Am I doing it right? Living this southern Ontario lifestyle now? Because I have a Costco membership again! Of course, I swung by Costco at the worst moment of the week – Saturday afternoon. It was a ZOO! I went to the Waterloo location. I think I was there for 3 hours and didn’t even see the whole store.

Here’s my new bestie who signed me up for my membership. She said we’re both Sagittarius, love adventure, and have no intention of ever dying. She’s so good at her job, she got me for the Executive membership and a new Mastercard. Well done lady. (What have I done, I don’t even live that close to a Costco).

The store was so busy, that I couldn’t even see it all. It was just so full of carts and people. But I got Mom and me a bunch of bulk things we eat so I don’t have to go to the local store as often. Flats of protein shakes, Diet Coke, and some Celsius energy drinks just in case ☺️ I got enough granola bars and snacks to last months. I only got into the meat department far enough to get Mom her favourite honey garlic sausage in bulk, and then I needed some freezer Ziplocs to freeze serving-sized portions. The rest of the meat department was so stuffed with people and their carts, I lost the battle. My new bestie promises I can get a refund on the executive membership if I don’t use it enough. The good news is they are building one in Thunder Bay so we’re all set!

Birdweather

When I sold my former employer’s stock this summer, before reinvesting it, I bought myself something I’ve wanted for two years. The Birdweather PUC device! It looks like this:

I bought the little plastic housing to shelter it. The PUC itself is the green unit inside.

It listens for birds in your yard and records a little sound recording of each one and identifies it as best it can. You can tweak the settings, including the confidence level you want to use. It does make some mistakes. It heard a swan a few times this month and when I listened to the audio clips, they were all distant car horns beeping when someone in the neighbourhood locks their car. In Dawson, our dripping eavestroughs sounded like black-backed woodpeckers.

When you have one of these, you can download an app for your phone to review the recordings. When I see something obviously wrong, I delete it. On one of my last days in Dawson, it recorded a mountain bluebird, so Cecilia and I went looking for it, but we didn’t spot it. The sound clip was a perfect match to what they sound like so ti wasn’t a fluke!

Here at Mom’s house, she has a line of cedar hedges behind her place that the birds love! It’s so loud with house sparrows most days! The neighbours keep a bird feeder full that the blue jays and squirrels love. (Sorry Dawson residents, they are still cutting grass here!)

It records the weather too, but I always find it a few degrees too high. I think I can tweak that in the settings though so I’ll try to fix that.

Anyway, I finally got around to making a page so you can see the bird stats today in our yard (or in my Mom’s as that is where it is now). You can see it at https://lisa.blog/birdweather/, and there is a shortcut to it in the right sidebar on the main page.

Pictures

Also, a few other random photos from lately:

I got a haircut:

I got a swag order in from my new employer. I even have GitHub socks now!

Jeff and I video chat all the time. Hank joins in sometimes:

Last night was the annual Dawson City Museum auction and it was rough not being there. Sounds like it was as great as always! I stopped at a Christmas craft show today, but it just isn’t the same as being at the craft shows in Dawson. I didn’t buy a thing!