Tag: The Cure

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.

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.

USPS Ridiculouness

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I had to make this it’s own entry since it’s so long.

Back in December I posted this to Facebook:

Let us count the ways in which the post office has screwed up in the past two weeks, shall we?

– 1 package was marked delivered 12/12 but has never materialized. Filled out a form on 12/17 and have never heard a peep from anyone. Since as far as the seller is concerned, it was delivered, so we have no recourse (it was a Christmas gift for me from Joe) and are out $20

– 1 Christmas card envelope was delivered without the card inside

– 1 Christmas card (from Terri) was in our Informed Delivery on December 23rd but has never materialized

– We received 3 village newsletters (1 on one day and 2 together on the same day)

– We received 2 pieces of mail that are not ours (one for the next door neighbors and another for someone who lives two miles away)

– My Cure Wish box set is missing. I pre-ordered it over the summer and it was supposedly shipped in November. This one might possibly still show, but I have no way to ever know where it is because the seller doesn’t provide any tracking information. Lesson learned; will not order from overseas again. To add insult to injury, I’m out $31 and could have gotten it from Amazon already for $10 less.
Until this year we’ve never had an issue with the post office but this is beyond ridiculous!

In January I posted this update:

1 – Today a man left the missing Christmas card from Terri in our door. This was caught on my doorbell camera. I do not recognize him from the neighborhood and when I went out to retrieve the mail, he looked to be sitting in a car out front, so who knows how far away he came to deliver it, but that was super nice of him! Unlike whichever neighbor got my Christmas gift and kept it. Lord help me if I see someone in the neighborhood wearing my t-shirt….

2 – I previously filed a second claim, this time online, for the missing Etsy package and the post office came back saying the postal carrier delivered it (I’m sure they did – just not to the right box), so I spoke to Etsy customer service, opened a case, and was refunded yesterday. I tried dealing with the seller directly but all they kept saying is “tell me how I can help” even after I told them how they could help. I was even willing to order again from them if they could ship the item UPS (which I told them I would pay for) but their response was “tell me how I can help”. I think there was a language barrier. An Etsy rep assured me the refund would not be deducted from the seller before I summitted my claim (I think Etsy eats the cost) as I did not want to harm a small business. It’s not their fault the post office sucks!

3 – I’m still waiting to hear back from the place I ordered my Cure box set from. I submitted an inquiry a week ago and it said to expect 5 business days for a response due to heavy volume. I wonder how many other people never got their orders. Without a tracking number how can I confirm they even really sent it? Ugh.

The Universal Music Store, where I ordered my Cure box set, did in fact reimburse me, so I ordered the set from Amazon and not only did it arrive in two days, it was $10 cheaper. Lesson learned; no more overseas pre-orders for this gal.

Family Dinner

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The kids came over Friday (just them) for dinner. They were a bit late (we agreed on 5:30, they texted earlier in the day to say they’d be over closer to 6, but arrived around 6:10 (turns out K had been at Indiana Beach with her SO and they caught traffic getting home)).

E brought us another copy of Aggravation.

I’m not terribly fond of this version. It’s sweet how he always buys them for us, though.

He also got me a Cure vinyl import called Pillbox Tales I had never even heard of!

I made spaghetti and meatballs with garlic bread for dinner, which they loved (my meatballs came out fantastic even though I haven’t made them in years) and we played UNO all evening. They left around 11 pm.

Yesterday I realized you can make public portions of your collection in Libib (a free app/website I use to track all our music, DVDs, and video games) so I published my vinyl collection and shared the link with E. He in turn shared his whole collection from the same app, haha! I wonder if he got the idea to use it from an Instagram post I made a few years ago when I started using it. I’ll have to ask him next time I see him.

Christmas 2021

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I am so glad Christmas is over! Why does everyone obsess over Christmas to the point where it begins in October now? By the time the actual day arrives I’m just over it.

I took all the decorations down yesterday and spent hours photographing and documenting it in hopes it will be much less stressful in future years. I have a decent pile of things to donate/sell too.

This year was extremely low-key with just Joe, me, and Wookie. Joe and I exchanged a few gifts, mostly off our wish lists, except for a tray for the Crosstrek console that he found. I haven’t driven my car in awhile so I haven’t tried installing it yet. He also got me a plastic divided tray to store all the pieces for my letterboard, and a Blu-Ray set that has Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End.

My favorite gift were these drink coasters of some of The Cure’s more colorful albums:

Aren’t they awesome? Strangely enough the Esty account he purchased them from has since disappeared which is unfortunate since they are so nice I wouldn’t mind ordering more. Not that I would actually use them. I have them displayed on the shelf over my computer desk.

I got Joe some hunting knives, bar soap (hey, he asked for it!), coffee beans, and lotion from Bath & Body Works. It seems lame, but he was happy. We’re just getting to the point where we don’t want/need many things so we haven’t been going all out on gifts.

Timeline

On Christmas Eve we went to K’s house to exchange gifts (she gave me my birthday ones as well). We usually have lunch when we visit but thanks to Omicron we decided to stay masked and only visited for about an hour so that we could get home and have lunch (which ended up being White Castle because Joe had a craving). That evening we had leftover chinese food from the night before.

On Christmas Day we opened our presents before a big breakfast consisting of my three cheese grits casserole, bacon, toast, and eggs. For dinner we had ham (warmed up in the crockpot), buns, corn, and garlic mashed potatoes. Personally, I could do without the ham but Joe likes it. We also watched a few Christmas movies like Home Alone & National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.