Saturday, March 11, 2017

A Mini-Trip with Highschool Friends

Hey everyone, so a little while ago I went to visit my friend Mskate for the weekend. She's going to grad school in the next state, and now that I'm a working man with vacation time, and since her brother gave me a bunch of videogames he no longer wanted, I wanted to go visit for the weekend and take her brother with me, lets call him IRA. This is something we wanted to do back in the end of 2016, but she had a lot of school work, so we bumped it to February 2017. So here's the adventure.

On Friday morning I went to pick-up IRA around 8AM. I loaded my car with my stuff, and he loaded up with his stuff and the things we were taking to Mskate. We punched mskate's address into my GPS, and here's where the first adventure happened. The highway that my GPS wanted us to take is under construction for the next 2 years, so I had to follow the detour until it got to my rout to work, then I knew exactly where I was and what routs to take. I drove us by my job just to show IRA where I work, because why not. It drove my GPS kind of crazy because it kept telling me to get on the highway, but I didn't. Eventually we got past all the construction,

After a while on the highway and getting all our "nerd" out that would bore mskate to tears we stopped for some lunch. We went to Wendy's because it tastes good and I have one of those "free frosty for a year" cards, but I didn't think it all the way through. See, I wanted to keep driving to make the time and eat on the way, and IRA doesn't like to drive so that means I'm doing all the driving, but you can't eat a frosty while driving. I told him "dude, you need to drive for at least 1 exit so I can eat this." He was a little nervous since he's never driving on the freeway outside of drivers ed. I had to coach him while eating my frosty. He did fine, but didn't want mskate or his mom knowing he was driving on the freeway. So when mskate asked "where's [IRA]?" when I answered his phone, I said "not driving on the freeway." It's not like he's not allowed to or anything, it's just that the whole family likes to worry. Everything turned out fine though, and we changed drivers at a gas station where I filled up. Then back on the road to mskate's apartment. We get there and mskate still had work or something. We had her key, so we just hung out in her apartment until she got home.

Once she got home we jumped into my car and went to check into my hotel in the next city. I checked in and did my bedbug check. Mskate and IRA didn't quite understand why I was so thorough (pulled up all the corners on the bed, took off some of the sheets, etc.) After checking in and dropping my stuff off, we went to the outside mall to walk around and get dinner. We went to a gamestop and I got an XBOX360 kinect and evolve for XBOX1. IRA got mskate a Sylveon plushy, because she thought it was cute even though she doesn't like pokemon. We later had dinner at the cheesecake factory. Being the working adult and gentleman I am, I paid for dinner. Here's a funny thing, I got the steak and mashed potatoes, and mskate got a burger and fries; I don't like mashed potatoes and she doesn't like fries, so we swapped. That was a good dinner. A little expensive, but I'm on vacation, you're allowed to have expensive dinners when on vacation. We went to walmart after dinner because it was close, I wanted to see if they had any amiibo I didn't have, and after seeing the pitiful "generic anti-bacterial wipes" I saw mskate use to try to clean her apartment I said "girl I'm going to hook you up with some real cleaning supplies." I hooked her up with clorox wipes, lysol tile cleaner, and commit toilet bowl cleaner.

After dinner we went back to her apartment. The 3 of us watched the Disney Channel Original Movie "Go Figure" on Hulu, because mskate figure skated in high school and undergrad, and is still a fan of the sport. So when I saw it was added to Hulu, I thought "oh we need to watch this some time," and this weekend was that "some time." All of us enjoyed it. Not much long after the movie everyone was done, so I went back to my hotel. I watched some more hulu after taking my shower. The cool thing about the hotel room, the TV was positioned in such a way I could see it from the bathroom. When priceline asked me to review the hotel room and asked what I liked most (for potential promotional material) I said "the TV was located so I could watch it from the bathroom." I don't think they'll be using that review. The other cool thing was that the TV had in room pay-per-view, like lodgenet but not "Lodgenet brand." Here's a video.

I didn't use it, because it's a rip-off, but it was cool to see it. I went to bed soon after.

OK now for Saturday. Mskate wanted to take us to this good breakfast place. It was good. I had eggs, hashbrowns, bacon, and toast. Afterwards we went to this local used entertainment store (videogames, movies, TV show collections, music CDs, and I think also electric guitars). She knew IRA and I would enjoy it, because both of us are big geeks. We spent a good 2 hours in there. I got Superman 64, a SNES game, and a bunch of PS2 games. They were at REALLY good prices. Like, all the PS2 games I got were under $8, many under $4. It was great. Here's a video of all my finds.

After the videogame store, we walked around her campus. It's a nice campus. Here are some videos I took.

We went to the student union, and kind of wandered into some places we shouldn't have. It's not like we got in trouble or were chased out by security, we just kind of wandered into some places that were closed, under construction, or were events we weren't invited to. No harm no foul.

With wandering done, I don't recall all we did. I remember we went to her local grocery store and made a salad for dinner, and we had pizza and watched Big Hero 6. I think we just kind of lounged around for a while before dinner. The pizza was good, and it was fun watching Big Hero 6 again. I think we also went out for ice cream, for which IRA decided he was going to treat after mskate and I had been paying for most everything. Once again, after everyone got tired I went back to my hotel. I watched some more hulu on the TV from the bathroom, because I could.

Sunday was a good day. I went to church, and it was a good mass. Not long after mass I met up with my godfather and his family. They don't live far from mskate, and they were going to be in the neighborhood to look at a potential used van. It was fun seeing my godfather and godbrother again after some months. We went to the college campus to walk around and visit. It's a very Catholic campus, and as religious Catholics we enjoyed seeing everything. We went to the on campus chapel and their youngest wanted to splash around in the baptismal fount (he's 2). I just said "he wanted to bathe with the lord," to which my godfather and his wife liked and will probably use in the future like my term "godbrother" for their oldest son.

After visiting with my godfather and his family, I went to pick up IRA, said my goodbyes to mskate, checked out of my hotel, and got on the road back home. It was a fun little trip. I have a feeling IRA and I are going to do it again. Well, this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.