Author: Nicole

Extended Weekend Recap (11/15-11/17)

Posted on

Joe took a vacation day on Friday (11/15) so we could join the DuPage Birding Club for a walk around McKee Marsh in Winfield, and walk we did. My watch calculated it was approximately 3.5 miles! Added a new bird to my life list – a Fox Sparrow.

Saturday (11/16) we ran some errands in the morning, including a trip to MicroCenter for Joe to pick up the parts to build himself a computer. His laptop was old and getting slow, so he built a desktop for himself and now World of Warcraft, his favorite game, runs much better.

For lunch we tried a limited time Mike’s Hot Honey pizza from Lou Malnati’s.

We made the mistake of ordering a small thin crust which is not a good value for the price, but we weren’t sure whether we’d like it. Turns out we loved it! My only complaint is they don’t put enough giardiniera on it. Some pieces didn’t have any at all and the pieces that did tasted better.

We plan to get another one, this time a large, before it leaves the menu.

Sunday (11/17) we went on another excursion with the DuPage Birding Club, this time to Muirhead Springs in Hampshire. There wasn’t much waterfowl there during this visit compared to in October, but I did add a new bird to my life list – a Snow Bunting!

Cute little thing.

Sunday evening we had tickets to Illumination at Morton Arboretum. Despite the drizzle, we forged ahead and still had a good time, sharing a hot apple cider while taking in the sights. It even stopped raining about halfway through our walk which was nice.

I’m glad we decided to attend early in the holiday season before it got too cold as that was a big reason we hadn’t gone in years past. Even with the rain the temperature outside was very comfortable. That being said, from what I gather it’s largely the same every year, so we probably won’t be going again anytime soon and will instead try something different next year.

Weekend Recap (11/09-11/10)

Posted on

Saturday (11/09) we joined the Forest Preserve District of Will County at Lake Renwick Preserve to look for migrating waterfowl. Everything was so far back on the opposite side of the lake we could barely make out what type of ducks they were. That being said, there were two bald eagles at the heron rookery and we saw three mute swans in flight.

After our walk we stopped at nearby Paul Rose Records to look around.

The owner was very friendly; he asked what we wanted to listen to while browsing so I said The Cure, naturally. He was telling us how he’s one of the only stores that still has copies of the newest Cure album on vinyl. It was tempting to buy a copy to help complete my collection, but $50? Seems pretty steep, so I’m holding off for now.

The store was really cute and they have a little boutique section upstairs. I asked how much the felted pumpkins in jar were only to find out they were just decoration and not for sale, haha! Too bad, because I really wanted a purple one. The owner said his wife bought them and it happens all the time where people try to buy the decor. Maybe put a sign that it’s not for sale then? Because they had candles and other decor like pieces right there so it wasn’t obvious the pumpkins weren’t for sale.

Anyway, we got two used records and the guy gave us a marker to sign his wall so that was kinda neat.

We stopped at home to drop off my camera, then went to a craft/bake sale at a church where we got treats and a cute homemade snowman Christmas ornament.

The treats were a bit on the disappointing side. I grabbed the biggest rice krispie treat they were selling but it wasn’t nearly as good as the one I got back in September at the dog event and that made me sad.

For lunch we had chicken salad sandwiches and a new soup from Costco – cream of chicken wild rice which was very good.

After lunch we winterized the patio by removing the umbrella and rug. The we put up our newly purchased shepherds hook, moved the suet feeder to it, and put the bird feeder on the existing hook. I filled both feeders, which included adding peanuts to the tray of the seed feeder. Shortly thereafter we saw two downy woodpeckers and a house finch.

Sunday (11/10) we visited the arboretum and a nearby lake looking for migrating waterfowl to no avail.

We stopped at Sonic to try the new Sparkling Cookie Dr. Pepper which wasn’t nearly as good as the Dirty Dr. Pepper we recently had.

We also stopped at Dollar Tree and snagged some canned coffees for those lazy days.

The thing I don’t love about them is how thick they are. They remind me more of a flavored milk than coffee even though coffee is first on the list of ingredients.

Our last stop was Aldi and we were almost t-boned by some idiot blowing a red light. The oncoming traffic had already turned left so this person (in the cross traffic) had no business entering the intersection at all and couldn’t have possibly been watching the road. My heart was racing for a good five minutes after that close call.

October Recap

Posted on

10/02 (Wed) – Discovered the deliciousness of pork schnitzel.

10/04-10/06 – Extended Weekend Recap

10/06 (Sun) – The first dark-eyed juncos of the year were spotted behind our house.

10/08 (Tue) – Started using eBird checklists which can be fun, if not a bit frustrating when entering species into the app. I like being able to add my photos to the checklist later on, though. I’m very much into documenting things, so I’m not sure why I didn’t get into birding checklists sooner. It’s like Pokemon Go, but with birds!

Finally saw the Northern Lights, aka Aurora Borealis.

10/09 (Wed) – Updated my iPhone to iOS 18. Liking the new photos app in particular. I think it’ll be time for a new phone next year as I heard this is the last iOS that will be available for the iPhone 11. I haven’t had any issues with this phone, but I am looking forward to getting one with better cameras.

10/10 (Thu) – Pulled out my newest Halloween decor purchases. The ghost solar light (Dollar Tree) ended up being a cool white LED which I didn’t care for, so no more were purchased. The towel (also Dollar Tree) was hung from the oven handle, and the bat (from Old Time Pottery) was hung from the left side of the fireplace mantel.

Shared a photo on Facebook of the orange mums from Meijer still looking good, with an owl I added to the hanging basket.

Took another stab at photographing the Northern Lights with my phone.

10/11 (Fri) – Decorated for Halloween inside.

Went to Mallard Lake after Joe got off work and spotted this beautiful juvenile bald eagle.

The sky was also pretty at the end of our walk as the sun was getting closer to setting.

10/12-10/13 – Weekend Recap

10/15 (Tue) – Got a halfway decent photo of the comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS.

10/16 (Wed) – Lincoln Marsh

10/19-10/20 – Weekend Recap

10/20 (Sun) – Started practicing standing on one leg to see how long I could do it since reading it’s good for one’s mental and physical health. Proud to report I was able to go a full minute on each leg and only 40 seconds was needed in my age group.

Also saw my first ever Blue Jay behind the house. It was eating some of the bird seed I had put by the tree. I could not grab my camera quickly enough to get photographic evidence.

Went to Aldi, only to find they rearranged the majority of the aisles. Nothing makes sense anymore!

10/21 (Mon) – Got our first male downy woodpecker at the suet feeder. He has a spicy attitude and will peck at any sparrow trying to access the feeder, so we named him Loki. Our talkative female downy is named Lulu, so we are doing L names I guess. We haven’t yet named what we think is a second female downy.

10/22 (Tue) – We had a hawk sneaking around out back looking for a meal.

10/23-10/27 – Anniversary Extended Weekend

10/28 (Mon) – Spent a lot of time sitting out on the patio knowing the last nice day was coming soon. I don’t know how I’m going to make it through winter.

10/29 – Air Fryer review

10/31 – Halloween

New Food & Beverage Recommendations

7-UP Shirley Temple.

I’m not sure what it’s supposed to taste like, but I liked the flavor, so I plan to get more.

Trader Joe’s Sesame Honey Cashews

A little pricey at $8, but very yummy! We only eat a small handful at a time.

Notable movies this month:

We watched 1-2 horror movies every night in October, and these are the ones we had never seen before which I thought were the best.

Don’t Hang Up – I had some issues with the killer’s motive, not to mention a few plot holes, and I wasn’t scared by this, but it was interesting enough to keep me off my phone so that’s a successful movie in my book.

Gonjiam Haunted Aslym – Actually creepy, if not predictible.

Late Night With The Devil – Very unique premise that kept us glued to the TV trying to figure out where it was going on.

Tucker & Dale vs Evil – Horror comedy that kept us entertained.

A Very Cure Halloween

Posted on

I was watching a YouTube video the other day that was sponsored by Opera, the web browser.

I admit, I completely forgot it existed, but decided to download it this morning to see whether I prefer it to Google Chrome. So far, I do. I really like the left-hand sidebar in Opera where your chats and music live, instead of having to keep open tabs for them. As far as performance, time will tell whether it hogs more resources than Chrome did.

—

I had a really nice Halloween afternoon – I edited a backlog of photos while listening to The Cure on the BBC Sounds radio app. They were streaming them in celebration of their new album being released November 1st.

The first show I listened to was pre-recorded recently and included songs from the upcoming album.

Tracklist from the BBC 2 Radio set:

1. Alone
2. Pictures of You
3. A Fragile Thing
4. High
5. A Night Like This
6. Lovesong
7. The Walk
8. In Between Days
9. Just Like Heaven
10. From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea
11. Endsong

The second show was a live stream of them playing at a small venue in the UK.

Tracklist from the BBC 6 Live set (which is listed incorrectly on the BBC website):

1. Plainsong
2. Last Dance
3. I Can Never Say Goodbye
4. Burn
5. And Nothing Is Forever
6. At Night
7. A Forest
8. All I Ever Am
9. Prayers for Rain
10. Disintegration

They sounded amazing, as usual, and it was a wonderful listening experience.

—

We got about the same amount of trick-or-treaters this year as past years, definitely no more than twenty total kids, most of them between 5 and 7 pm, with one boy coming around 7:20. I ended up closing the door at 7:30 because technically the official hours are until 7. The neighbor across the street brought her two boys this time (they didn’t show up last year) and I had made a treat bag for them. I just gave loose candy to the rest of the kids, but next year maybe I’ll make bags for everyone. I usually do, but just didn’t feel like it this year.

We got the big bag of Swedish Fish, Sour Patch Kids, and mini Oreos since we like them all and knew we’d have leftovers.

I think the uneven distribution with the Oreos is partially responsible for me not making the treat bags.

I was worried I’d have a big group of kids where some would get three types of treats and then others would get only two. I hate the idea of disappointing anyone.

New Air Fryer

Posted on

We picked up a new air fryer from Costco on the 23rd after we noticed the old one’s cord was getting really hot when in use. We’ve only had it a handful of years, but it was a free gift Joe got from his old job, so it could be worse.

The new one, a Gourmia, was $40 on sale, normally $50.

What I like:

It has a larger capacity (8-QT verses 3-QT) even though physically it’s not much larger than the old one.

It has a window so you can check on the food without opening it.

The beeps when you make selections are much quieter than the old one, and can be turned off if you want (I knew this going in because I downloaded the user’s manual before deciding to look at it).

The air fryer fan is much quieter than the old one.

It came with a very nice laminated cheat sheet of cooking times for a variety of foods.

It has although cooking modes besides air fryer, like bake, dehydrate, keep warm, although I’m not sure how frequently we’d use those.

It has a cord wrap on the back.

What I don’t like:

When using the preheat option, it will only beep a couple of times to remind you to add the food and gives you something like ten seconds to do so before it just starts counting down the time as if the food is already in it. It does the same thing when it beeps to remind you to turn the food halfway through the cooking time. I wish it would give you more time like our last unit.

When you wash it, water gets in-between the glass and unless you literally unscrew and take it apart, you cannot easily dry it. Owners have also complained grease gets in-between the glass too which means it’s going to look dirty like our toaster oven. The difference is the toaster oven doesn’t live on the counter so I don’t have to look at it.

There aren’t any protective rubber feet on the bottom of the basket so you can’t pull it out and set it down on a bare counter, you’ll need a pot-holder or something. The old one didn’t have this issue.

The stainless steel parts around the basket are difficult to clean without creating streaks, so it looks dirty even when it isn’t.

It has a screen instead of buttons so those get dirty the second you touch them.

The machine was only $40 though, so perhaps I’m expecting too much. Overall I guess I like it, but I don’t love it, and if anything else comes up that is super annoying we might take it back to Costco and look for something else. I like Ninja’s options and watched a video where they don’t beep at all and have physical buttons instead of a screen, which I like, but it’s twice the cost.