Category: Shopping

Whirlwind Morning of Errands

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Last night I checked the weekend weather forecast and it was showing rain for today so I thought we might as well get my vehicle emissions test done first thing in the morning. They opened a few minutes early so by the time we were done it had just turned 7:30 am.

On the way home we decided to stop at Tony’s Fresh Market which replaced the Valli Produce we used to shop at years ago. It looked much nicer inside even though the basic layout was nearly identical. Testament to what a little updated flooring and lighting can do. We ended up getting $50 worth of food there which included some fresh salsa and deli items.

When we got home Joe checked one of my tires that was making a noise from what he thought might be a rock (I heard it recently as well). Turns out it was a nail, so off to Discount Tire we went, hoping it wouldn’t be busy since they had just opened a half hour early. Wrong! We were told the wait time was 2+ hours so Joe made an appointment to bring it back in a few days to have it patched. The guy noted the tires could use replacing too which we already knew.

We stopped at the library and then decided since we were out we might as well head over to Target so Joe could pick up a prescription.

At the store I was telling him about this Newsweek article – Foreign hackers are actively targeting critical U.S. infrastructure, including water and wastewater systems, using artificial intelligence-powered tools to identify vulnerabilities and gain access to industrial control systems.

I wanted to buy some bottled water (which we haven’t done in several years) just to be on the safe side in case something does happen. He said Costco would have the best price, so we decided we would go on Monday. Well, that is, until we were leaving Target and saw someone with a lot of water in their cart. Was this the universe telling us to get the water now? We thought so, and Costco had just opened a few minutes before, so we headed over.

Before we went inside we decided to check out their Tire Center since Joe had been planning to replace both my battery and tires soon. Neither have ever been replaced and I’ve had my Crosstrek since October 2017. We ended up getting a battery right then and there since they carry a better brand (Interstate) than the Everstart he had been eying at Walmart, and it was cheaper to boot!

Once we got inside the warehouse I bee-lined over to the AT&T kiosk with the iPhones to get a feel for what the new one will look like. If the predictions are true, the iPhone 18, which comes out next month, is going to be the same size as the iPhone 17. The AT&T rep was really nice and showed me how his personal iPhone 17 Pro compared in size to the iPhone 17 Pro Max by placing it on top of it. There is a very slight difference in width, but the majority of the difference is in how tall the Max is. I personally find no benefit to that, so unless the iPhone 18 Pros differ, I plan to get the base Pro but not the Max version. They both should have the same exact cameras (of which there are three).

Oh and let me talk about that for a bit. I have an iPhone 11 which is going on seven years old. It has two cameras and only has a 2x digital zoom. The iPhone 17 Pro by comparison has a 4x optical zoom. The rep showed me how he could zoom in on a shopper very far away with clarity. I was wowed. Not to mention the latest iPhone camera has 48 megapixels compared to my phone’s measly 12MP. I’m definitely going to be spending money on storage in the new phone with that photo size, but it would be worth it if I could take more nature photos than I do now. I would still need my SLR for birding treks, but I bet the phone would do pretty well for everything else.

I’m getting very excited at the idea of getting a new phone soon. As much as I love my current phone, Apple is dropping support on it with iOS 26 and the battery is to the point it needs replacing, so now is the best time to upgrade even though it’s going to hurt to drop what I’m guessing will be $1500 thanks to the chip shortage. Hopefully I can get another 7 years out of the new phone to make it a more digestible $225 per year. But I digress….

Costco had more water out than usual which made us feel like something might be going on, so we grabbed 3 cases (40 bottles in each) instead of just 1 or 2. I really hope we won’t actually NEED it!

When we got home Joe started working on a late breakfast while I did a little research to find the best place to get new tires of my car. Costco is cheaper than Discount Tire (our usual go-to), especially when you factor in Costco’s free installation. Furthering my research, I learned that Costco rotates their tire sales by brand every 2-3 months, and was able to confirm the Michelin tires we want go on sale this Monday. Therefore, waiting just a few days to place the order will save us another $80. Gotta like that!

Speaking of money saving and stuff, we got a check from State Farm for $105 as part of some cash-back dividend they received.

I’m also getting a credit to my CC for an overpayment on a medical procedure.

Money in. Money out. Repeat until you die.

Update: Leaked information for the iPhone 18 series points to a major main camera upgrade featuring a variable aperture (ranging from f/1.4 to f/2.8) that physically adjusts using moving blades. Reports suggest this advanced hardware might be exclusive to the larger iPhone 18 Pro Max.

Ugh, I hope that’s incorrect because I don’t want the taller phone.

Weekend Recap (07/11-07/12)

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Saturday (07/11) we ate homemade breakfast burritos I had prepped on Friday before heading to the arboretum.

We arrived just after they opened at 7 am. The plan was to take advantage of the relatively cool weather and get a few hours of bird watching in before we had to get home to prepare to drive out to my parents house. Well, the mosquitos had other ideas so we mostly drove around the grounds, although we did stop by the visitor center to look at the flowers.

We made a quick stop at Walmart before heading home where I spent two hours on the patio reading a book before it got too hot and humid for comfort.

We left the house around 1 pm so we could get to my parents around 2 pm. We had some good food, helped my mom and brother with a few things, and left around 8:30 so we could be home by 9:30. I had a hard time sleeping which is typical anytime I socialize.

Sunday (07/12) we stopped at Old Time Pottery before heading out to the Bath & Body Works in Geneva to pick up an online order I had made on Thursday for this adorable light-up spooky kitty hand sanitizer holder.

It was sold out nearly everywhere else so I feel lucky I was able to grab one. I hate buying Halloween stuff in mid-summer though. Why can’t we live in the moment a little more? Call me crazy but didn’t stores wait until kids were back in school to start putting out the Halloween stuff back when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s? Now it’s out in early July. It’s very annoying. By the time any holiday arrives these days I’m burnt out on it because of this nonsense. But I digress…

After B&BW we went to the Barnes & Noble store in the same shopping center.

I love the smell of a bookstore; there is nothing like it.

I looked at their e-readers but they seem overpriced for what they do and seemed to operate slower than my very old Kindle.

I was also amazed by all the cool educational toys they had from stuff about bugs to things about our solar system. I would have loved so many of them if they had been available when I was a child.

We browsed the magazines last and this caught my eye…

Hmmm… that seems familiar. A little closer look…

Aha, I knew it was Robert Smith!

I was shocked to see that 2600 magazine is still being printed.

I used to think I was so cool reading that even though I never hacked a damn thing.

We were getting hungry so we headed home to eat the stromboli sandwiches and potato salad my mom sent home with us on Saturday. Then Joe washed both our cars while I attempted to install garden edging around the tree out front before giving up.

I got it because my next door neighbor put some around her tree and it looked really nice, but the soil was too hard and the plastic edging too flimsy. It just felt like more effort than I was willing to put in. Back to Walmart it goes!

And yes, I know that makes me a hypocrite after I said I was boycotting Walmart. I do admittedly buy things from there once in a blue moon if I can’t get in anywhere else, like the bike shorts I’ve been living in since my skin went all sensitive on me.

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.