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A little over a month ago, I purchased a bird feeder. I have a lot on our property; however, the one I bought also has video, and since then, I’ve been able to view their livestream daily from the comfort of my home. I liked that bird feeder so much that I purchased another feeder, and about two weeks ago, I bought another.

I’ve found myself uploading videos daily to a YouTube channel dedicated to my bird feeders, and because of that, I’ve had to brush up on video editing. Now granted, my video editing skills weren’t the greatest; however, it got me by enough to create videos that I’d send to family; however, since I have not actively posted any video content since my daughter was about five years old, I’ve found that I have a whole lot to learn. I must say that I’m enjoying the experience. Initially, I used iMovie; however, I still felt limited, so I opened up FinalCut Studio. I purchased that software at the end of last year to relearn it, but then I encountered some unexpected obstacles, and my “downtime” became non-existent. However, since things are slowly starting to settle down and I desperately need to have a way that I can decompress daily, I thought video editing would be the perfect outlet for me.

I typically post a video at 6:00 a.m. daily and schedule the footage a day ahead. This weekend, I’m hoping to schedule videos for at least one week ahead. If I get two weeks knocked out, that would be even better; however, that might be too lofty a goal. Regardless, I’m enjoying relearning Final Cut Pro and sharing my love of bird-watching with others.

 

Monday, I noticed some unusual transactions in my checking account. I checked out where they originated and could confirm that these payments were not mine. Calling my bank, I was told that these were ACH transactions, and I’d need to come into the bank, fill out the required paperwork, to stop the activity. I did that yesterday, and I closed that account and opened a new checking account. I then went through making sure my credit cards, investments, car insurance, were all linking to the proper bank account. I have a few more accounts to update; however, for the most part, I am finished. I check my accounts regularly, so this has rarely happened to me. Last week, I remembered receiving a few alerts from Lifelock (An identity theft company) that several sites were potentially compromised based on an application used by all those companies. I would not be surprised if that’s how the hackers accessed my information.   The last time I had unauthorized access to my checking account, it was similar. Thankfully, I could take care of it without any lost funds.

I’m looking forward to the three-day weekend. It’s been a busy work week; however, I cannot say that I mind it at all. I work remotely 100% of the time. I purposely positioned my office desk to have a fantastic view of the outdoors, and I look outside often.

Shop opening soon

I’m slowly creating items that I’ll release online. After that, I most likely will use Etsy and have the items featured on my website. There’s still a lot of behind-the-scenes work to complete, and I’m okay with that.

Sundays are typically when I spend a few hours doing meal prep. For example, yesterday, I used my Cuisinart Digital Air Fryer again to make more fries.

I must say that I’m getting better at making them without burning the fries. The fries were crispy and flavorful. Unfortunately, there were only a few fries left. I only had a few fries since I wasn’t hungry; however, my daughter ate the majority that I’d prepared. Which, of course, made me feel great.

 

Meal Prep

Since we were out of cookie dough, I made more. This time I made oatmeal raisin cookies.

I’ve made enough of the oatmeal raisin cookie dough to make at least three dozen cookies. First, I placed the cookie dough onto wax paper, which I rolled into cylinders. Next, I placed cling wrap over the wax paper. The majority of the dough is headed for the freezer. Then, when my daughter wants fresh baked cookies, she can make them.

She made the above oatmeal raisin cookies about 1.5 hours after I’d made the dough. Since the dough had time to cool, they maintained its shape when she baked them in the oven. In addition to the cookies, I made homemade chocolate. I used cacao powder. Yes, I used the real deal, not that fake wanna-be chocolate that many companies passed off as the real thing.

About an hour before bedtime, I started prepping my rice by rinsing it thoroughly in my rice bowl and placing the cleaned rice into my Zojirushi rice cooker. I set it to be completed by 6:00 am.

When I came downstairs this morning, my cooked rice was ready. I love It always makes perfectly cooked rice every single time. My only regret is not having purchased one sooner.

I didn’t feel like making dinner after I got off of work at 6:00 today, and that’s perfectly fine. There’s plenty of food in the refrigerator for my daughter and the freezer. Since I do a lot of meal prep, there’s always a variety of food that we can choose. Some of the food is in the refrigerator; however, most of the food I place in the deep freezer.

I’m looking forward to drinking my hot chocolate this evening. I don’t drink alcohol; I find hot chocolate or herbal teas to be the perfect nighttime beverage.

A few weeks ago, I started having issues with my computer. Turns out, I had a hard drive failure. Whoops! Since I didn’t have the time to replace it myself, I finally got around to having it taken in to be replaced last week. The computer is still under warranty. It arrived back today and now I’m in the process of adding everything back to my desktop computer. Thankfully, nothing was lost, so yes… all my documents and pictures are intact.