Category: Shopping

4th of July Weekend (07/03-07/05)

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Joe had Friday (07/03) off for the holiday. Since it was so hot and humid we decided it would be a perfect day to run errands, like dropping off an Amazon return at FedEx and hitting up Trader Joe’s since it had been awhile since our last visit.

Afterwards we stopped at Paris Baguette for some delicious pastries and Korean Iced Milk Coffee. It’s a good thing they aren’t closer because I’ve gained enough weight this year since I’ve been stuffing my face without discipline; I’m just so happy to be able to eat after what I went through last year. I do need to reel it in though.

We had Culver’s for dinner as our little holiday celebration since Joe had to eat light on Saturday in preparation for a medical procedure on Sunday.

Saturday (07/04) we hid in the house all day and didn’t do anything to celebrate. Not sure what is worth celebrating right now anyway. This current administration is fucking up anything and everything it can get its hands on. That’s what happens when you put a bunch of narcissistic, unempathetic, rich, brainless cretins in office. Not saying the other side are angels, but this group of people takes the cake.

I temporarily unfroze our credit at all three bureaus so we could apply for Amazon’s Prime VISA. They sent an invitation in the mail and we had just been talking about how annoying it is that Costco only takes VISA or debit and how much we hate using debit, so they caught us at the right time. Plus we got $200 just for signing up!

Now we have all the frickin cards – AMEX, Discover, Mastercard, Target, and VISA. I literally had to put together a cheat sheet for both of us so we know which card to use where to maximize the cash back benefits on each.

Obviously the VISA will be used at Amazon, as well as Costco. We have no choice but to use Discover at Woodman’s since they do not accept any other card, and we’ve been using the AMEX at Aldi since we get more cash back for groceries on it vs the other cards. Frankly the Mastercard offers the least incentives lately so it barely gets used. Target doesn’t get used a ton, although with having to get our prescriptions at the CVS inside, I have been using it more this year than previous years.

Surprisingly I was able to fall asleep before midnight and wasn’t woken up by fireworks even though I know they were popping off.

Sunday (07/05) after grocery shopping, my B12 injection, and Joe’s procedure we headed to REI so I could look at binoculars. I do not understand how an outdoor store has so few binoculars on display to try.

In fact, it doesn’t seem like ANY store really offers the ability to try most of the binoculars they sell, although to be fair the variety is always lacking. Are people really buying them without trying them first? This seems like yet another example of the patriarchy at work – chances are most binoculars are perfectly suitable for men, but for women, and petite ones with small heads, close-set eyes, and glasses like myself, it’s not that easy. I can’t even see through most of them because either the minimum distance between barrels is too wide, or the eye relief isn’t high enough. In fact, I tried two different Nikon models and I was able to see through the mid-range ones with my glasses on, which is the goal, but couldn’t with the higher end pair.

I’m a buy it for life gal so it’s frustrating that I might have to resort to ordering thousands of dollars of binoculars off Amazon just to see if I like any of them. That makes me feel icky and I’m trying to avoid that, but none of these retailers are making it easy.

We even stopped in Best Buy briefly because they sell binoculars but we couldn’t find them. It’s amazing how much I used to love that store and now abhor it.

We stopped in Disc Replay to look around but didn’t buy anything, then picked up Potbelly since we were starving by this point.

We made it home just in time to watch The Cure playing a festival show in Belgium. Since it was being streamed on YouTube we watched on the TV which was especially nice.

May 2026 Recap

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05/02-05/03 – Weekend Recap

05/05 (Tue)
Saw our first hummingbird of the year. Also ran errands on my own, and although it was nice to feel independent, I hated it as well. I’m spoiled by Joe doing all the driving and handling the cart when we go shopping.

05/07-05/10 – Extended Weekend Recap

05/14 (Thu)
Joe had the day off so we went to Elsen’s Hill in the morning to look for warblers. We did see a lot of bird activity, even though warblers weren’t part of it. We went to St. Charles later and hit up a few places and stopped at a Mexican place for lunch.

That afternoon we received an order of coffee syrups from Monin

05/16-05/17 – Weekend Recap

05/20 (Wed)
Finished setting up the patio by pulling weeds, planting zinnias and separating the area with Dollar Tree fencing, and adding solar lights.

05/23-05/24 – Extended Holiday Weekend Recap

05/28 (Thu)
On the way to Lincoln Marsh to do some birding we stopped at the county animal control to donate a big box of potty pads we still had in the garage. At this rate I don’t know when we’ll be getting another dog so we might as well donate them and make some room.

05/29 (Fri)
Recently got back into reading, and figured I would stop needing to recharge my phone so often if I used my Kindle instead. Except apparently my Kindle 3 will no longer accept books from Libby. This feels like an intentional move to force people into buying a new Kindle even though there’s nothing wrong with the one they already have.

05/30-05/31 – Weekend Recap

Notable Media This Month:

DTF St. Louis – Starring Jason Bateman and David Harbour, this was a strange, yet intriguing, show. Don’t let the homophobes in the IMDb reviews dissuade you from checking it out.

Big Mistakes – I never got into Schitt’s Creek, but after seeing Dan Levy’s performance in this show, I think I might give it another try.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die – Heard about this one on an Instagram reel and was intrigued. It was so strange but kept our attention. I’m not sure I’ve seen a comedy starring Sam Rockwell that I didn’t like.

The Killer’s Game – My brother mentioned this one so I borrowed it from the library. There is a seriously unhinged line in the movie that made me laugh so hard. Starring two Guardians of the Galaxy alum, it was an entertaining ride.

Shrink – This is an older show about a guy trying to make it as a psychiatrist and much like other hidden gems, only lasted one season. We blew through it quickly and I wish there had been more.

Weekend Recap 05/30-05/31

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Saturday (05/30) we stopped at the Wheaton French Market. We were on a mission to get a tasty breakfast and noticed there were even more booths than last year. We did a loop to check all the booths before settling on the ones we wanted to try this time (there were too many possibilities to try them all).

First we got some homemade bakery treats – an oatmeal cream pie, strawberry poptart, and “bigass” cookie (with chocolate chips and Biscoff pieces). I should have gotten the name of the business because I want to avoid it moving forward. I think I’d recognize it when I see it, though, because it seems like the booths remain in the same location from one week to the next. For the price I was expecting to like everything more. It wasn’t bad, just not impressive. The oatmeal cream pie had too much cinnamon and the cookie didn’t have enough flavor. I only had a small bite of the poptart since I’m not a fan of those in general.

Next to that booth was one serving coffee so Joe got a vanilla latte. That one was a bit lackluster too.

Finally, we got a breakfast crepe from a third booth. It tasted ok but was really hard to eat in the container provided so we’d skip that one too. 0/3 I guess, but at least the people-watching was top notch!

We headed to the arboretum next and spent a few hours there before it was lunch time. We had to get Minnie Bird because those pimento cheese wraps are way too good. I didn’t bother getting a dirty soda this time because they sound better in theory than in reality. The soda always tastes kinda flat to me.

Sunday (05/31) the patio umbrella I ordered was delivered. I decided to go with a royal blue instead of yellow after all and I’m glad I did. It matches our existing chairs pretty closely so it looks like a set now.

I love how easy it is to open and close compared to the old umbrella. It’s unfortunate the old one couldn’t last through Pride month though.

I like imagining the rainbow print triggering homophobes which makes me smile.

Extended Holiday Weekend Recap (05/23-05/25)

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Saturday (05/23) we headed to my parents’ to give my brother his birthday gift (a wrestling DVD that I found on eBay since it sold out everywhere else). We also grabbed some tacos from a food truck and small restaurant. My mom made some sides too. One of them, pizza dip, is a favorite of mine.

Whenever we socialize it’s hard to get to sleep so when we got home around 10 pm we decided to head to Woodman’s since they’re open 24 hours. We figured we’d get our regular Sunday morning shopping out of the way and be able to sleep in. Wow, were we surprised to see it fairly busy in the store. Not only that, but the parking lot had people hanging out and 7 Brew had a line of cars in the drive-thru. I guess we’re unfamiliar with nightlife in the area since we’re usually not out past 8 pm.

I ended up getting this bird themed stepping stone.

I had seen it a few weeks earlier and after researching it online decided it was worth the $15.

We didn’t end up sleeping in on Sunday (05/24). Oh well.

Later that morning we went in search of a new patio umbrella. The 80’s rainbow one from my childhood that my mom gave me a few years ago is literally falling apart. The canvas is tearing at the edges and the pole is detaching from the top. As much as we like it, we know it needs to be replaced.

Old Time Pottery had a yellow umbrella on display that we liked, but none in stock, so we headed to At Home in Aurora. They closed the Schaumburg location a year or two ago and the Geneva one is gone now too. That only leaves three in the area so I can’t help but wonder if they will go out of business soon. That being said, they didn’t have the yellow shade we liked in the size we needed but we did get a stand for when we find an umbrella we like.

Monday (05/25) was Memorial Day. We went to Wood Dale Grove for the first time. Another dud when it came to warblers but we did see a Black-crowned Night Heron which is a rare sight.

Afterwards we killed some time waiting for Mexico 2000 to open since we really like their Huevo con Papa y Chorizo (eggs with potatoes and chorizo) which is really hard to find at most Mexican places. We took it back home to enjoy on our patio.

For lunch I made cheeseburgers on the grill. We recently picked up some pickled red onion from the store and OMG why didn’t we think of buying these sooner?

They were soooo good on the burgers!

We had corn on the cob and baked potatoes too. It was a nice relaxing holiday.

Weekend Recap 05/02-05/03

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Saturday (05/02) we went to ABT to look at binoculars. I had my sights on the Nikon Prostaff P3 10×42 ($160 retail) which were ok. When I asked to try the 8×42 version, the employee mistakenly handed me the Nikon Monarch M5 8×42 ($340 retail) instead and I fell in love with them.

Not one to buy something on a whim, I took his business card so I could go home and do more research. That’s when I learned about a term called called eye relief and how this affects whether you can see through a pair of binoculars with glasses on. I always have to take mine off for all the binoculars we own, but the pair I’m thinking of getting don’t require that which is a real plus. Not only that, but the hinge bends close enough to accommodate my close-set eyes. The glass is a higher quality too so everything was brighter and crisper even though the magnification was less. That makes them heavier, though, which is a trade-off. I’m still thinking about whether I want to buy them or look at more binoculars first, but it’s hard finding places that have them on display to try. ABT only had a few and they were all Nikon.

(Update: a month later they are selling for $40 less).

After ABT we walked around the nearby River Trail Nature Center before making a stop at McDonald’s to pick up some chocolate chip cookies for our friend, K, who we were visiting for the afternoon.

Joe replaced her patio door screen and helped her mount a new outdoor camera. We had lunch from a Thai place.

Sunday (05/03) I bought three new hand soaps from Woodman’s. I don’t want to use Bath & Body Works soaps anymore so I’m phasing them out. Not only are they expensive, but their bottles tip over too easily.

The Softsoap ones were inspired by K; she had both scents in her house and I really liked them both. Mrs. Meyers is a brand I’ve seen a lot of people say they like. They had multiple scents and the honeysuckle smelled the best. They have an apple one I liked too but I will save that for the fall.