Category: Recaps

Extended Weekend Recap (06/19-06/21)

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Friday (06/19) Joe took a half day from work so we ran some errands, including a stop at Costco. We tried the new strawberry shortcake sundae to tide us over for a few hours before going out for a late lunch.

It has been years since we’ve eaten at Village Tavern Bar & Grill because I think their prices are rather high, plus I don’t like how dark it is inside. Joe wanted to have the fish fry and I realized they have a patio, so I said lets do it. I had a coupon for a free appetizer so we got the cheese quesadilla and I got the BLT which was not the best because of the mayo they use. I should have gotten a photo of the quesadilla because I would order that as my meal next time, that’s how good it was. They put pico de gallo inside and also give you a very generous helping of sour cream and guacamole.

The weather was perfect and we really enjoyed ourselves. I even had a little alcohol which is unusual for me. We split this flavored vodka.

Saturday (06/20) morning we hit up a community yard sale and headed to downtown Glen Ellyn to look for some food. We drove around a bit but couldn’t find anything appealing. I took to Yelp and found a place in a different area called Paris Baguette and decided to check it out. Upon entering I was thinking the case of pastries looked really familiar. I even remarked to Joe, “these look like those pastry cases we saw at H Mart” (spoiler alert, that’s because they were). We got a few pastries and a Korean Milk Iced Coffee which we took to Panfish Park.

They were so good! Definitely will be back especially because they open early and are on the way to the arboretum.

After eating, we took a walk around the park. A guy passing us in the opposite direction said “hi hi hi”. We both said hi back and he replied, “assholes, you’re assholes” or something like that. Joe called over his shoulder, “Huh? We said hi back”, as we walked away.

I’m not sure what the deal was with that guy, but if I had to guess based on his behavior, he might have Tourette Syndrome. I noticed he was wearing headphones, so I guess it’s possible he just couldn’t hear us, but either way I think something was going on with him. As we were leaving the park we could see him near the same section of the path as if he was simply walking back and forth looking for more people to call assholes. After the initial shock of being called an asshole for no reason, it was pretty funny.

In the afternoon I visited my neighbor and her adorable dog briefly before watching The Cure’s livestream at the PinkPop festival in The Netherlands.

They played so many good songs for two hours, including A Forest followed by From The Edge of the Deep Green Sea.

I’m so thankful they chose to air it live. The only thing that would have made it better was if they aired Sofi Tukker’s earlier performance at the same festival. Yeah, that’s right, Sofi Tukker and The Cure were at the same festival on the same day. Talk about a dream event!

The next door neighbor’s daughter had friends over in the evening and they were blasting music and carrying on. Her parents were working which is the only time she does stuff like that I’ve noticed. Apparently at some point they were on the roof running past our front windows at like 2 am. Joe was so pissed off and yelled at one of the guys to get off the roof immediately, which he did. Can’t believe people in their twenties act like that!

Sunday (06/21) was a pretty low key day. We left the house to get groceries from Aldi in the morning and KFC in the afternoon because we had a T-Mobile deal.

I learned why we never go to KFC even though they have a location extremely close to us.

Their food is only good IF you get a fresh batch like Joe did. I got the bottom of the barrel. It’s wild to me they’d see two orders come in with the same last name and still give completely different chicken nuggets and wedges, as if we couldn’t see the obvious difference between them.

They also gave us sauces based on what I had selected in my mobile order instead of giving Joe the sauces he actually ordered (which were completely different from mine).

And something is wrong with their app – it cuts whole sentences off. Whomever they hired forgot to add code for word wrapping to accommodate different sized screens. So dumb.

What a bummer, especially because I love their wedges (when they aren’t hours old) and Wendy’s stopped offering breakfast around here so they don’t have the delicious potato wedges anymore.

Weekend Recap (06/13-06/14)

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Saturday (06/13) we hit up the Wheaton French Market before 8 am so we could get in line for the Cooperage coffee booth right away. We tried their vanilla iced latte and now it makes sense why they have a mile-long line within a few minutes of opening – it’s delicious!

We grabbed some pastries and people-watched for a long while before walking around a bit of the downtown area. We discovered they have an entire block cordoned off with a row of tents with seating for all the restaurants on that block. I found out they keep it up all summer and into early October, so I added that to my list of things I want to do this summer on a nice day – breakfast one weekend and dinner on another.

Once we got home I prepped lunch (chicken salad) in preparation for Joe’s son and girlfriend who were arriving within an hour. We don’t get to see them often enough because he works long hours which really sucks because they’re both such a pleasure to be around.

We exchanged our long overdue Christmas gifts. We gave E money and a little 3D printed Pokémon (Charmander) who looks like he’s made of yarn. I felt bad we didn’t get anything specifically for his girlfriend so that will be changing this year. And hopefully we can see them closer to the holiday too since it’s been years since that has happened.

In any case, these are the thoughtful gifts he gave us:

E has been adding to my Cure vinyl collection for years now. The latest is The Top picture disc. And he’s also our personal UNO game dealer; I’m excited to try the Uno Flip Attack. They couldn’t stay long enough to play any games, unfortunately.

Sunday (06/14) we rested from all the people-ing on Saturday. If you’re an introvert then you understand.

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.