The moon was full and rising at the horizon. I knew it would be a longshot, but I had hoped to get a glimpse of NGC 4517 and NGC 5746. To make matters worse, when I stepped into the backyard, our neighbor forgot to turn their backyard flood lights off. I was able to position my scope behind the shadow of a tree. This allowed me to get my first shot at T CrB, but after a few attempts at both NGC 4517 and NGC 5746, I had to give up.
First visual magnitude estimation! I used the variable star plotter from the AAVSO to print a page of the nearby starfield (chart X36730BBN). It includes known magnitues of nearby stars. Using this chart I estimated T CrB to be 10.2 using the star directly north of it (magnitute 10.6) and the star directly west of it (magnitude 9.9) as points of comparison.