UofM Men's and Women's Gymnastics, Men's VS Ohio State, Women's VS Alabama University (And Some Other Weekend Events)

Hey everyone, we had another fun time with college gymnastics at University of Michigan. But first, Friday was a "sad gathering." My grandma is having problems with bed sores after her broken hip surgery among many other things, and the bed sores got really bad all of the sudden, so we had our priest friend come and give her anointing of the sick/last rites. We went to her assisted living facility and had cheese pizza and bread sticks (because Friday of lent). I brought my balloon animal stuff and made balloon animals for her and other residents; yeah, one of my many talents is that I can make balloon animals, I wanted to learn how to do it when I was a kid, got some how-to books and creativity of my own, and most importantly a pump since twist balloons are hard to inflate by mouth, and now it's something I can do. We also got her room all decorated for Easter and spring, and enjoyed some cartoons on MeTV Toons. She enjoyed the company and the anointing was really good. I wear my grandpa's ring and the class ring they bought me when I graduated college, and I had my hand with all the rings on her for the "family lay your hands on the sick" portion, so it was like grandpa and her past self was there with her for this. It was a long Friday night, but a good one.

Now for Saturday. We started out with going to Blimpy Burger as we always do. This time I had a double with a fried egg, salami, grilled banana peppers, onions, lettuce, and pickles with a side of fried broccoli. Mbinski was able to join us and he had an egg sandwich. We chatted for about an hour which is always fun. After lunch we went to the Joan Fabrics in Ann Arbor to see what kind of fun stuff we were interested in. Mskate needs to get stickers for the friends for life conference and we found a number of stickers that would be good for the conference. We also found some blanket yarn that is normally REALLY expensive; mskate likes to make blankets using the heavy yarn, but heavy yarn is quite expensive so she doesn't do it often. I got some command hooks just because we find a use for them and they are kind of expensive. We looked for patches since mskate needs to practice with sewing them, but we couldn't find any, oh well. There was a party city close by so we went there to see what bones were left. Very little was left, a fair amount of fabrics but not a lot of the kind of things we were looking for. In the same shopping center was a party city, so we went there as well to see what scraps were left. There were a fair amount of halloween costumes and balloons, but that was kind of it. I found an inside out 2 mystery toy since mskate is into that, and she found some other thing that I don't remember. Now we went to the meet.

Going to the meet was kind of crazy. Normally it's not that crowded but it was today because the men's gymnastics stadium shares a parking lot with the baseball field and there was a baseball game going on at the same time. As we're driving around the lot looking for a spot we saw the school grounds vehicle with a flat bed trailer taking up 6 spots, and then I found a bunch of soccer nets taking up another 6 spots. What jerk moves, don't they know that people need to park here. We had to park in the student housing, but because it's St. Patrick's Day weekend there were a lot of parties and therefore not a lot of available parking. We had to park like half a mile a way, but it wasn't that bad considering that the weather is nice and warm now. One thing that had me kind of laugh uncomfortably is that there were a lot of shoes on the power lines, and in some places it's a gang symbol of territory or where a member died. In reality it's almost certainly "mark of achievement" for students who graduated, but still, here's a picture of me with the shoes.

The men's meet was pretty good. Today was senior's day as the last home game. Mskate and I got pom poms and a poster for free and weren't able to sit in our normal front row spot because they were received, but we were able to set 1 row back. Why were they reserved? Because there was an assisted living facility doing a field trip to watch the event. It was senior day in more ways than one. Having so much experience with my grandparents I was on guard to help if needed. One thing that was pretty cool for mskate is that the coach for Ohio State is a 4 time Olympian or something. She kind of wished she brought the Olympian shirt, but he wasn't able to sign autographs anyway. When they did the t-shirt give away after the floor routine I went over to where people could see me and did the "stand on one foot" trick thing that they do for floor routine that I can do really well, and one of the gymnasts laughed and tossed me a shirt. I didn't take any event photos this time, so don't expect my "attempt at real photography" this time. The great thing is the shirt is in my size. All the "old seniors" left around the final high bar event, so we were able to go to their seats. That was good for me because my legs were getting cramped. UofM won which was good. After the competition the seniors were recognized with a framed singlet (or whatever their uniform is called). It was pretty cool to see. Here are the pictures I took.

With the senior day event it was a little late in the day, and mskate jokingly said "hey we could go to the women's meet now." I took it seriously and we went to the women's meet. We had a little trouble finding the car, but no real problem as we found the car. When we got to the stadium we were able to find a spot in the parking lot. Of course this is "a real stadium" and not "a gym with stadium seating," so we weren't "sharing a small parking lot." The women's meet also costs money, but we didn't expect to do this so we needed to buy the tickets at will call. We got the tickets no problem and now we have paper tickets for the event. Something cool about this event was that the first 2000 people got a free t-shirt and we were both able to get a free t-shirt. Since we had a lot of time before the event started we walked around the stadium and for their "show off gymnastics" thing they had Fred and Paul.

As we walked around there was a health care package thing that was being given out, and a tote bag that came in very handy with carrying the shirts and some other things. In the bag was a lot of good things; liquid IV, pimple patches, aspirin, bloating stuff, moisturizer, and a condom. I had a good chuckle with the condom. It was getting to dinner time and we had to find something to split. Mskate and her dietary restrictions kind of limited things, but lucky for us the burgers are served open face with 2 patties, so she was able to have the burger that wasn't touching the bun and the tomato.

We were able to get some good seats to see the whole event. We got there for warm-up and watched the warm-up. One thing I noticed was that the leotards were very sparkly, but it wasn't really coming through in photo. It was a pretty good meet. The set-up was one team did one event and the other team did another event and alternate between teams and events, unlike how with men's both teams compete on the same event. I think the order was vault and uneven bars, and floor routine and balance beam. I think floor routine is my least favorite women's routine, it's "too dance" at least at this level (according to mskate). Vault was pretty cool since we were able to see it better. Also, it was kind of funny how there was a fair amount of country music for the different events. My guess is it was "because Alabama." Here are photos I took.

Afterwards they had a recognition thing for the seniors as well. We weren't too interested in the ceremony, but mskate wanted to see if men's gymnastics Olympic medalist Paul Juda would walk with his girlfriend during the ceremony, which he did. At some point during the meet there was a "dance and get on the jumbotron" thing and we made it, way cool. Nothing too much else for the night.

Now it's Sunday, the day where we were celebrating my brother's birthday with the family. We went to a tavern close to my parents house and this is when I had my corned beef on a sandwich. I'm not sure where I could get corned beef by where I live for St. Patrick's Day on Monday, so I'm happy I could have it now. We gave bro a picture frame collage with pictures of him with grandpa mskate has been scanning in, and that was a very emotional gift for him. Then I wrapped him some specialty beers I got from a store when we went on a trip for mskate's training. Overall great weekend. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Men's Gymnastics, UofM vs Iowa University, and the Super Bowl

Hey everyone, more University of Michigan Men's Gymnastics adventures coming in. For those who don't know, mskate enjoys gymnastics and we can get to Ann Arbor without too much difficulty, so we go to the gymnastics meets regularly. Normally we go to Crazy Jim's Blimpy Burger before the meet, but this time we wanted to try someplace different that we saw driving to the arena, Cat Pizza Max. It had a cool exterior, lots of neon and pastels, looked like it would be fun and maybe have some arcade machines. Well we got there and the atmosphere left a lot to be desired, it was kind of small and didn't have any arcade stuff, more like a bar than a pizzeria. In the basement they had a dance floor and some boardgames and a NES classic on a TV, but not to appealing, and the bathrooms weren't exactly cleaned after last night (mskate said the lady's room was covered in trash from the previous night, and the men's room wasn't terrible but the garbage can wasn't in the garbage can location so I had to put my paper towel in the garbage in the can outside). The pizza on the other hand was pretty good. Their thing is "unique pizzas," like "bad breath" pizza which was heavy on onions and garlic and some other things, and "no THC" pizza which was a hemp crust with other hemp based foods. We got Carolina Brisket (brisket, Carolina barbecue sauce, and a cheddar cheese blend) on a gluten free crust, and it was a very good and unique flavor, something I might want to try to make myself. There was another variant with sweet sauce instead of tangy sauce, in case Carolina mustard based BBQ isn't your thing. The menu was also in a trapper keeper, and a real Trapper Keeper brand trapper keeper. They also had a nice cocktail menu that looked good, but it was a bit too early for alcohol. We ended up using just about the exact time purchased for our parking meter (1-2 minutes left), which felt great.

We got to the arena about an hour before the meet started, which ended up being the right choice because it was super busy today for some reason. We were able to get our usual seats front row right in front of the floor routine mat. This time the give away was light up bracelets which were really cool. They were all pre-set to turn on at blue, but they could be cycled to different colors and 3 different strobing effects. I set mine to soft transition. This became really cool at the opening when they turned the lights off. We watched the warm-up and it was good, saw a lot of people fall and tumble, but that's what you do during warm-up. There ended up being a problem with the floor routine floor, because the coaches had to keep straightening the seams. I don't have a ton of things to comment on for the competition, but I do have a bunch of photos I took of different events, and some of the team celebrating their teammate. When Paul and Fred finished an event the team would chant "he's an Olympian."

[insert photos]

Here's a photo of the coaches fixing the floor.

Now for some fun stuff. First off, the national anthem was sung by a little girl, maybe 8 or 9 years old, and she was wearing an American Flag dress. She was sitting behind us and mskate said "I bet she's going to sing," and she did and was pretty good even if she didn't sing loudly into the microphone (if she had a microphone). Between events the team throws out shirts to the audience, and last year we each won a yellow shirt. We weren't going to try but then noticed they were giving out blue shirts which inspired us to try. We didn't win, but I came up with a plan to get attention that I'll say in a moment. After the pommel horse there was a "stand on 1 leg doing the pose" contest for audience members, and I unfortunately wasn't asked to compete. Mskate thinks it was just for students. Too bad because I would have dominated, I once stood on 1 foot for over 30 minutes in a competition between MMT and I (and we probably would have gone longer if my aunt didn't knock MMT over because she was complaining about her foot starting to hurt). This gave me an idea, I'll get the attention of the teammates by doing the pose. Before the final event I went to where the coach was standing and did the pose yelling "t-shirt." They ran out though so I didn't get one, but I did get the attention of the coach and he did a pose with me. 

After the meet we went home, nothing super special afterwards, but I did have my ribs that I had been brining for 24 hours. Now it's Superbowl Sunday. Mskate and I did coffee and donuts at church, something we do every 2nd Sunday of the month. The industrial coffee maker we use is a little broken, and I ended up overflowing the coffee pots. That made quite a mess. I let our maintenance guy know and he's going to look into getting it fixed. After mass mskate and I went to meijer to get special take and bake cookies for her allergies for superbowl snacks, but they didn't have them and we were disappointed. As for the game, it was football, a pretty crazy blow out with the teal team. The half time show was not that good; not a fan of mumble rap. As for the commercials, they were hit and miss. I liked the Lays commercial, Michelobe ultra commercial, sketchers commercial, and the Jeep commercial with Harrison Ford was very entertaining ("I like Jeep, even though my name is Ford"). Then there were the crappy AI commercials, the weird dunkin dohnuts commercial, and the hellman's orgasm commercial that's a parody of when Harry Met Sally (makes sense, but tasteless). There were also 2 commercials that went to very different places than expected, there was one where it was "boobs, look at the boobs, we all like boobs, boobs boobs," and then it was Wanda Sykes saying "if you like them get screened for breast cancer," and the other that was all "big pharma bad, it's over priced, designed to make companies richer, this is some kind of commentary on our healthcare system" and then it was for hims/hers mail order pharmacy. There also seemed to be a lot of ads for FOX shows and properties, which more power to them with the largest audience of the year but not a great showing for commercial creativity. Oh well, this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Pokematic's Christmas and New Years Story

Hey everyone, Christmas time is here, time for joy and cheer. My last day of work was December 18th  or something and then I was off until January 2nd. There were a lot of fun things that happened this year, and one of the fun things is that mskate worked for santa this year with my mom. I went to see her and my mom one day and it was fun seeing her. I also don't remember exactly when this happened, but at some point we went to see mskate's aunt who is now in assisted living for their holiday party. We got her a stuffed flag heart that is also an ornament. At the little party I sung Christmas song karaoke and did some songs in my goofy voice. That went over well with the residents. Mskate and I also went to see The Nutcracker as presented by the Royal Ballet and Orchestra at fathom events. Review experience here. We also did dinner with the accordion friends early in the vacation before the vacation where we gave them some small presents and one of the call blockers from my grandma's old house.

I think I should start things off with the Christmas party my mom has with her old college friends and their kids on like the 20th. All her friends had kids around the same time, so all of us are around the same age, and back in the day we'd all play together, great time. Now though, there's only like 3 of us that are still local; myself, my brother, and one of my mom's godsons. Still fun though, the godson has 2 kids, 7 and 5 years old, and they're really fun to play with. We played with the playmobile Christmas sets that my parent's have had since I was a kid that they still put out as part of their Christmas displays. Mskate and I also brought some happy meal toys for the kids that we got from our fast food meals (I try to not eat big meals when I go to fast food, which typically means kids meals with a toy that I'm not always collecting). The kids really liked the toys we got them, though a lot of it was probably just that it was a "new toy." The hospital by my parents does a community thing for the children that are hospitalized over Christmas, people come with flash lights and other lights and shine them at the windows (it's like 5th story 100 feet from the building, so it's not like people are sticking flashlights in the window and blinding the kids), and then they shine flashlights back at the people outside. Most of the time the police and fire department gets involved, bringing a car or truck to shine their lights since that's a fun thing for kids. Since my parents live 4 blocks from the hospital with a path to the hospital mskate, godson, his kids, and I walked there to shine the lights. Since mskate worked for santa she got a snowflake wand that we let the kids borrow for the event, along with the snowflake wand that my in-laws got when they went to see mskate. They really liked the wands, and I made sure to remind them that they were borrowing them so they wouldn't get too rough and accidentally break them (because they did get a little rough some of the time). We shined the lights but didn't stay the entire time because it was below freezing and snow everywhere and everyone was getting cold (I could have stayed a little longer, but everyone else didn't want to stay the entire time). Rest of the party was fun, but nothing else super worth discussing.

Not sure exactly when this happened, but I think it was between the college friend party and full festivities. We went up to my aunt's house and did some Christmas celebrating. It was the first Christmas without my grandpa, and was pretty hard on my aunt. Grandpa had lived with her for the last 7 years and died in October. It was a bit of a rough celebration, but we still had good dinner and some gift exchange. My aunt basically gave everyone some valuable-like things from my grandpa's condo (mainly super old ornaments). Then we were able to pick an animal wood carving from my grandpa since he was a master carpenter (maybe not "fully classified," but he was quite amazing). Mskate and I both chose the moose, and now he looks down on the front room from on top of one of our curio cabinets. Speaking of wood carvings, my grandpa would carve a Santa every year and instead of putting up a tree my aunt puts up a Santa village with little fake trees and cotton snow. Mskate and I made her 2 Santa ornaments to add to her village and she puts them up (not this year, but I think she just wanted to put up grandpa's this year). We gave her a banzai tree kit as a present this year and she really liked it (she gardens and this inside gardening kit is perfect for her). Hopefully there's a sprout next time we see her. It was originally going to be a present for my dad but then we had enough things for him and nothing for her, and afterwards mom told us that dad would like a kit as well (we ordered him one and had it shipped to his house).

Lets fast forward some days to the main Christmas festivities. Since mskate and I were in the same school district and met in highschool our parents are pretty close to each other, and since my in-laws have a "real guest room" while my parents have "a twin bed in the spare room," we stay with my in-laws for the Christmas festivities. We went to my in-law on December 23rd in the evening and unloaded all our gifts for everyone. Nothing super exciting this day, just packing up the car and organizing our gifts for who they go to and the different parties.

It is now Christmas Eve, the day we celebrate with my grandparents. This was a different than normal, since my grandma is no longer in her town house and is in memory care. Little backstory, this year my grandma moved out of her townhouse condo and moved into memory care since she can't live on her own anymore. We still did McDonald's lunch, and Mskate and I picked up the orders for everyone since I have the app and get points on orders. Little backstory on the tradition for the new readers, my grandparents lived 1 block away from McDonalds and on Christmas Eve we would go to McDonalds for lunch and then Santa would deliver presents to their house when we were out to lunch, and we continued the tradition up to when she moved out (and still do as I said). It was really good that we brought food because grandma wasn't eating her lunch at memory care since she didn't like it. We got her a happy meal and that was enough for her (she only ate about half of it actually). I got a mcrib since they have that again, and everyone else had different meals. It was a good time. After eating we did our gift exchange. We got grandma some noomio stuffed animals from our Disney adventures since she likes "her babies," one of her valentines day stuffed animals that somehow ended up in our gift stash, and some snack foods. She got me a crystal growing kit (because I want to see what happens if I let it sit for like a year), pokemon sun and moon DVD set, pretzel trail mix, a pin board for my pin collection, a lows gift card, krabby patty candy, and star bills. After all our gift exchanges we went to church at my grandma's home parish. She hasn't been there in a long time, and it was great for her to see everyone and everyone to see her. It was a little hectic getting her in the church (because she struggles with walking and sitting), but still good. After all this we went back to the in-laws and did a night before gift exchange. I got some lego sets and socks, and maybe some other things I'll explain in the tomorrow bit. I finished off the night by watching some of A Christmas Story on TBS (because I always watch A Christmas Story on TBS as part of their 24 hour marathon).

OK, it's Christmas day. We wake up and go out to the presents all spread out, everyone finding their presents spread around. IRA's favorite presents from this was the Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends DVD set we got him. Mskate really liked all the lulu lemon clothes and Disney animated movie DVD set she got (though it's region 2 since dad-in-law doesn't pay much attention to regions and he has a region free player). Delilah really liked the dog sweaters we got her, one a dragon costume and another a Christmas tree sweater. I got Pokemon megablocks both mini pokemon in balls (that I like to use to decorate my work desk), a dragonite, and pokedex, a magicarp nanoblock kit (a brick toy imported from Japan), a Tangled TV show DVD set, animal crossing lego sets, a Disney lego set, sonic shirt (specifically for the day after Christmas, you'll see why), a water ring game, and some candy. IRA also got a nanoblock kit (him blastoise), but he was having trouble building it so then I spent about an hour building it for him. Some time we had breakfast, and it was nice and relaxing because we didn't have to pick up mskate's aunt (the one in assisted living). It was a fun calm morning.

After the in-laws it was time for my parent's Christmas party. Mskate and I were like the last to arrive, meaning we didn't have to help get my grandma in the house. We started off just catching up with everyone. PepperBC and her mom where there which was great. I told them all about our Hawaii trip and they filled us in with how the cousins are doing. MMT may be getting proposed to before the end of the year, which means that my wedding streak is maybe still going. Our accordion friends also came, and we had a fun sing along with everyone. We sang all the Christmas songs, sleigh bells, let it snow, santa clause is coming to town, and so forth, and some Disney songs since mskate likes them and they're fun to sing. The accordion friends thanked us a lot for the call blocker since it blocks almost all of the annoying spam calls now. Cousin M joined us for dinner which was great, and dinner was pork tenderloin. It was a fun party with everyone. Getting grandma to and from the dinner table was something since she has trouble with the ups and downs. After the party was really difficult getting her out. We had to instruct her on how to get out of the chair and get into the wheel chair, and then when we got her out to the car how to turn around and sit down in the car. It was like a 30 minute ordeal. According to mom, when they got back to the assisted living facility the workers were able to get my grandma out of the car, in her room, and ready for bed before mom was even able to get the car parked and say goodnight. Professionals at work.

Now it's the day after Christmas, where we did a gift exchange with my parents and brother. My brother got a lot of different beers (because he likes beer), and a Coors Lite sign that I found. We game my mom a fancy silicon like pool noodle on season close out (normally like a $20 pool toy for only like $5), and lots of cotton candy (because she loves cotton candy). We got my dad some Peanuts Snoopy things since he loves that, a folding emergency shovel, gloves with flashlights in the fingers, a stripped screw removal kit, and some other things I'm forgetting. Mskate got lots of Disney gift cards. I got a Rokr globe lamp, rokr owl clock, a microwavable ramen bowl (because I like to have ramen when traveling), spongebob socks, elf goldfish, multi-connection charging cables (I call them "multi-taps"), a santa chocolate guy with a smashed penny, Fall Guy on 4K (great movie), a Power Puff Girls ornament, a chuck e cheese gift card, star bills, and silly putty. Later we had some left overs for lunch, great little time with the family. Later in the evening IRA and I went to Sonic 3. The movie was sold out (we got the last seats that were together) and someone was sitting in our seats, and that's because someone else was sitting in their seats, and so on like all the way down. Right before the movie the row basically did the wave of shifting down. Great movie, you can hear my thoughts here. Pretty calm night after that.

Following day we went home. I packed up all our gifts and travel things and we went back home. Once we got home I unpacked everything and began sorting where to put things. Some time during these days we went to different stores looking for after Christmas sales. We got some candy and chips, and some gift wrap and dog presents for next year. I also got my dogecoin migrated to my coinbase wallet. So fun story, back in college I liked to tinker with bitcoin and dogecoin because it was all new and I could get it from faucets and obvious ponzi schemes ("double your crypto in 100 hours," I'd deposit the minimum and 80% of the time would get in before it collapsed, making a decent amount). I used dogechain as my dogecoin wallet because it was an official cloud wallet and was easy to manage my crypto. I got an email from dogechain mid-November that they were going to fully shut-down and if your wallet wasn't migrated by December 31st your crypto would be lost for good. I missed my window to send the dogecoin through the wallet application but not to get the private key and back it up on a local wallet. I tried just putting it right into coinbase (since they now support dogecoin), but it wouldn't work so I installed dogecoin core on my old college laptop (because I wanted to use a computer that I wouldn't be worried about breaking), and it was running for like a month because it had to update the entire 14 year blockchain. Yeah... Whatever though, after a month of updating I was able to move my 220 doge to coinbase. If it wasn't a "substantial amount" (when I started it was worth about $140 and when I finished it was like $80) I would have just cut my losses, but I didn't want to lose out on that. Whatever. 

Now for a little fun thing between Christmas and New Years. One of mskate's good childhood friends was in town and was having a 1 year old birthday party for her son. The funny thing is a lot of the friend's family lives out by us, but the party was at the friend's parents house an hour away from us. We went basically right after church. It was quite the drive, and rainy, and they live in the country nowhere with some dirt roads, meaning that our just cleaned car got dirty. Thankfully the rain washed off a lot of the wet dirt (it's the drying on that makes it stick). The party was pretty good. The baby really liked my hat, every time I was close he just stared at me. I asked his parents if it was my hat or beard and they said "probably the hat." I played galiga with some of the other party guests, and we visited with the people mskate knows. One of the party games was "guess the baby's month age in 12 different pictures." I only got one picture right, but I did better than my wife who got zero and follows the mom's instagram. Funny thing when it came time to sing the baby happy birthday and give him his muffin (no "baby crushes cake and makes a mess" scene here, he has allergies that prevents him from enjoying normal cake), he was more interested in the balloons than he was in the muffin. His parents kept trying to get him to eat the muffin but he just wanted to play with the balloons, and when the parents tried to take the balloons away from him he got sad and would cry. Pictures had to be taken between balloons. All went well, except for the lack of red meat sandwiches (it was all turkey and I don't like turkey), and the dog being territorial and not liking people (not violent, but very yappy and there's something about a dog's bark within like 6 feet of me that makes my right ear hurt). Otherwise it was a good little day.

2 days later it was now New Years Eve. Normally we have someone hosting a new years party but none this year. I got a promotional text from zapzone (a regional laser tag, arcade, and entertainment complex) that they were having a new years promotion, and we considered going to it, but on closer inspection it was a little too expensive for our preference decided just spent the night in. We did go driving around to Party City to get some things on sale since they're going out of business (got a helium tank for my mom since she loves balloons and some of those study plastic party cups that my in-laws like to use among some other things) and an upscale grocery store where we got some personal party supplies (spinach dip and chocolate moose). We watched The Emperor's New Groove together and I watched an IP Man movie and John Tucker Must Die on hulu before they expired. We also went to New Years Vagile mass since New Years is a holy day of obligation. I built one of my lego (mega block) sets from Christmas, the Pokedex. Mskate doesn't like to stay up late (and for that reason she kept asking "what are we even celebrating" and didn't really want to accept "it's just a reason to party"), so 10 minutes before midnight I called her into the living room and pulled up Dick Clark's Rock'n New Years Eve on ABC. Since I run our local channels through a networked over the air DVR that makes it's own server or something (along with digital not being "100% live" like analog was), the feed was like 30 seconds to 1 minute behind live so mskate was looking at her phone and saying "my phone is ahead." We counted down the minute countdown and kissed at midnight along with some sips of wine (I didn't have a small thing of bubbly wine and I didn't want to open a full bottle). Happy New Year. The Time Square ball is getting replaced after 17 years of use, and if my math is right that means that I saw the ball right when it was first used back when I went to New York back in highschool with the band.

New Years Day is just calm. One of the main things was we watched the Rose Bowl Parade. This was the first time I've watched it, and it was really neat, everything was made of roses. We also went to Meijer for a little more after Christmas shopping (we've been doing a lot of that recently). The main thing we needed to get was on sale sweatshirts that mskate and her dad could throw off to donate at the marathon they're doing next week, and an ornament box that was on sale. We got it and started taking some ornaments off, and it's going to work out well for us since it's all divided to individual holders. We also made one of mskate's lego, brick heads of inside out characters. I stuck them in the Lego Mario display, so now it's kaiju pixar characters in the mushroom kingdom. I also watched a lot of masked magician on youtube. It's also the return of Family Guy on Adult Swim. I tried watching some but then I remembered why I don't like Family Guy.

Now I need to go back to work. It was a really great vacation. Well this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

2025 International Auto Show Adventure

Hey everyone, it's that time of year again, the Detroit international auto show is back again, and this year I went with my parents after getting some discount tickets. We were there for the first day that it was open to the public, and boy was it fun. This year they had off-road driving demos from Stellantis and Ford, and there was a speedway thing with 3 of the car brands (Volkswagon, BMW, and I think Ford). This was possible since the vehicles demonstrated were electric and electric vehicles don't have combustion emissions to put into the enclosed area. I'll get to the details of those when I get to them. Electric vehicles were kind of the big thing at this show since this is what all the industry is pushing for. I'm not super interested just because our grid isn't ready, I don't have charging in my garage and getting wired is not something I want to go through, and public charging isn't very common, but good for you if it's your thing.

The absolute first thing we saw was a drifter van, a van with a kitchen, shower, bed, and storage, perfect for those weirdos on youtube that live out of their van. We saw it because it was on the way to the Stellantis display.

First real exhibit we went to was Stellantis. I liked sitting in the Jeep Wagoneers and Fiat 500s. Some of the jeeps were hard to get into, which was fun. There was this one car with LED trim with an option to change the light colors, which was really cool.

It was also the 20th anniversary of stow and go, and there was this game to see if you could fit everything in the stow and go van, and I was part of the game. We did it with 12 seconds to spare and so we won trucker hats with the brand on it, and I wore it on top of my fedora. Now for the big thing, the Jeep off road experience. We went up and down an uneven hill, up and down steps, up and down a  45 degree incline hill, through a narrow passage with us riding the edge of the wheel, on a 30 degree tilt leaning over, and sopping on a peak. We were able to ride in the pink jeep, which made my mom happy. Since it sits so high up my dad had a little trouble getting in and out, but it was really fun. When we were going down the steep incline I was being held in completely by the seat belt which was a pretty crazy feeling, like something out of an amusement park ride. I took a first person video from the front seat, and then afterwards I took some video of the obstacles so I could overlay them. Check it out here.

Also, while we were waiting in line, there was this cut-out hanging out in the trees to startle people. Kind of funny. I also got a soft pretzel around this time, with a pitiful amount of cheese sauce for dipping. I don't know if the vendor was running out or was just being stingy, but oh well.

Right by the stellantis exhibit was a switching gears show, where they play the first episode and have some give aways or something like that. I had already seen the episode at home so it wasn't a big deal, but it was pretty cool that a TV show had a presence at a car show.

By this time dad was getting tired, it was maybe an hour and a half into our time there but he expires kind of quickly now. All he really had to do was sit in the back seats of some cars, but that wouldn't have been the most sustainable thing. Mom and I looked around at some different exhibits looking for a place to sit, and we found the DTE electric car display. There was a trivia scavenger hunt that once all answers were found would get you an opportunity to play plinko to win a slinky, ice scraper, tire gage, tire stress ball, or a tote bag. Where the prizes were set-up the ice scraper was the hard one to get, but I ended up winning it. Cool I guess, even though I would have liked the pressure gauge more. Still pretty cool.

We were pretty close to the Ford exhibit, so we looked around at some of the fords. They also had an off-road demonstration for their off-road vehicles, and we would have done that as well but the line was super long (like at least an hour), and while I wouldn't have minded it would have been too much for my parents for what would have largely been the same experience we got from jeep (only real difference was this bridge thing, video below). We mostly just looked around at different trucks and watched a little swag giveaway. One of the cool things was the Detroit Lions football helmet car and a pickup truck with some Lions decals.

This is about when dad sat down at the DTE display with the nice seats. Mom and I got him a soft pretzel and bottle of water, and I got dipping dots. Dad got a fair amount of cheese, so much that it was spilling over. Mom and I went around to some of the other displays. I was able to sit in a BMW, and right close to it was some prop cars from movies and TV shows. The big ones for us were the Jurassic Park jeep, station wagon from National Lampoon's Vacation (complete with Aunt Edna on the roof, a leash out the back from Edna's dog, and a Wally World bumper sticker), and Magnum P.I.'s Ferrari. My mom's family used to go on a lot of family road trips and when National Lampoon's Vacation came out they saw it multiple times since it reminded them of all their family trips.

The next thing we did was we went to the luxury car display. These were the Ferraris and Lamborghinis, and other super luxury brands. Mom and I aren't like super into these, but it is pretty cool looking at cars that are worth more than our house. Here are some of the pictures I took.

And then there was this James Bond car.

Outside the luxury car display was a place where you could get an alcoholic drink and some porches (at least I think it was porche). There was one that had this cool paint job that I took pictures of.

Since we didn't get enough time at stellantis, we went back and sat in a couple more vehicles. I got my picture with the utility van, which is always fun for me. I just think utility vans are neat. I also got in this pick-up truck and the rear view mirror wasn't actually a mirror, but was a screen that showed the feed of a rear view camera. Really cool. I called my mom over to look at it and she thought it was cool too.

I think our next thing was a combination of Volkswagon and GM. Not a whole lot of interest in VW, but they did have a van that was a little reminiscent of the VW bus. At GM we got a picture of the new Silverado for my mom's friend and I looked around and found another van life van.

Now I don't remember when this happened exactly, but at some point we went to this display that was the Detroit grand prix, and michigan science center. The science center was full of activities for kids; build a dinosaur skeleton, build a foam car thing, play mario kart for switch, build duplo cars, play with hotwheels and tracks, and some other things I'm forgetting. I know as a kid I would have really loved that "build a car" thing. The Grand Prix was pretty cool, they had racecars and a victory podium for taking pictures. They also had a real F1 racecar for kids 12 and under to climb into. I wanted to do that since once I was able to sit in a real stockcar racecar, but oh well, I did get a fun picture on the winner's podium.

This was also right by the car speed demonstration. I didn't do it because the lines were kind of long and it was getting late for date, but it was still pretty cool and I got some videos of cars going fast.

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Time for the last event of the day. Dad was really tired and ready to go home at about 4PM, but there was still the show car display (cars owned by enthusiasts in a local club that look cool). Mom and dad just stat down at the cafe while I went to the display in hall E. Lots of cool cars, check them out here.

And then there was this monstrosity of a license plate.

I promised them I would be very fast, and I think I spent maybe 10 minutes at most. After that we went back to my parents and then went out to dinner at Chilies using the gift card mskate and I got them for Christmas. All in all it was a really fun day time, even if there wasn't nearly as much swag as there was in previous years. Well this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.