Pokematic's Dolls and Gymnastics in Ann Arbor Adventure

Hey everyone. Little backstory, mskate is into American Girl Doll and Gymnastics, and I'm into Diners Drive-Ins and Dives. On Saturday March 2nd all 3 of those things came together in Ann Arbor Michigan. In one of the nearby cities there was a major local American Girl Doll sale where multiple people were selling parts of their collections. Not to far away in Ann Arbor there's Crazy Jim's Blimpy Burger, a small burger place that was featured on Diners Drive-Ins and Dives. Then at University of Michigan, the state college that's in Ann Arbor, there was a men's gymnastics competition between them and Oklahoma University. I'll get to all this in a moment, but first I'd like to thank my sponsor, good luck. Have you ever wanted to live an interesting life, one great for being an influencer type person like myself where you have things to talk about online? Well with good luck you can get this. Go to the good luck store and mention pokematic, and you can get a fun life so you can make blogs and vlogs like me. Jokes aside, lets get into the story.

OK I'll actually start out with a funny story from earlier in the week. Mskate was taking care of my grandma on Thursday and without her around I decided I was going to see Madame Web because it seems like it might be leaving theaters soon (because it's bombing hard) and I like the Sony Spiderman Universe. I didn't tell her I was going to the movies because I didn't think it was that big of a deal, and it wasn't known when she'd get home so she might not even notice I left. Like a responsible theater goer I silenced my phone before the movie started. About an hour and 10 minutes into the movie I decided to check the time on my phone because I forgot my watch at home, there are 12 missed calls and multiple missed texts trying to figure out where I am (my brother in law asked if I died). Apparently mskate was freaking out that I wasn't home and thought something bad happened, so she called my mom asking if she knew where I was and called her dad to try to figure out what was going on. I didn't mean to cause problems, I just wanted to see a movie. That was funny.

OK, now for the main story. Mskate found an American Girl Doll swap meet about this time last year that we missed out on, and kept it in mind to make sure we didn't miss it this year. I'm not much of an AG fan but I appreciate the neat dolls and the stores as seen in my vlogs to the Columbus store.

We got there pretty close to when it opened and started looking around. Mskate wanted to get the Christmas outfits and Addie books, and maybe some other things. There were many venders of different types. Unlike things like craft shows or flea markets where everyone is kind of "a professional seller," there were some people who were like professional sellers and some that were just collectors that are leaving the hobby. Basically it was everything American Girl had to offer, mostly clothes and accessories, and a number of playsets and dolls, but some people had the books and one person had a bunch of empty boxes for sale. One of the venders was a former employee of the Columbus store that was selling display model dolls and an employee apron she picked up when the store was closing (because it's unfortunately closed now). I almost bought one of the store display dolls that was mounted on a piece of display wood since I love "store things" (I have a "thank-you for shopping at blockbuster sign," a family video "free kid's movies" and "new releases" sign, a Chuck-E-Cheese table topper, various display stands, and some other things), but as I said I'm not super into American Girl Dolls so $50 for something that only has some attachment to and interest in is not really worth it. It was pretty fun. skate found some books and outfits that interest her, and I found a toy camera and can of almonds (the same brand that Mskate really likes). After the first purchase we didn't have a bag, so I pulled out the grocery bag I keep in my picket and used that for our purchases. She got one of the first outfits from the 90s and a christmas dress (don't remember which doll it's for though).

Now that the American Girl Doll sale was over, we went to Crazy Jim's Blimpy Burger. Part of the great thing about Tripple D is that it spotlights restaurants that aren't like 5 star and super expensive, but are still very good and successful (it's not like a "bar rescue" or "restaurant impossible" where the restaurant might be bad again by the time that the episode airs, or completely out of business, making them a "safe pilgrimage"). Then there's the other great thing that the featured restaurants are all over America, and I've started keeping a list of restaurants in places I might go to one day. One of the restaurants on that list is Crazy Jim's Blimpy Burger, a burger stand in Ann Arbor Michigan. This isn't the first time I've been there (vlog below), but this is the first time they had pumpernickel buns (and I love pumpernickel bread when I can get it on special occasions). On their bun options they have pumpernickel listed, but they didn't have it the other 2 times I'd been there. Anyway, it was great. I had a triple with cheddar cheese, grilled onions, grilled banana peppers, grilled salami, lettuce, raw onions, and pickles on the pumpernickel bun. Mskate had a double with pepper jack cheese and grilled mushrooms on a bed of lettuce. Definitely not healthy, but REALLY good, definitely recommend. On the TV for customers they had food network on (as I think they always do), and it just to happened to be Triple D; it wasn't their episode, but it still was Guy.

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And here's the vlog from one of my other times.

While we were on our way to Blimpy Burger, mskate looked into the gymnastics meet. She knew it was a gymnastics meet happening but couldn't figure out how to buy tickets. While we were at Blimpy Burger mskate figured out it was a free event so we just had to go to the arena. We drove to the arena and found parking while finding our way to the arena entrance. Apparently UofM gives out free souvenirs at every event, and this time they were giving out capes. The even cooler thing is the seats were unassigned, and we were able to sit right up close to the floor routine mat. Mskate wanted to sit up higher but then I said "babe, when are you going to be able to sit almost front row again?" so we sat right close to where they do the floor routine. I'm not into gymnastics or sports in general, but I do kind of enjoy watching things in person and stadium energy; I have no energy watching alone on TV or online, but if I'm watchin in person surrounded by excited fans I have some energy. What was really cool is I got a picture with the Wolverine Trooper.

The event was pretty cool. I got a lot of videos and pictures of the competition, specifically the competitors that mskate and her mom like. What was really funny is they steadied the rings for the ring event using a crutch. I also saw some pretty wild falls, which was interesting. They also gave away t-shirts between events, and while we didn't win them I did take note of how they did the tight roll for throwing, and learned how to do that for when we travel since it will make it better for packing (less space).

Good news is UofM won, which made everyone very happy. After the event the entire team was signing autographs. I had them sign the picture they were giving out, and mskate had them sign one of the capes we got. I was able to get the picture signed faster than mskate, mainly because I was willing to hold my arm above the children that were taking a long time to get through the line. I ended up getting pictured and ending up on the U of M website in my yellow shirt and puffy jacket and blue jeans (school colors) as I'm reaching over children to get the autographs of the team.

Protected picture of me in the crowd.

It was quite a fun and full day. Sunday was pretty basic, just went to church, got my hair cut, cleaned my shower, and my kitchen faucet decided to break so I got the replacement and called a plumber. It should get fixed on Tuesday. Yep. Well this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Pokematic's Christmas through New Years Vacation (with a little Thanksgiving and Advent)

Hey everyone, time for my annual Christmas blog, and this year I'm throwing in New Years and Thanksgiving for a little extra fun. First I'll start with Thanksgiving, which was pretty basic. Mskate and I went to my parents and we had thanksgiving with the family, then we had desert and accordion playing. The next day IRA and I went black friday shopping, but the most interesting part of that was IRA woke mskate and I up at 4:30 saying "it's time for shopping it's time for shopping." Why, because everyone was empty, didn't have the same craziness as last year. When I went back to work there were people talking about how the news was all ready to interview people like they did last year but there wasn't anyone out. It was fun enough, we still bought a fair amount of things, but nothing to write home about. This is why I didn't do one this year; I'm sure I could have woven an entertaining story, but I just didn't feel inspired this year. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas Mskate and decorated for Christmas, wrapped gifts, and I did a 12 days of Christmas puzzle advent calendar. It was quite fun and I framed it quite nicely where it'll make a good decoration in the years to come. Given how busy we were and how short Advent was this year Christmas came pretty fast. Because it went so fast we almost didn't do the county lights this year, but we did after work on like the 21st, and we did it with my grandma and mom. Since it's a drive through exhibit thing we wanted to take her to it for a year or 2 now, but kept forgetting. She really enjoyed it.

OK time for Christmas Eve. First I'll start with it being REALLY foggy around where everyone lives. This made things rater interesting. Mskate and I packed up our car with all the gifts we were giving away and overnight stuff for the 2 days we'll be staying at the in-law's house. The fog was kind of cool on the drive up, kind of like a Halloween atmosphere. We dropped off all the overnight stuff and divided the gifts between who we were giving them to (my grandma, her family, and my family). I did the dividing while she settled in with the overnight stuff. We also visited some with her family, and then went off to the McDonald's by my grandma's.

For those who might be new to the blog, when I was little and we do the gift exchange with my grandparents, we'd all go to the McDonald's that's a block away and then Santa would come while we're eating lunch. To this day we still go there because it's part of the tradition. Now for the silly fun time story of this. I have the McDonald's app which means I can get free food and discounts while also getting points for future free food and discounts so long as I log in. However, I don't know if it's my phone, how I use my phone (normally I have location and mobile data turned off, so connecting can take some extra time), or just the android app, but it regularly crashes or becomes unresponsive whenever I try to use it. IRA also wanted the Kerwin Frost adult happy meal toys, so we got 2 of those for the family members that wanted chicken. We also got my grandma a happy meal; mom said "is it just so you have the ebay inventory toy," and I said "no, it's that but it's also just enough food for her and it gets apple slices for mskate." I'm going through the app trying to maximize the savings while the family is saying "I'm hungry." I eventually get us saving quite a fair amount of money with the discounts. It ended up going really well, and VikingPolak was able to get a free McChicken with the points since he still needed some food after everyone was done. We also got some very interesting chicken nugget toys with the Kerwin Frost box.

With McDonald's eaten we went to her house and exchanged gifts. It was primarily everyone giving grandma gifts and her giving everyone else gifts. We got grandma a bunch of snack foods, a build a bear outfit, a cinderella doll to go with her micky and minnie doll, and some other things. She gave me Krabby Patty Fruit Snacks, Duckman the complete series, a pokemon puzzle, lemon cookies, Dragon Ball season 3, Perfect Blue on steel book, hazelnut wafer rolls, goldfish, highlander on 4K, young justice season 3, a yo-yo, burger king gift cards, a reindeer ornament, a spongebob magic towel, hot chocolate, a meat stick and cheese pack, and a wooden puzzle marble run. This is a high level model that is fragile with a lot of pieces, definitely not for kids. Mskate got hair clips, popcorn, 2 hairbrushes, a disney mystery box stuffed animal (it was pumba in the shape of a pretzel), socks, a Lizzie Maguire mug, fruit snacks, gluten free cookies, jelly beans, milk chocolate truffles, smoked guda spread, a glitter star tree topper, bath bombs, crayola hat, hair ties, harry potter fruit snacks, an Anna from frozen magic towel, hot chocolate, and peppermint peeps. All the while we had the Arendale Yule Log playing on the TV, it made for a nice festive. After all the gifts we made it to church. While on the way I got some great video of the flog.

Video is uploaded with creative commons attribution, click here for details (youtube rumble)

After mass we had dinner, pizza I think. We then said our goodbyes and went to mskate's parent's house. When we got back we did some additional gift exchanges, I got some pokemon mega blocks and a mcdondald's gift card I think. Mskate got a peanuts christmas display thing, some ornaments, and a starbucks gift card. We also gave Delilah some gifts, peanut butter filled cow hooves and jerky treats. We gave her one of the peanut butter cow hooves when they had to put Duke to sleep earlier this year, and she was happy to have more of them since she really likes peanut butter. The rest of the night was pretty calm, I watched A Christmas Story on TBS as part of my tradition, and made some jokes on twitter about how it was my tradition. Having watched the first airing in full I didn't have to drive my families crazy with "I have to watch A Christmas Story on TBS." What was great was I was able to shower during the commercial break and miss nothing. Yay.

OK it's now Christmas morning. IRA is super excited (bragging about how he only slept for 2 hours). Before I get to the fun stuff, I need to explain/remind a thing about my father-in-law. He's notoriously hard to shop for, either thinking that what you got him is too low of quality or thinking that you spent way to much on something. I have cracked him though, what he needs are household items he doesn't yet have and doesn't realize he wants. We ended up getting him washing machine cleaner, gaffers tape, 3 different bird feeder feeds, pet stain cleaner, and a novelty sign that says "forget about the past you can't change it, forget about the future you can't know it, forget about the present because I didn't get you one" (we had him open that last). He liked all of them. For Delilah her final present from us were pawstruck dog bone treats. She REALLY liked those. They were a little big for her but she loved jumping on it and biting it and breaking off crumbs she later licked up. I think I won Christmas for the dog (at least for now, more on that later). From them I got more pokemon mega blocks (specifically the pokeballs that make for great desk decorations, IRA had them stacked together since they link together on the top), a pikachu children's model (I think I'll do a "model review" where I give Crash a friend), pokemon puzzles, a tin of breakfast blend tea, a buckees shirt, a Naruto mug with Naruto socks, a new polo work shirt, a Naruto shirt, more McDonald's gift cards, a lego parrot, gum, life savers candy, a stuffed snorlax, and a stuffed dragonite. IRA picked out the Naruto stuff because when we went to Disney I had ramen twice, and he associates ramen with Naruto and not "I can make my own food/broke college student." Oh well, I like Naruto even though I haven't watched it in a long while. Mskate also gave me some things here. She gave me a gourmet cookie that she bought from someone at church and a hot sauce variety pack. I gave her her presents from me the day after with my parents. She got peeps, Harry Potter legos, a calendar, stationary, a saint a day book, a harry potter shirt, a harry potter mini backpack purse thing (similar to loungefly but not that brand), cheese knives, American Girl Doll accessories, a starbucks gift card, jelly beans, a phone protector, high quality markers for art things, candy canes, a stuffed Harry Potter and Hermione, a stuffed Winnie the Pooh and Piglet, and stuffed santas. We gave IRA various nightmare before christmas things and volume 1 of invincible. It was a great day. I don't remember what we got mom-in-law, but they were things she liked. There's also this funny chocolates we got. It's a company that makes Easter chocolates and they did Santa and his reindeer, but I swear the reindeer were just the bunny mold with antlers on the ears in the foil.

Now with gifts over we went to get mskate's aunt from 2 blocks away. When we got her in we gave her her little gifts from us (rice krispy treats). She really liked them. We had breakfast and all went well. Now for some of the Delilah story, she was going absolutely crazy with the bone thing, running around everywhere, digging in her dog bed, and general hyperactivity. After breakfast aunt's daughter picked her up and went to their next activity. She also brought over her dog Edison, a big dog that they gave some big rawhide treats to that were too big for Delilah. The dogs ran around together and had a lot of fun. I don't know if they knew each other before this, but they enjoyed each other it seems like. We rested for a few hours before going to my parents. I watched A Christmas Story on TNT during this time (because TNT aired it on the odd hours and was a different channel). It was fun.

It's now about 2PM, time for my parents party. We got there before everyone else, and then mom and grandma got there. We helped grandma into the house and got her seated. After Mrs. G joined us we did coloring cookies; one Easter we got my grandma these coloring book cookies with edible markers and we found it's a food and activity my grandma really likes (it's the only thing she eats really quickly). We got her the cookies on Christmas Eve and we did them on Christmas day, with some extras for her to do at a later time. We were going to use the different markers from other times but we lost them. Oh well, we'll get them another time since this is going to be a thing we do with her for a while. After the cookies we did oplatke, a Polish tradition. Mskate and I got the oplatke from our church since ours does it, and it was fun. We did it at our little gathering and dad and vikingpolak did it with our grandpa and aunt. It was a fun little time.

Now for the other part of the party, where my dad and brother came back from aunt and grantpa's. Normally grandma's long time friends with the accordion come over but they had to stay healthy due to an upcoming surgery. Oh well, we still managed to enjoy ourselves, just a lot of talking. We had dinner ham, rolls, corn, green beans, and sweet potatoes. Mom didn't serve the ham on a very good plate, it was pretty shallow resulting in me spilling the juice on myself. It was a good dinner. After dinner we had desert with IRA and mom-in-law joining us. Grandma gave IRA a minions magic towel, and he made his when he got it. Since he's a bit of a doof he activated his towel by soaking it in water, and then bringing it out sopping wet to show everyone. I cleaned up the water he was dripping everywhere. Mom-in-law also brought over a dancing snoopy toy that she got for Christmas to entertain grandma, and I showed her a dance she could do to dance along (hold her arms up in front of herself and do windshield wipers). It was a fun time. When we were done we got grandma all packed up to go home, and went back to the in-laws. Delilah was still very excited, and dad-in-law figured there was something in the new bone that was making her all crazy. Apparently she didn't sleep much that night.

Now it's the day after Christmas, Boxing Day if you're Canadian (which I'm not). Mskate's dad got fed up with the paw struck treats so he threw them out. Delilah was looking around sad that she lost her treat toy. I later dug them out to give to Edison since his dog-mom causes a lot of trouble, so causing her some trouble wouldn't be that bad (he got pretty excited as well, but he just liked the new toy thing). We went to my parent's house and set-up the gifts. We gave my dad a lot of peanuts stuff (peanuts hot chocolate, the Charlie Brown and Snoopy show complete series, 4 TV movie set, and a pop-up card with the Christmas special scene where Linus says what Christmas is all about), and some cooking things I think. We got my mom brownie mix (she really likes to make brownies), bath and bodyworks soaps and lotions, gift cards, and some other things. We got my brother a flash light, shirts, an amo box, beard wash and conditioner (that we got from bed bath and beyond in the bankruptcy sale), and some other things. I got this peanut butter cup and chocolate trailmix insert mix (really good), a game called "nice buns," a squishy stress ball thing, a spongebob puzzle, spiderman across the spiderverse, a slinky, Crash 4 it's about time, pickles, sunflower seed kernels, katamari, spongebob socks, a ruby tuesdays gift card, a taco bell gift card, uber gift card, slide wistle, and a rubix cube key chain. Mskate got dominos, gluten free cookies, an american girl doll play set (a truly me doll she's naming Noel), bath bombs, lotion, and a warming unicorn. Mskate and I got matching Disney shirts, so we know what we'll wear next trip. We also got Disney 100 happy meal toys, a collection process we worked on when it was in restaurants and we are only missing 3. This is also when I gave her my gifts, The Aristocats on Bluray with the Disney 100 slip case with Marie on it (she loves Marie), and Miracle on 34th street. After all the gift giving and breakfast cinnamon rolls and bagels we watched an episode of the Charlie Brown and Snoopy show. It was REALLY funny, I picked a winner. After that we gathered up our stuff from both houses, and went home. For the next many days I was just working on finding places to keep all our new gifts. One thing I need to do is find a place in the curio cabinet for the happy meal toys that are basically just figures.

The days between Christmas and New Years were pretty chill. For the most part I organized our new presents and rested. 2 days before New Years Eve we went up to mskate's parent's house so she and dad-in-law could see The Polar Express in IMAX for his birthday, and IRA and I went to see The Boy and the Herron, the movie the Hayao Miyazaki came out of retirement for, reopening Studio Ghibli just to make (though basically that just meant that the people that made Studio Ponok went back to the old offices since they made their own studio after Ghibli closed). It was a really good movie, even though it had a lot of "Ghibli old lady face" and "Ghibli fluids," along with some "Ghibli frog face" if I'm not mistaken (3 elements of Ghibli movies I don't care for). I'll be making a review at some point. Since the theater we went to was close to where Cousin M lives IRA and I stopped by after the movie for an impromptu visit. We talked for maybe an hour just catching up, which was great since we didn't see him at Christmas. Then the day before New Years Eve we had a funeral for one of the scout moms from my old Boy Scout troop. It was sad but it was great seeing so many people I haven't seen in over a decade. Since she was so involved in the troop (regularly being an adult leader on camp outs and driving us up in her 15 passenger van (the memory I shared in facebook that made the sons smile, and I shared in the "write down a memory"). So many people from my old troop came, so many people I remembered but didn't recognize (I said "who am I not recognizing" but when he said his name I would remember instantly). After the funeral the luncheon was held at the VFW post that we would regularly partner with for blood drives with or hold banquets at. One of the VFW men recognized me from 12+ years ago, which was so cool. It was just a regular troop reunion, and the good thing is since mskate and I grew up in the same area she knew a number of people and wasn't "I don't know anyone, stick with me and don't socialize to the full extent with your old friends" like I imagine many spouses would be in situations like this. About halfway through before one of the sons had to leave we took a picture with all the old scouts that were there including the old scout masters. Just a great little thing.

Now it's New Years Eve, I had some ebay packages to mail so I went to Meijer for the authorized USPS shipping location. While there I did some shopping and used some coupons while also buying on sale Christmas stuff (primarily chocolates, but also a dog sweater for Delilah next Christmas). I basically got everything for 50% off, yay. Then after my shopping I went to Wendy's and got one more free Jr. Frosty (got mskate a small vanilla diet coke and I had the frosty). Then it was time to go to our camping friend's New Years Eve party. Our contribution to the party was a meat and cheese tray, plate of cookies, champagne, fireworks, and board games. The food went over very well, and the champagne was great for the New Years toast. The game we brought was the Nice Buns game my mom got me for Christmas, and it was a really fun game. The goal is to get 3 sets of 3 cards of the same color (9 total) before your opponents, while also avoiding the "fishy buns" which prevent you from making a set, while rolling dice that determine how many new cards you can get and if you can get rid of your fishy bun if you have it, and while there's a lot of chance with the drawing of cards and rolling of dice there's also a lot of skill with how the players play the dice and cards. We had one game that went on for about an hour because we got really into strategy of how to play the dice and cards, and played it 2 or so other times. It's a really fun game and will be bringing it camping. Since my godfather and his family weren't going to be there for the ball drop I lit off some of my fireworks for my godbrother around 10PM (the others would be done at midnight). He's still young and doesn't have the "backyard shows," so he was yelling "you need to call the fire department, I've never seen up close fireworks." My godfather was a little nervous about this since he's been to some irresponsible backyard shows, but he also knew I was responsible and safe. I lit off 3 in the drive way while he and my mom stood at a far distance, and he thought they were really cool. I'm sure there's going to be some "can we do fireworks like [Pokematic] did" and there's going to be things like "no, that's a thing only specially trained people like Mr. [Pokematic] are able to do on New Years and the 4th of July." Mom also took a photo of me with the firework and said "you're just like [you're uncle who would light off the fireworks when we did 4th of July parties 20 years ago]." We all just hung out until about 10 minutes to midnight, and then we started getting ready for the ball drop. I popped the cork on the champagne into the back yard and poured as many glasses as the hosts had, and everyone that wanted some got it. I also jokingly told the hosts "send one of your kids to find the cork in the morning." We counted down the ball and toasted the drinks. I lit off the remaining 6 or so fireworks for an audience of about 5 people. The fun thing is I bought this kit and box of tanks about 7 years ago and have been gradually lighting them off 1-4 at a time over new years and 4th of July at my house, and with this it's now about done (still have some small ones and tanks left, but "the show pieces" are all done now). Now it's time for me to get a new kit since everyone really liked them (and hopefully I can get some on sale now that new years is over). Shortly after the fireworks it was time to go home.

So there you have it, my Christmas and New Years 2023 extravaganza (with a hint of Thanksgiving and Advent). It was quite a great time. It was also quite an eventful 2023 (which I'll recap in another blog). New Years day is the last day of my break (which went very quickly), and will be populated with various "get ready for the work week" stuff (and maybe some sales to get more fireworks). This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Oh and here's Steamboat Willie, hosted by me on this blog (not linked). I can do so because it is now 2024 and Steamboat Willie is now public domain.

Pokematic's Christmas 2022 Blog

Hey everyone, it's that jingle jangle time again. Before I get to real Christmas, I need to tell a little story about the last day of work for the year. My one co-worker retired at the end of the year and the 23rd was his last day. I wore my Pikachu shirt for him like I do whenever a coworker leaves the company, and it was a pretty slow day. I basically worked on paperwork all day while I watched Christmas specials (Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, Shortsmas with Big City Greens, Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire, Click Clack Moo Christmas at the Farm, A Garfield Christmas, Santa and the Three Bears, Ernest Saves Christmas, and The Night Before Christmas). Mskate and I also had to get the car ready for the big trip to our parents house. So the midwest was expected to have a giant winter storm over Christmas, and we had to make sure we made the 40 mile trip all OK. We packed up a case of water, a bunch of snack foods, some blankets, candles, the power brick, and hand warmers. We ended up not needing them, but better to have and not need than need and not have. Mskate packed up the car (or as I say at this time, sleigh) while I was at work and we were ready for our trip. It was pretty packed. She had to work 5-9PM at her retail job and with the bad weather I dropped her off and picked her up. The snow wasn't all that bad (primarily super cold and windy), but I still decided to take a trial run on the free way to pick-up a game at Best Buy (in-store pick-up) to make sure it was going to be OK tomorrow (and it was safe, and the game was Oddworld Soulstorm on XBOX by the way).

The 24th was the big start of the festivities, gift exchange with my grandma. Before we went there we unloaded our overnight stuff at Mskate's parents house since we wouldn't need it at grandma's house. We had to make sure IRA didn't see the bag we got him since that was his big surprise (I'll get to that later). We met the family at grandma's house to unload her presents and start setting up the piles. Mskate and I were there first so we did the bulk of the setting-up, and then everyone else showed up soon after. We got everyone packed-up so we could go to McDonalds like we've done for nearly 30 years, and I forgot my phone at her house, which meant I wasn't going to get my rewards points on the order. Mskate told me "well I guess you're out of luck on this one," but it was going to be like a $30-40 order and that isn't insignificant, plus she forgot some stuff as well so I walked the 1 block distance back to grandma's house and got my phone and her hat and gloves. Once I got back everyone had their order figured out so we went to the self serve kiosk, put in my reward number, made our order, and I got enough points for a free large fry off the order. It was a fun little thing remembering the fun times.

Now it's time for the gift exchanges. Let's see if I remember everything. The funny thing is grandma got 4 bags of Lindor chocolate balls, all the same flavor. She likes them, but it was just kind of funny. Mskate and I also got her a 50th anniversary Micky Mouse wishimal since she liked the Minnie Mouse we got her last year so much, and puzzles she can do (large piece children's puzzles) since that's something she enjoys doing. I got Morbius, Spiderman No Way Home, Death Stranding, Doki Doki Literature Club Plus, Used Cars, Pokemon Johto League Champions, and candy. Mskate got me Disney nutcracker socks, and the funny thing is it was 6 different socks (not pairs), so I have to mix and match when I wear them. Mskate got a Welly Wisher doll, Courtney slumber party accessories, Micky and Minnie plushies, candy, film for her instaflix camera, and candy. It was a fun time. After the gift exchange it was about time for church, so we got everyone together and we went to grandma's church (we normally go to my parent's church, but it's gotten too hard to do that now). After mass we had dinner at her house (ham), and watched Pluto's Christmas Tree and Santa's Workshop Silly Symphony on Disney plus.

After all that fun we went back to mskate's parents house and did some Christmas Eve presents (because that's a thing her family does). I got a Buckees mug and tumbler, and I think mskate got some ornaments. We gave IRA his "only presents from us," a Nightmare Before Christmas puzzle and a Micky plushy. I also started watching 24 hours of A Christmas Story on TBS, my Christmas tradition for at least the last 10 years. I watched most of the movie on the first airing, but I missed triple dog dare you and Chinese restaurant, so I had to catch that on later airings. After that I fell asleep and was ready for bed. 

OK it's Christmas Morning. Mskate and I woke up a little earlier than everyone else, so I ate a bagel before all the festivities. I like to put peanut butter on my bagels, and apparently only the dogs at the in-laws eat peanut butter, so little Delilah was like "hey, that's my peanut butter, let me have my peanut butter." Unlike my in-laws I don't feed the dogs off my plate (because I know that's bad for dogs), but since I was eating their food I let her lick the butter knife, and mskate got some off my bagel to feed to Duke. It was a good little bagel.

OK, now that IRA is awake it's time for Christmas morning. The in-laws got me a Dreamworks 42 movie collection (which is crazy because I remember the first Dreamworks movie when it released, and have seen 29 of the 42), a Bowser plushie, Super Mario Legos, pokemon megablocks, cells at work issue one, 2 cars toys, a set of ankle weights from mskate, and candy. Mskate got some clothes, Harry Potter Legos, candy, and some other things. IRA was really surprised to find the giant bag of presents mskate and I got him. Here's a really funny thing, we bought him a Santa baby Yoda but couldn't find it (I tore apart the room we kept the gifts in and it wasn't there), so we gave him the Nightmare Before Christmas puzzle instead. Well it turns out that I put it in the Nightmare Before Christmas lunch box we got him, and when he opened it he was super happy. One thing I got my father in law was media remote for his xbox series x that he primarily uses as a streaming box. Well unfortunately Amazon sent me a replacement roku remote instead so I had to make a return. That's annoying, but oh well.

After gift time mskate and I picked up her aunt from 2 blocks away for Christmas breakfast. It was pretty easy getting her to the house, and it was a good breakfast. I had eggs and bacon, and everyone else had an egg and bacon casserole thing. After breakfast mskate and I booked our hotel and flight to see her aunt over New Years. Her aunt isn't doing too well so we're going to see her over New Years for an emergency trip (and she lives in New Mexico, so look out for a blog on that at some point).

In the afternoon mskate and I went over to my parents for Christmas day fun. We didn't do gift exchange with them yet (that's for the day after), this was the Christmas party with all the family where my parents make dinner and we sing accordion songs. PepperBC and her family came to visit as did TanMan's grandparents and uncle. He called us shortly after they arrived just by coincidence so they were able to have a nice conversation. Cousin M and my in-laws showed up about an hour after Mskate and I arrived. IRA gave grandma and mom a gift of hand soap and lotion from Bath and Bodyworks (we got it from our black friday trip).

Next it was time for dinner. My parents made a pot roast and ham, and my dad borrowed my cast iron Dutch oven to make more food for everyone. There was a kids table and adults table since my parent's dining room table isn't large enough for everyone. We all did Oplatki (a Polish Christmas tradition) with our tables, though I think the kid's table might have been the only one to do it since I was into it. It was really good. After dinner we sang accordion songs. It was a lot of Christmas songs, and was fun. I'm glad my in-laws enjoy Christmas with my family. After that we had desert, lemon meringue pie, chocolate cake, and ice cream. I had both, and it was yummy. My mom gave IRA a little present, and it was a Tamagotchi. I got it set-up for him, and he wasn't really into it but I was so it kind of became mine.

After the Christmas party mskate and I went back to her parent's house. I watched some more A Christmas Story since I love watching that movie at Christmas (and at some point throughout the day I watched the parts I missed and this was just some fun), and after finishing the final airing IRA and I watched Used Cars. He thought it was hilarious and I have a feeling he's going to want a copy as well. Time for bed.

Now it's the 26th, and it's time for after Christmas sales and gift exchanges with my parents. I had another bagel with peanut butter for breakfast (and gave the dogs some thank-you licks for sharing their food with me). Mskate, her family, and I went to the mall to have a look for things. We got some Sees  (Ceese, Seeces, I don't know how it's spelled) gourmet candy from the pop-up store. After that we went to the other side of the mall to go to the basic candy store to get a spongebob surprise egg for me (if they had one that wasn't squidward according to the product number on the bottom), and some harry potter candy for IRA. I was able to get a chocolate egg and it ended up being Patrick, yay. After the candy store we went to the lego store and IRA and Mskate made a custom mini-figure. Mskate made one that looked like me and gave it a safety vest with a beard head, legs with pockets in the pants, a cowboy hat (because that was the closest to a fedora), and a pizza box. IRA made one that kind of looked like him. After the lego store we went back to the other side of the mall for Lulu Lemon for Mskate and an outdoor store for me to look for a new winter jacket. Now, I think both of my winter coats are perfectly fine, as does mskate, but all season my mom has been making a big deal about how old my coats are, so we found one that would work for me we would get it just to make her stop bringing it up every time we saw her. Unfortunately they didn't have one I liked, so I said "I'll just have to continue wearing my perfectly good coats that are just as old as can be" (that's a thing my grandma would say about old stuff). Lulu lemon was too crowded so mskate didn't get anything.

After our mall trip we packed up my parent's stuff and went to do gift exchange with them. When we got there I told mom "mom, I wasn't able to find a new jacket, so I'm just going to have to continue wearing my perfectly good jackets that are just as old as can be." She got defensive and denial about how she doesn't care that my coats are old and mskate and I countered with "you are literally the only person that says anything about my coats, and it's every single time we see you." Hopefully this gets through to her about how no one has any desire to replace my coats. We set-up all the presents and now it's time to exchange. I got candy, star bills, a set of family games my mom thought were more mature but they're really children's matching games, Sonic frontier, a mini inflatable dancing man (because my parents have the full size one at their house for now), a movie trivia game, lottery scratch offs (which won $57 on), and some other things I'm forgetting. My brother got socks, beer, Letterkenny DVDs, and money. We gave my parents gift cards, soaps, touch screen winter gloves with a matching hat and scarf, and gaffer's tape. Mskate got a popcorn popper (she really likes popcorn, so single serving popcorn popper is great for her), Friends the complete series blu-ray, a Minnie Mouse necklace (also a black Friday find), and heavy socks. The big thing mskate and I got were German headwear for when we have Octoberfest at church since we didn't have much this year's event, and my Grandma being German she had a hat with real German pins on it, we got that as a present. I also got a men's version of my grandma's hat to put the pins on, and mskate got an artificial flower crown with a ribbon. We'll be very German next year. We also got picture ornaments from our major accomplishments this year. Mine was going to Sault Saint Marie to find an analog Canadian TV channel (of which I have a blog about, that hopefully will get up soon), and mskate with getting her book out. I also have a framed picture of me with the TV with channel 2 on it; I'm going to put it on my desk at work as a conversation starter ("Pokematic, why do you have a framed picture of you with an old TV?" and then I can explain how Canada has 12 channels still broadcasting in analog at the time of this picture, and this was when I found it in November of 2022).

Shortly after that mskate and I packed up all our stuff from both of our parent's houses and went home. It wasn't any problem getting home, and then I unloaded the car to the house. It wasn't any trouble, just a lot of stuff. One funny thing is I tried opening the bed gate on my truck to put some junk in it before we left but it was so cold that it wouldn't open, but then when we got back the bed was open because it got warm enough to melt the gate so we were greeted to an open lift gate on the truck. Now I'm in the process of trying to pack for the New Mexico trip while sorting through all our new stuff. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Oh wow, I never hit publish. Guess I should do that now a year later.

Pokematic's Disney Christmas 2023 Adventure

Hello everyone, I just got back from a big trip to Disney World with my in-laws. Technically it was "moderately sized" because we only went to 2 of the parks, but since we live on the other side of the country every Disney World trip is a big trip. Mskate and her family left about a week prior to drive to a diabetes conference before the big event, and I had to fly just for the Micky's Christmas Party and other Disney festivities. I'll get to the fun events later, but first all the prepping. I bought many snacks for everyone to eat along the adventure, and they packed up most of them while I packed many others. We were also staying at the camp grounds where there was a camp fire thing and outdoor table, so we also brought some of our camping materials (mainly the table cloth and clips, and marshmallow sticks). Then since it was a 2 week trip for the in-laws I packed bags of powder laundry detergent so they could do laundry while we were there. For the week I was by myself I made my chili because I knew mskate doesn't really care for it. Just a simple at home time. Though there was something kind of crazy that happened, the Saturday before I left I had someone win an ebay auction I was running, and paying at 8:04 PM. This resulted in going to 2 different authorized USPS shipping locations trying to find someone that would still take it. I found someone though, so that was good because otherwise it would have had to wait until after the trip (or possibly finding someone in the airport).

Now it's time for the beginning of the adventure. I woke up at about 5AM Sunday morning with the car mostly packed already (just needing the last minute things like my mouth guard), and as I was vlogging my cold feelings I realized I forgot to get my mouth guard. Getting to the airport was nothing super crazy, but like with the New Mexico trip I found an abandoned luggage cart and loaded my carry on bag on it and wheeled it to security. .Unlike last time though I found the cart return and got my quarter. Yay. When I went through security my one bag got flagged, because we had a little smores making present for IRA and the tin set off the alarm. Thankfully no problem and it went through, so no harm no foul. I got to the terminal and started pulling out snacks. My breakfast consisted of Animal Crackers, Cheese Its, and Rice Crispy Treats; not very substantial but it got me through the trip (plus, I had a lot of snacks). The flight was pretty uneventful, though they did have to de-ice the wings (something that happened about 2 decades ago when I went to Disney as a child). I watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mutant Mayhem and half of V for Vendetta. TMNT wasn't very good, I liked some of the things they did and I guess it is on brand considering the lingo from the 80s cartoon, but there was just too much "modern meme culture" for my liking (and I'm someone who likes memes). V for Vendetta was pretty good though, even though I only got to watch about half of it. I also was going to take video of the plane taking off and flying for creative commons uses, but unfortunately the people in my row were already against the window seat and I didn't feel like saying "please move, my ticket is for the window and I need to take creative commons video for my youtube channel." When I touched down in Orlando I wanted to explore the terminal some, but unfortunately with how it's laid out there wasn't much to explore, so I just went to the ride share place and got my uber. I did stop at the duty free shop to maybe pick up a couple dollar mini bottles of liquor (because I knew Disney would be super expensive and eventually I'd want a drink that week, and duty free is always kind of cool), but what normally costs $1 plus tax at the grocery store would have cost $5 tax free. I don't care what the tax rate on alcohol is, I know it's not 400%. While on the uber ride I did end up taking some video while driving that I'm uploading with creative commons attribution.

This video is uploaded with creative commons attribution, you can find the original video here (youtube rumble bitchute)

When we got to the resort the GPS took the driver to the bus entrance, which caused some problems in that we now had to drive around until we found the actual entrance. When I got there I was supposed to beat the in-laws there, drop off my suit case with bell services, and do my smashed penny exploration before they got there. Well they ended up beating me there and started getting the golf cart to drive around the resort (because everything is very spread out and the only way to get anywhere in a reasonable time is with the golf cart or internal bus). We were going to just go to the restaurant and get some lunch while we waited for the cabin to get ready, but I was the one driving and no one in the group was a good navigator, so we ended up going around the entire resort until we got back to the main lobby. Well by the time we made it back the cabin was ready, so we found the cabin and started unpacking. Mskate and I lived in the living room section on the pull out couch and the other in-laws were in the single bedroom. I unpacked my stuff into 3 drawers and made a little nook "mine." After the unpacking we found our way to the restaurant and shared a pizza. It was pretty good and had this fun box design.

With lunch over IRA and I went on the quest for the resort pressed pennies. With Disney celebrating their 100 years of animation there were special 100 year pennies available at various locations. I had gotten many on a previous trip and I just had about 15 left. The plan was to ride different modes of transportation from all the different locations, but I accidentally kept my pocket knife on me from when I was setting up the cabin, so I couldn't go on the transportations that require going through park security. Oh well, the busses still got me Pooh and Piglet, Pocahontas, Meilin, Raya, and Tiana and Naveen. After the adventuring we got back and unloaded. Now for dinner. We had hot dogs that we made at the cabin. We had a little charcoal park grill that I got all set-up, and then roasted using the marshmallow sticks we brought for the party since we didn't have any tin foil for the grill (and park grills are "never clean"). I did the cooking and all went well, and everyone else did the clean up.

After diner we went to the Contemporary Resort because everyone wanted to see the gingerbread house and decorations. This is when I made up for lost transportation fun. We rode the boat from the camp ground to Magic Kingdom, and then rode the monorail to the Contemporary. We did our viewing of the gingerbread house and the rest of the family did some shopping while I did pin trading at the various different shops and service desks at the resort. After they finished their shopping I saw them to the walking path while I waited for a bus to Hollywood Studios. Why'd I want to go to Hollywood Studios at 7PM without a park ticket? Because that's how I could get on the skyliner and ride that transportation. Then take the skyliner to one of the resorts on the rout, take the next bus to a park and then take the bus from the park back to Fort Wilderness. It was quite fun, please enjoy some video and pictures I took.

Then I just love this, it's a K9 unit for Disney security. I wonder if the K9's name is Pluto.

Now it is time for the first "Disney theme fun." We brought the marshmallow sticks because of the campfire sing along with Chip and Dale. The event is free and you can bring your own supplies, but if you don't have supplies Disney will provide them for what is likely an outrageous fee. Being prepared we brought our own. While many people were using the disposable wooden sticks, we were using our telescoping tongs with ergonomic grip, and since I'm quire familiar with proper roasting techniques having gone camping many times and growing up with a fire place in my childhood what we used quite often, I was showing everyone how it was done. One kid was having some trouble with his marshmallow catching on fire so I showed him where to put it. His dad was like "yeah he's the professional, just look at his equipment." The real fun started when Chip and Dale came out for the sing along. We were hoping to get pictures with them (specifically with the dog), but that wasn't part of their appearance (guess one needs a park ticket for that), but it was still fun dancing the Hokey Pokey with them.

Time for Monday, the start of the "real disney adventure." Monday is the day we were going to the Micky's Very Merry Christmas Party at Magic Kingdom from 4PM to midnight. That was going to be great, but it left us with about 8 hours of down time. What are we to do? We went to Disney Springs. IRA kept reminding me "don't bring your knife," and I didn't. The rest of the family really likes to go shopping, but not so much me. So while they were doing their shopping at all the big stores I did the Disney Springs Christmas Tree scavenger hunt. Throughout Disney springs there are various themed Christmas trees with corresponding stickers to line up on a map. If you line them all up, you get a button. I did them all and got myself and mskate a single button for our collection and IRA a button for his (2 total). This worked out quite well because, as I said, I don't really care for Disney shopping and IRA wouldn't have been patient enough to do the hunt even though he definitely would have wanted the button. At about the same time I finished the scavenger hunt they finished the shopping, and we decided to meet at Chicken Guy (the Guy Fiery restaurant). IRA likes the fried chicken, but I just wanted to try the sauces with fries. This time they had more than just ranch and mayonase based sauces, which was great because I don't like either of those. When we got back to the cabin I had one of my ramen bricks. Ramen is such a great hotel food, all you need is hot water and the ramen is very easy to transport, so it makes for a great travel meal. Here are some pictures and video from the scavenger hunt.

There was also this radio controlled talking tree, and it was saying things specific to the audience member it was talking to (like it said "oh you have one of those old school cameras" to me as I use using my camcorder). Pretty neat.

OK, now it's time for the main event, Micky's Very Merry Christmas Party. We drove our golf cart down to the boat dock, got on the boat, and road it to Magic Kingdom. We found our way to the line to get in and there was definitely a better way to queue us; we had to like circle back, stay to the left of the path to let the transportation people through but then cross over that path, things weren't very well defined with constantly having to be herded by cast members, and some other smaller things. Oh well, we eventually made it in and got our wrist bands. We were taken down an employees only corridor where we got our Christmas ornaments. We could have gotten our picture taken with the parade toy soldiers, but we don't care much for the parade characters and the line was kind of long, so definitely not worth it. Our first ride was the Jungle Cruise (or should I say "Jingle Cruise"). While on our way I saw a family with a great set of shifts ("most expensive Christmas ever"); I complimented them on their shirts. For those that don't know, the Jungle Cruise is a river ride through the rainforest with different sets of animatronic animals doing funny things, and during Christmas they give it a Christmas theme with wrapped presents and garland on different set pieces. It's pretty creative. After Jingle Cruse we got dinner at KC's Corner, a garment hot dog quick service. I got a chili cheese dog and it was good.

The next thing we did was some "for the family" attractions. IRA and I went to the Enchanted Tiki Room. This was one of my special needs uncle's favorite attractions. He just loved the singing birds, always singing "in the tiki tiki tiki tiki room, in the tiki tiki tiki tiki room." It was the first time IRA did that experience and was like "I love this, why didn't I do this before?" It's because mskate doesn't really believe in "do it all no matter what" and doesn't do a whole lot. IRA likes having me because now he has someone that says "we're going to do it all." After Tiki Room we went to Small World, my uncle's other favorite ride. Since he was in a wheel chair it was a big ordeal to get him in the boat, so when the ride was over the operator let him ride it as many times as he wanted. I told the operator the story and she thought it was so cool. Mom told me when she saw the wheel chair accessible boat how easier that would have made things 50 years ago. Small world is small world, it's a fun little song with simple animatronics. Since Peter Pan was right next door and was my brother's favorite ride, we rode that one next. It's a fun little dark ride that takes you through the story of Peter Pan. Then because it was right there, we rode the Winnie the Pooh ride. We were able to jump right onto the rides because during the transition period between Christmas party starting and kicking out the non Christmas party guests. What was really great about these is we were unable to do them mskate's and my honeymoon trip due to trouble planning, so that was great to finally do them. Some time around this time I got a picture at Gaston's Tavern. I wanted to get a picture with Gaston, but he wasn't there so I settled for his Tavern. Do you know the joke I'm showing here?

The next thing we did was the first "real Christmas party" attraction, and that is the Tea Cups. What made it "Christmas party" was the music and lights they did (red and green lights and Christmas music). I'm not the biggest fan of the tea cups (not super into spinning rides), but one has to do as much Christmas themed stuff as we can. The next thing we did was go to one of the dance parties at one of the restaurants in tomorrow land. This was a 4 fold thing. First the disability fast pass got screwed up so mskate had to go to guest relations up at the front of the park to sort it out and we needed to wait for her. Second mom-in-law needed to sit down and take a rest. Third, this was a place where we could get free cookies and cocoa because of the party. Fourth, this was my opportunity to meet a character since there was Timon and Doc McStuffin on the dance floor, and I danced with Timon. It was a fun little thing to do. After we had our fun IRA and I went to meet Santa Goofy. It was a bit of a hike and a wait, but nothing too big, we got to meet a Christmas character. I also tried to meet Alice and the White Rabbit, but the line was either long or they were leaving for 40 minutes, so I just missed out on them.

Now for some really fun stuff, tomorrow land Christmas theming. First thing we did was Space Mountain. What makes Space Mountain really cool is is they turn the lights on some, have projected snow flakes on the ceiling, and play Christmas rock music (for us it was Carol of the Bells). It was really fun. Mom-in-law didn't ride it so she just held onto our stuff. After Space Mountain we rode the people mover, mainly because we could get a good view of the inside of Space Mountain and it was right next to it. I took some video of it which was cool.

Now for the "crazy event." The newest ride was the Tron lightcycle roller coaster, where the rider gets in the light cycle and rides it like a pocket bike. This was kind of a crazy endeavor, because as the new ride they did the virtual queue thing, which is like everyone has a fast pass thing, but you can only get in line when they're calling your queue and it's a far narrower window than fast pass, and the ride kept breaking down so our queue kept getting pushed back, and when we got to the disability pass area they didn't have any signs saying what the queue number was so we had to keep checking the app, but then the app wasn't working very well so the only way we got in was because I asked "what are we on now" since it was stuck at 3 spaces before us for like 20 minutes. After that run-on sentence of an ordeal, we got in line and found our locations. Since nothing could be taken and mom-in-law doesn't like roller coasters, we left everything with her. They do have a pretty neat system though, where there are what seem to be free lockers that you drop your stuff in at the start of the ride and then pick-up from the opposite side of the wall on exit, all locked and unlocked with magic bands. There was also a pre-show thing where they "digitize" you. I decided to T-pose because that's how 3D character models are stored in video games, and the people that joined us T-posed as well thinking it was some kind of instruction they missed out on. That made me laugh. Light Cycle Run was OK, it was definitely a fun roller coaster but not worth the effort of getting on it in my opinion. Personally I say wait a year or so for it to no longer need the virtual queue and extra long lines. But as IRA said, it's great that Tron is finally getting some love from Disney. And some time around this time I got to dance with Nick Wild at a different dance party.

Now time for some "opportunity cost." IRA and I wanted to go on Monsters Inc Laugh Floor, but with all the resting mom-in-law needed and the Tron craziness we were cutting it close to the fireworks. Mskate was OK missing Laugh Floor so she and mom-in-law found their way to the fireworks, and IRA and I went to Laugh Floor because we wanted to see it and it was Christmas themed. The show was very similar to normal, but Roz was wearing a Christmas sweater and all the jokes were Christmas themed, and it was pretty fun. However, when we got in the fireworks started and mskate was freaking out wondering where we were, and IRA and I ended up missing the fireworks. Oh well, I was OK with missing them but mskate wasn't able to really enjoy them because she was worried we would be upset. After laugh floor I had enough time to ride Buzz Lightyear before the parade. So they went to find the viewing for the parade and I got to ride Buzz. I got a pretty high score I think, and it was a walk on since everyone was gathering for the parade. At the picture I did a Gene Simons, and then got my picture with Zerg. 

Now for the final event of the night, the Christmas parade. IRA found a perfect viewing spot right by the rout and unobstructed because that was a walking path, and mskate and mom-in-law found a nice place by The Plaza restaurant where they could see things from a table. IRA kept trying to get the ladies to join us, but they didn't want to. The parade was pretty fun, we saw everyone in their Christmas outfits and all sorts of fun things. After the parade we got back on the boat and went back to the cabin.

Now it's Tuesday, a "break day." Today was a day for us to hang out at the resort and do things at the resort. Since dad-in-law was an "Arizona born native cowboy man," we did the horseback riding experience. It was a fun little thing, even though it rained. My horse was Jack, and as I was sitting on him waiting at the stable to go down the trail he kept adjusting his stance. I told him "I know the feeling bud, it's not fun to just stand around waiting." It was kind of a perfect pairing since I also have some trouble standing still. Of everyone I was one of the very few people that didn't need one of the horse trainers to give me directions on how to correct my horse (we got along very well, and I was able to correct him very well). It was a fun hour long adventure. I was the first to get off my horse so I was able to take pictures of everyone as they got off their horses. After the adventure we went back to the cabin and warmed up (because we were all kind of soaked. We basically hung out at the cabin for the rest of the afternoon since it was all rainy (I had my other ramen, and mskate might have gone somewhere to do a little shopping).

Around 4PM mskate and I went out for our anniversary date night. For our special date we went to Beaches and Cream at the Beach Club resort. To get there we took a bus to Hollywood Studios, took the Skyliner to the back door of Epcot, and then walked to "the waterfront themed resorts" that have a walking path to the Epcot back door. The skyliner ride was fun, the Epcot stop is like the farthest stop and requires a long travel, and goes over the France section of the park so we got to see some of that. Before going to the restaurant, we went to the Yacht Club resort and saw their gingerbread lighthouse. I did some pin trading while we were there. After the Yacht Club we went to the Beach Club where the restaurant was. The theming is a beach side ice cream parlor, and their signature menu item is "The Kitchen Sink" (8 scoops of ice cream, every topping in the store, and a whole can of whipped cream *restaurant guests* a whole can!?, where every time someone orders it the lights go dark, the siren lights turn on, and the server announces it to the entire restaurant). It was really fun. I got a French Dip with a s'mores milkshake cocktail (which was quite good, though a little rich for me). Mskate got a fancy grilled cheese, and for desert got a milk shake. It was quite a fun thing.

After dinner we did a little more exploring of the Beach Club and Boardwalk. The main thing I wanted to do at Boardwalk was to get the remaining 100 year pennies I needed; Vanellope, Rapunzel, Bing Bong, Mr. Increadable and Elastigirl and Frozone, Edna Mode, and Joe Gardner. While on our walk we went to a photo booth and took a photo. It was a little expensive but it was an anniversary fun memory. Mskate was getting pretty done by the time we finished getting the pennies, so it was good that the boat dock was right by boardwalk. We rode the boat back to Hollywood Studios and then took the bus back to Fort Wilderness.

Now it's Wednesday, our Animal Kingdom day. In addition to being our park day, this was our character breakfast day. Unlike the 2 Micky waffles, 2 strips of bacon, and a half pint of milk, this was a big buffet at Tusker House with the characters. We got our pictures with Donald, Daisy, Goofy, and Micky.  I can do the voices a little bit and it's always fun when the characters react to me doing their voices. Then I had a giant breakfast of waffles, tater tots, potato wedges, bacon, sausage, a croissant, and a piece of sunrise Savana bread (plain white bread but food colored to look like the rising sun of the Savana). Since this was all you can eat and stupid expensive for what we get, I snuck some bags of waffles and potatoes to eat later (because the $50 continental breakfast isn't just the cost, I'm spending loads on the park tickets and hotels and all the other $8 milkshakes and $10 kids meals). It was quite good, and we had a lot of fun meeting the characters and getting autographs. One of the best things is one of the pennies I needed was at the restaurant, so I got it really easily. Then there was also someone else with the same last name as my wife and I (and that's rare because I have a very unusual last name in America).

Now the park fun begins. Since we were right by the Kilimanjaro Safari ride we rode that first. For those who don't know, it's a safari ride where we see all the different animals as they free roam the attraction. We ended up seeing a gazelle and zebra tussle after the zebra intruded on the gazelle's territory. That was really fun. We also had a giraffe come right up to our ride vehicle and was maybe 5 feet away from us. I've ridden this ride many times, and while I really miss the poacher plot this was really fun and one of the best experiences. Here are some of the pictures I took.

After the Safari we went on a little walking trail where we saw the gorillas from the Disney behind the attraction animal kingdom show on Disney plus. That was really fun. The gorillas were also right up close to the glass and interacting with the audience some. One of the small gorillas banged on the glass to get a little rise out of people. Not thinking anything of it I waved to one of the gorillas (for humans it's a friendly gesture, for most animals they think it's just a weird thing the human does). The cast member then told me and everyone else not to wave as the gorillas may interpret that as a sign of aggression. Yeah, that's always a challenge with humans and greater primates; we're not so dissimilar that gestures and actions are completely foreign to the other (it's REALLY fun to watch baby gorillas play because they play almost exactly like curious human toddlers, whereas with dogs we only know that nipping at the ears is playing after generations of observation), but we're also not similar enough that gestures and actions mean the same thing (take the smile for example, with humans it's a sign of happiness and joy, with chimps it's a gesture to intimidate). I apologized and didn't do it again, and that's also why you should never do a Tarzan chest drumming around them since that's a sign of "I want to fight." We walked the whole trail and it was pretty cool.

After the gorillas we road the Wildlife Express Train which took us to Rafiki's Planet Watch. While there IRA and I decided to do the Wilderness Explorer kids activity. Based on the movie Up, you get a Wilderness Explorer manual and go to different stations all around the park to get sticker badges, and if you get all of them you get a Wilderness Explorer ranger badge or something, and along the way you learn bits of trivia about nature. It's a really fun activity, I highly recommend it. During the tracking badge I was able to let my knowledge from taking the actual Boy Scout tracking merit badge shine, by answering all the questions and leading the discussion. I could tell the cast member was happy to have someone skilled help out, or maybe she thought I was some kind of "regular auditing plant." But I'm getting ahead of myself, there were 5 badges in the planet watch area, and there wasn't much there except for a "how to draw" class and a petting zoo. The petting zoo was pretty fun though; I love petting zoos, it's fun to pet the animals and they're always so friendly. The fun thing is the goats had a play structure that was basically the same kind of play structure found at a human park (just lower to the ground, kind of like what one might find for a small child). I can't believe I didn't think of this when I took the video; play structures, fun for kids of all species. Another fun thing was there was this one goat that was scratching it's neck against a bench, so I went up and said "hey little guy, let me get that for you," and scratched his neck. He was like "oh yeah, that's the spot." Then the rest of the family joined in and scratched his neck while I took video.

After the Planet Watch IRA and I picked up the badges that were around the restaurant and safari area we missed out on earlier (and I got another penny I needed). We had to go back to the exit of the safari and into the gorilla walk again, but no big deal, mskate and dad-in-law just waited for us to finish. This is when they went on Kali River Rapids while IRA and I did another walking trail to get more badges and see more animals. It was fun, we saw bats and tigers. When we got our bat badge I asked cast member which one was Dracula (just trying to make a joke, they were some kind of large fruit bats and not vampire bats so I wasn't expecting one to actually be named that). She said "he's in there somewhere, we also have a Vladimir." That caught me off guard, I was just making a joke about if the bat was actually a vampire, and didn't think that all the animals have names and of course the best name for a bat is a famous vampire. IRA asked what other famous vampires there might be, and all I could think of was Edward. The tigers were also pretty fun.

After our walking path and the rapids we watched the Finding Nemo show. It's a stage show where there are puppeteers with these probably 3 foot puppets doing and abridged musical version of Finding Nemo. It's a really good show, almost broadway quality (just not broadway length). A nice detail I picked up on was Dory's actress had mismatched socks to go with Dory's scatter brained personality. Then there's also the "big blue world" song Nemo sings that's also in the Finding Nemo ride at Epcot. It's a great 30 minute show that offers a great heat or rain break. After the show we went on Expedition Everest. Dad-in-law stayed behind because he's not into the big rides, so that was OK since he stayed with our stuff. Expedition Everest is a really fun coaster, it goes forward, then backward, then forward again (which I recently learned is a safety mechanism so they can run multiple trains on the track at once), and has some really cool theming with the yeti. After Expedition Everest we went to It's Tough to be a Bug, the Bugs Life show that's a little scary (the tarantula shoots stingers into the audience, the termite sprays you with acid, the stink bug stinks you, and then hopper tries to bug bomb you, has hornets sting your back, and drop black widows on you). I remember my brother got scared and had to leave once, and I got scared and had to leave another time, and my boss's kid had to leave once. They're supposedly replacing it with some Zootopioa thing that's probably going to be more tame. I still had a lot of fun. After it's tough to be a bug I got 2 of my last pennies in the discovery island area.

Now for a funny thing. The next stop was Dinosaurland where we road the Dinosaur ride (the ride where we're going back to right before the asteroid hit to get a dinosaur that was tagged as we ride over all sorts of off roading). I remember I watched a "how they do it" thing years ago and it's really cool. It's one of my favorite rides at Animal Kingdom. The interesting thing is I don't think most people know it's based off an animated movie of the same name (do you remember the Love Monkey?). Yeah, deep cut right there. Now for a funny thing. Dinosaur land is REALLY geared towards little kids, with a spinning flying dumbo type ride, midway games, 2 character meet and greets, and a play place. The Wilderness Explorer activity is also geared towards little kids (with IRA and I being the oldest people I saw doing it). Well Disney decided to put 2 of the badges inside the play area. It felt a little awkward being a group of 4 full grown adults walking around a playground with 2 doing a children's scavenger hunt, but Disney lets adults be kids so no harm no fowl. Anyway, this is also where I got my last smashed penny, yay.

Now for the last real location we had to go to, Pandora, the land of Avatar. First we rode Navi River Journey, a simple river ride through the land of Pandora at night. It's a really cool dark ride that really feels like another world. It uses a lot of practical effects and matt projections to really bring the world to life, and then there's a dancing Navi animatronic at the end that's pretty life like. I tried taking some pictures using the pro mode on my camera phone, but it wasn't working and I spent most of the ride fiddling around with it. After the river ride we rode Flight of Passage, a 3D simulator ride where it feels like flying on a Banchi. Last time I rode it I got motion sick, but this time I made sure to keep my head forward and did much better; still got dizzy, but didn't feel nauseous. We had a little dinner thing at the cantina restaurant where IRA had a cheeseburger pod, and I almost did as well but I decided $8 wasn't worth it just for a little food, especially when I still had breakfast left overs. Once all the food was eaten and rides rode IRA and I got our wilderness explorer badges from this area. Now onto the next thing, the Lion King Show.

Well, not quite. Mskate had the foresight to ask when the wilderness explorer thing closed, and it was in about 15 minutes, and we still had 2 badges to go. Mskate and dad-in-law went on their way to the lion king show while IRA and I hoofed it to the final badges near the opening of the park. Thankfully the last 2 were in the same stop, but we ended up cutting it close. The funny thing is the cast member doing that one saw us at one of the other badge stops, and remembered us because 2 grown men without kids doing a kid activity for real (we participated with all the things, not "just give me the sticker") is kind of unforgettable. We got our sticker and wilderness explorer certificate stickers with about 5 minutes to spare. OK good, now we just had to get to the other side of the park where the Lion King show was. IRA and I made it no problem, just had to hoof it. The Lion King show isn't much "Lion King," it's primarily a stunt show with acrobatics, fire juggling, and flying ballet among other things, all set to Lion King music. I'm not complaining, it's a really fun show, I'm just saying don't expect an abridged Lion King story like the Finding Nemo show.

Now's the time where we kind of went our separate ways. Since Animal Kingdom is the smallest park we had done everything by about 5:30 PM, with the park closing at 7PM. I wanted to stay for the Tree of Life night show at 6PM but everyone else wanted to go explore Animal Kingdom Lodge, the resort that's next to Animal Kingdom and can see some of the animals from certain rooms. It was also raining (had been since Dinosaur) so it wasn't the most comfortable even with the rain gear, so I don't blame them for wanting to leave. I saw them out and then went back in. I was going to get pizza from Pizzafari, but they had been closed for about 30 minutes at that point (no worries, I just ate the food I brought). I decided I was going to go back to the walking trails just to really enjoy them and maybe see some things I missed, but they had been closed for about an hour by then. I made my way back to Dinosaur land and decided "I'll just ride Dinosaur again, the app is saying it's a short line anyways." This is when something even better happened. When I got to Dinosaurland Chip and Dale were doing a meet and greet in their dinosaur costumes, and the line wasn't very long because a lot of people had already left (about half the park was closed by now). I barely had enough time to dig my autograph book out by the time I reached the front of the line. I got my pictures with them and did my best attempt at the voices, but they gestured "no you didn't really get it." Chip and Dale are hard to do, and I was pretty tired anyway so it was only that much harder. Then as I was going over to the ride there was a Donald and Daisy meet and greet in their Christmas outfits, also without a very long line. I decided to get them as well. I had a little more time to dig out the autograph book, and they had to take a break which gave me some more time to deal with that. When I got up I said "great weather for ducks" (an old joke about rain if you've never heard it), and they did the laugh gesture. I also did my best Donald Duck yell and they gestured "ok but not the best." It was a fun set of pictures.

OK, now it's time for the reason I stayed, the tree of life video show. The lights went down and then the video got projected on the tree of life. This was pretty cool, there was a little story about a bunny and it was going through a winter story. It was a short 5 minute show, and then the lights went on. I'm like "oh, OK, I guess I could go watch ride something else, let me just figure this out" for 5 minutes, and then there was another scene. Once again the lights went down and a little video story started. I thought it might be the same thing as before but it wasn't, this one was about a fox in the winter. I'm like "oh nice, it's something different." I watched it and once again the lights went up after about 5 minutes and lasted about 5 minutes before the next show." I watched about half of it and then said "I'm not super interested, let's see what the lines are like" and the River ride was a 5 minute wait. I walked over to Pandora and was blown away by what it looked like at night. The river ride wasn't the only place that showed how Pandora comes to life at night; the walking path was all glowing with black light illuminance, there was all sorts of animal noises, the fake flowers were lighting up, really cool. Then I got to the ride and rode it again but kept my phone in my pocket and just enjoyed the ride. It was really fun, paying really close attention to everything and it was so cool. Then when I got to the dancing Navi lady, and teenage boys out there, she is anatomically correct. During her dancing her giant necklace thing swung out while I was in just the right angle and there was a blue booby with a blue nipple. I felt like Zeke at the museum of natural history in Bob's Burgers in that one episode. I was just admiring the animatronic work and boom, boobies. How about I change the subject and just show off some of the cool Pandora pictures I took.

Given how cool Pandora was I decided I was going to walk the entire park before they closed and see what the imagineers put together, or see how far I could get before I got shooed back to the front of the park. First thing, the path between Pandora and Africa at night with low crowds is very creepy; the path is dimly lit, there are animal noises pumped in from all around you, there is a single path with foliage on both sides, it was kind of rainy which in writing is a way to show bad things are going to happen, and there is no one around. It was activating my fight or flight reflex, but not too panicked. Then I got to Africa and there was a group of cast members walking in the opposite direction. I was expecting them to say "sir park is closing turn back," but they didn't, I walked by them without them even acknowledging me. OK, guess I'm free to explore the park at night. Africa was pretty much all closed; all the shops were tented, the restaurants locked up, the rides over, and the only people that were really around were the clean up crews. The kind of funny thing is they were wearing the same uniforms as everyone else there and not like "janitor jump suits," so Disney still keeps the magic going even when the magic is mostly gone. Oh, I was also like the only park guest around, which added to the weird vibe of the atmosphere since the place is normally full of people. Then when I went to Asia I stopped at "the market" (a collection of window service restaurants with a collection of tables) and had some snacks. There were 2 other people there that I'm pretty sure were also just finishing their day and having a snack. I got to Expedition Everest right at 7 PM when the park closed, but the queue line still seemed open with a posted 5 minute wait time and coasters still going. I might have been able to get on the last ride but I didn't want to push my luck and get kicked out. I did see that the tree of life show is projected on the entire tree of life since the bunny video was playing again, just from a different angle. I also saw some pretty cool light set pieces which was a detail I know most guests don't get to see. Even though the park was closed I got bold and walked through dinosaur land and it was also pretty cool seeing everything lit up and the midway closed. By the time I got out of the park it was like 7:15, and the tree of life show was still going on and people were still hanging around. I guess at Animal Kingdom they don't really kick you out, they just kind of turn off all the fun stuff and wait for people to leave on their own (or maybe they really kick you out after 8PM or so to say "no free loaders, get out," but I had to get back to the cabin and the Disney transportation only runs for like 1 hour after the park closes and I wasn't taking any chances, though next time I might try expedition Everest if given the chance, because I'm sure that's really cool at night). Anyways, I made it back no problem and did a lot of packing for the following day. They also got pizza for dinner and saved me some. After seeing what I did after everyone left mskate wished she stayed with me because they didn't do much exploring of the resort, but then again she wouldn't have been able to keep up with me and all my night time fun.

It's now Thursday, the go home day. The rest of the family packed up everything in their car and left about 30 minutes before me. I had some left over pizza from the previous night for breakfast lunch. I also had to take back the golf cart along with checking out. I almost forgot the magnet with our names on it that said it was our cart, but I got it before they threw it away. I also did the check out. I ordered my uber and waited outside after doing a little pin trading at the lobby. The uber driver got the wrong gate again, and it was a simple ride to the airport (finished watching The Poof Point). I got to the airport and got my ticket, and made it through security after having to take out all my gaming equipment which was kind of annoying. When I got on the people mover there was a woman with a wiener dog puppy that was visibly shaking. Then she started trying to get away so making some small talk I asked "nervous?" and the owner said "yeah, she's just a little puppy so this is very overstimulating." I got to the gate no problem, just opened up my bag and got some snacks while I waited for boarding. When it was my time I got on and got comfortable. I took some creative commons video and watched some movies (finished V for Vendetta and watched The Michaels VS The Machines, both pretty good). I did nod off a couple of times, but nothing crazy.

This video is uploaded with creative commons attribution, you can find the original video here (youtube rumble bitchute)

Then when we landed I found my way to the car, drove home, and that was basically it. I unloaded my stuff and got the mail). Then I lied down on the floor for about an hour because my back was sore after sitting in an uncomfortable chair on the plane, and nodded off. Then I just climbed into bed and slept for like 3 hours, and watched videos on my phone for about an hour because I was just exhausted. I got up and did some "normal relaxing" because I didn't want to fully throw off my sleep schedule, but still went to bed pretty early. It was a really fun trip. I might have been able to get a little more out of the Christmas party, but whatever. I managed to get all my smashed pennies for the 100th birthday of Disney animation. I managed to get some great creative commons video (even if I wasn't able to get any audio library samples because there was copyrighted music everywhere). I had a lot of fun at the parks riding the rides and meeting the characters. I also did a lot of pin trading and now we have a much larger and cooler pin collection, including some cool new buttons. My only regret is that I didn't clear off my memory cards and had to ration my video recording come Animal Kingdom. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.