Eps Cas unaided

We had some rain and a little snow yesterday but today was clear and sunny so I decided to give my light poluted observatory another shot. Tonight I was able to spot eps cas unaided. It wasn't easy and I had to use averted vision but there it was, a mag 3.3 unaided in south Texas. Unbelievable! I was going to try for some of Matt Wedel's objects in Cassiopeia but I stopped at IC1805 which wasn't even on the list. This is the Heart Nebula and I saw it as a faint cloudiness. To find it I started at eps cas and the 4-star Y shaped asterism about a degree NE of eps. About a half binoc field to the right brought me to mag 7.1 HD14010 and its brighter companion. Another field to the right took me to the faint cloudiness of IC1805 or at least that's what I told myself at the time. While looking for some sort of distinctive asterism that I could use as a waymark, I spotted an obviously Scorpio-looking group of 8 stars between mag 6 and 7 that turned out to be where the famous Double Cluster in Perseus is located. The double cluster isn't much in 10x50s and nothing at all like what I remembered in Colorado a few years ago but the asterism was nice. I was getting a bit chilly - it warmed up to low 60s but then dropped again after the sun went down - so I decided to close out with M31 again. I found it fairly quickly by using the bright triangle of Cas to point the way and once again M31 presented itself. It seemed somewhat brighter tonight and I was able to make out a small arc of three mag 7 - 7.6 stars nearby. Mag 5.3 32And was clearly visible in the field and is near the SW extent of M31 but I could only see the center portion of the galaxy.
That was enough for one night. I opened up the garage door, turn on the lights, packed up my observing chair and gear, and called it a night. Very nice.