-treaters at 4:30 pm and not a single kid after that. Joe had run to Target on his way home from work to buy another bag of candy that we never ended up needing. We later returned it and learned they have to throw all returned candy in the trash, so we won’t get freaked out next year and if for some crazy reason we run out of candy we’ll just turn off the light. The kids were really psyched about the microwave popcorn we gave out with the candy. One kid exclaimed “yay, movie night!” and it was adorable.

(Costco sells their Kirkland brand popcorn for $15 and you get 44 bags. It’s a steal, and way more popcorn than we can ever eat before it expires.)

Enjoyed the following movies and series in October:

Meg 2: The Trench – I hadn’t heard good things about this movie, but I’ll watch anything with Jason Statham in it. Well, I’m glad I did because this was so funny! I’m not sure if it was meant to be, but you couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of the plot.

Spree – Kurt Kunkle is a rideshare driver who has figured out a deadly plan to go viral. Kept our attention and had some good laughs too.

Sprung – Not sure how I missed hearing about this comedy, but I’m liking it. Stars the two actors who played the parents in Raising Hope and has that kind of humor.

Totally Killer – Back To The Future meets horror comedy. Yes please!

Kath & Kim – A New Zealand based sitcom that should have had more seasons. “Look at me, look at me, look.at.me”.

Haunted Mansion (2023) – This updated version was done quite well. I prefer it to the Eddie Murphy one.

Deadstream – I plan to watch this every spooky season. A YouTuber decides to spend a night alone in an abandoned house that’s said to be haunted and live stream it. He has cameras in other rooms as well and interacts with his viewers as things go down. It was both scary and funny. There were jump-scares, one of which made us scream, and scenes so ridiculous we were in tears.

Strays – This movie, along with Barbie and Deadstream, all came in at the library at the same time. I assumed Barbie would be the breakout star, but it was the worst (although still enjoyable), and this was the funniest. I’m usually not a fan of the CGI talking dog schtick, but here it just works. It’s vulgar and not meant for kids, and people who get offended by cursing and poop jokes won’t like it, but I thought it was fun and plan to watch it again.

The Fall of the House of Usher – If you liked The Haunting of Hill House or The Haunting of Bly Manor, you’ll love this since they’re all created by Mike Flanagan and star many of the same actors.

Slotherhouse – This is labeled a horror comedy but it’s less horror than it is comedy. It is hilarious because of its ridiculousness. A killer sloth that can drive a car and has a social media account? Ok! Definitely watching this one again.

April 2023 Recap

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Recently tried Zevia again. We got a black cherry flavor and Dr. Zevia. Neither are very good. I wish I liked it more. I drink water 99% of the time but crave soda occasionally. (Still sad that Culver’s went and switched from Pepsi to Coke).

Tried Chick-fil-A’s new watermelon mint lemonade which was ok but not great. I really miss the peach tea lemonade they used to have years ago. I will never get over them taking it away from me.

Decorated the fireplace mantel for Easter with some faux flowers I found in the garage that I hadn’t used in years, plus a new ceramic bunny I found at JoAnn’s. Would have liked two, but it was literally the last one left and they weren’t expecting any more.

My mom invited us over for Easter but I ended up cancelling two days before because I was having the weird nerve pains all over my body again. It lasted several days but eventually went away. Ironically, I ended hearing from both her and my brother Easter evening because their landline stopped working (they use Facebook Messenger to communicate since no one in the house has a cellphone). I spent the next week getting the run-around from AT&T just to locate the right department to issue a repair ticket so they were without phone service for 8 days.

Bought a new camera (more on that in a separate post).

Found my old pedometer and figured it was time to chuck that thing in the trash. My Apple Watch is all I need to track my steps and I love it.

Organized my not-so-much junk drawer because once in awhile it needs to be redone. It’s always pretty organized, but there was stuff in there that belonged either somewhere else or in the trash.

Decluttered the garage and tried to see if any of my friends wanted the stuff I would like to get rid of, but didn’t get any takers. I am not sure what to do with stuff. I don’t enjoy listing things for sale because people are so freaking annoying to deal with, but I also don’t like donating to Goodwill or Savers anymore now that they’ve raised their prices to take advantage of people. I would feel better if I could give to someone in need directly. So right now all the stuff is sitting in boxes in the garage. Sigh.

Heard they brought back an old school Kool-Aid flavor called Sharkleberry Fin and decided to try it.

I’ve never been a fan of Kool-Aid, so it’s no surprise I wasn’t impressed.

Started researching window replacement companies because ours needs to be replaced.

Spotted a sharp-shinned hawk hanging out in a puddle in the street in front of my neighbors house.

Fortunately I was able to run downstairs to grab my new camera to get this shot. The zoom is 150mm which is the max on the lens that came with the camera, plus I was behind a dirty window, but I still feel fortunate to have gotten a photo at all.

Decided against participating in Record Store Day this year even though Show by The Cure was available. For one, it’s a picture disc which I hate. I want a nice jacket, not one with a hole in it! Secondly, it would have been $40. I’m starting to question why I’ve continue to collect Cure vinyl at all. It’s not the same as the 90’s where you could find a used copy for a few bucks. Lately the choices seem to be rare used stuff that’s over $100 or new reissues that are $30-$40. Playing vinyl isn’t exactly convenient, either since only so many songs fit on each side. Longer albums tend to be double vinyl so you have to get up four times just to listen to an album. Besides, what’s going to happen to all this stuff when I’m dead? I dunno, I just feel like I should put that money toward something I’ll get more bang for my buck with, so to speak, like camera equipment. I really want a bigger telephoto lens for my new camera, for instance. I’d use it quite often during the warm months.

We planted some zinnia seeds in an egg carton and small pot so we could get them going a little earlier this year. I love zinnias, but they take forever to bloom and I’m impatient.

NYE & New Years Day

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As usual, New Years Eve was super chill. We split two small specialty pizzas we picked up from Aldi and watched Glass Onion on Netflix. I liked it just as much as Knives Out, and rated them both 8/10.

The pizzas weren’t great, although I liked the goat cheese on the one labeled Caprino Verde (the other was called Buffalo Mozzarella and we mistakenly were expecting it to have buffalo sauce on it).

We were both in bed by 10ish but I didn’t actually fall asleep until 1 am partially because I wasn’t tired, but also because people were setting off fireworks from midnight until 1.

New Year’s Day we went over to K’s house to celebrate Christmas and my birthday. We stopped and picked up some munchkins from Dunkin on the way there and arrived around 11 am.

She got me so many awesome things, including a heating pad that can be snapped together to form a pouch for your feet. I love it!

She also got me a keychain that says “Guess Who’s Got Anxiety?” (haha), a pair of socks with flames on it because I’m always telling her to set it on fire when she doesn’t like something, some soft socks with reindeer on them, a Bath & Body Works gift card, and a few things from my wish list – a pair of slippers, a bluetooth remote for my phone (I intend to use it for TikTok scrolling), and the recently released Robert Smith Funko Pop. My friend also gave Wookie a Chewbacca dog toy “from” her dog, and Joe a Dunkin gift card.

I also bought her “dog person” mug I found at Target the day before, which she loved. I loved it too, so much so that I went back to Target yesterday and got myself one.

My gifts to her:

A pair of socks with dog bones on it, a eyeglass holder for her nightstand (which is just like one I got a few months ago and love – luckily when she looked at the listing she mentioned which pattern she liked), a box of mug cakes, a single serve blender, and a pan of cherry pie bars which I had made the day before. I joked that I’m her sugar dealer. I was worried whether she’d like the blender, but luckily she loved it, and the color I picked out too. Yay!

I made sure to have Joe take some photo of K & I together since we don’t have any after all these years and still need to look through them. I hate pictures of myself, but I wanted to have some of us together since she’s like a sister to me.

We ordered lunch from a local Thai place and shared a Crumbl cookie for dessert. (She had given me the coupon she got for her birthday so I picked out one on Saturday called Galaxy Brownie which was pretty good).

It was a nice day, other than Wookie constantly pestering us to leave. She was a real pain on this visit in general. First off, the second she came through the door she immediately starting eating my friend’s dog’s food which she’s never done before. She acts like we starve her even though I’m feeding her the recommended amount of food daily. She also peed on the floor right in front of us, and then pooped down the hallway despite us making sure she went to the bathroom before we left and Joe taking her out frequently. Luckily my friend is understanding as her dog often goes where he isn’t supposed to, as do many of the dogs she looks after when she dog sits, but it was still embarrassing.

Usually Wookie will just chill by us but this visit she kept going to the door and whining. She really didn’t want to be there to the point I’m not sure I’d bring her with us the next time we visit unless it’s nice weather and we’re outside in the yard. She still gets restless, but it’s not as bad.

We ended up leaving around 3:30 so we got home just as it was getting dark outside. We watched Road Trip for the umpteenth time since we had been discussing it with my friend, plus we wanted to destress and not have to pay close attention to anything.

Christmas

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Christmas Day was a relaxing quiet one. We had opened the majority of our gifts the day before, but after breakfast we opened the remaining ones.

Joe got me a non-picture disc vinyl copy of Seventeen Seconds by The Cure, a paper cutter from my wish list, a phone & watch charging stand for my nightstand, and of course, the Apple Watch.

He also got me a pair of earbuds (same type, different color than the ones I got him below) because he thought they would be great with my new Apple Watch (since you can only listen to music and podcasts directly from the watch with earbuds). He totally spaced on the fact that I avoid earbuds now with my ear issues. He had forgotten about them because I haven’t been talking about my ears lately (still have tinnitus but it’s calmed down and the sensitivity in my ear is much better lately). Needless to say, those will be returned.

What’s missing is a cute t-shirt that looks like this:

The postal service said it was delivered in our mailbox on 12/12 but it never materialized. We thought maybe they put it in a neighbor’s box by mistake, since it’s a shared box with individual slots, so we were waiting to see if they would bring it over. When that didn’t happen, we went to the post office on 12/17 and filled out a form, but haven’t heard squat from them. Joe contacted the Etsy seller but they can only refund us if we can get a letter from the post office stating the package is missing. But they’re not going to do that since according to them it was delivered. Ugh! So we’re out that money now. So help me if I ever see someone in this neighborhood wearing that shirt…

I got Joe a Darth Vader print he had requested, some earbuds from his wish list, candy (two different types of Turtles so we could do a taste comparison – Turtle brand wins if you like caramel, but Fannie May does it you’re not into chocolate – and watermelon Sour Patch Kids since they stopped making the watermelon flavored Twizzlers he loved), a small Star Wars LEGO set, and two bars of Bath & Body Works soap.

Wow, seems lame when laid out, right? But the Apple Watch for me was a last minute decision. We don’t typically buy each other big gifts since we like picking out expensive things ourselves as needed. Although last year he got me a new computer monitor which I didn’t like so he uses it instead. That’s just how things go sometimes when you’ve been together almost 21 years.

We watched Die Hard & Scrooged and had planned to have a steak dinner but weren’t hungry enough after lunch (which was homemade baked mac & cheese) so we had it the following day with green bean casserole, crescent rolls, and some of the sweet potato casserole I had frozen from Thanksgiving. Dessert over the entire week has been the pistachio cake I made, although on Monday I made the pumpkin pie we originally intended to have on Thanksgiving but didn’t, so Joe had that (I don’t care for pumpkin pie).

Haunted Trail Walk & Halloween

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Saturday, October 29th

Our local park district offered a haunted trail walk for $5 per person this year, so we signed up with our friend, D. We had attempted to attend the event last year but it was cancelled due to rain. This year it was just very cold outside. The park they chose to hold it in was one we’ve never been to before but was close by which was nice. But that’s where our luck runs out.

This park had a small building they were using as a staging area for each group but you had to wait outside for your turn and like I had mentioned, it was really cold out! In addition, even though there were lights on the exterior of the building, they weren’t on, so it was pretty dark. The person checking people in had to use a flashlight and even then couldn’t find us on the list until another person intervened. The whole thing was very disorganized.

In fact, they were running behind, so we had to wait about twenty minutes past our scheduled time in that freezing cold. This one lady was smoking and no matter how far away we stood, I could still smell it. I thought it was pretty rude of her to be smoking at all considering how many kids were in the area. Plus she was with kids! Of course she ended up in our group and even though she wasn’t smoking on the actual walk, the damage had already been done and my hair smelled like smoke when we got home.

I’d like to be able to say all the annoyances were worth it in the end, but sadly, they were not. They had stations set up along a walking path that were like chapters in a scary story about an escaped kid or something (it was so lame I wasn’t even paying attention) and you could tell the people involved hadn’t participated in such a thing before so they weren’t very good at acting or scaring people. Needless to say, it wasn’t scary in the least (and I’m a wuss), or fun, and I couldn’t wait until it was over so I could get back into the warm car. We definitely won’t be signing up for that in the future.

Monday, October 31st – Halloween

On Halloween we got about 10 kids or so which worked out well since I had put together 9 treat bags from the large bag of candy we got from Walmart.

Look at the uneven distribution of flavors, though! I think I might just hand out full sized candy bars next year.