Friday was a simple day. I took the Friday off work and left 7AM after eating a quick breakfast. I drove all the way to mskate but since she was still working I had some time to myself. I went to the videogame store in her city and spent about an hour there, looking for PS2 games I don't have. I picked up 12. After shopping I went to the thrift store in her city and did some thrifting. Unfortunately I didn't find anything there. Oh well. I still had some time before mskate got home to let me in, so I sat outside her apartment and watched some hulu and youtube with the end of the range of the wifi. When she got home she needed a rest, so I just watched Home Improvement in the warmth. After the rest, we watched I Want to Eat Your Pancreas, and she really enjoyed it.
Now for the main event, SpongeBob the Musical. I got dressed up all special.
Slightly kidding, I wore that under my pants and jacket.
Mskate wasn't too thrilled about me, being me about it, but once she saw I wasn't the only one wearing very casual and SpongeBob stuff she was cool with it. The souvenir stand didn't have any posters, so I unfortunately didn't get something from there; I have enough t-shirts and don't use buttons and bags and such, but I like getting posters to hang in my nerd cave. Since we got there early the doors weren't open yet, but thankfully there was a guy giving a talk about the history of SpongeBob and the musical. Here's a brief clip I took.
It started with Stephen Hillenburg's start in a tidal pool park and his creation of a comic book of the marine life in tidal pools and went all the way to the creation of SpongeBob the Musical. I didn't know he created a comic book, or worked on Rocco's Modern Life. When he said "Rocco's Modern Life," I gave a small excited fist pump and he said "oh I see you're a fan, anyone else fans? No, you should check it out." Also when he said "SpongeBob has been on the air for 20 years" I thumb pointed to myself saying "fan since the start." Then at the end there was a little trivia question for "how many times has SpongeBob failed his driving test." I was thinking about the season 1 episode where he failed 38 times, and the speaker said "superfan, let's let the kids have a chance." When they were saying "1000 times" and "that's too low," I thought "oh no, it's the episode where Mrs. Puff gets replaced, that was...9,256 times," so when he called on me I said "well if you're going off the season 1 episode it was 38 times, but later it was 9,256 times." I was still off, because it was 1,258,058 times, but because I was such a super fan he gave me a consolation prize of a reusable bag.
By now it was about time the doors opened, but first I went to the bar to see if they had any SpongeBob themed drinks. When I go to the movie theater it's not uncommon for a big movie to have a themed cocktail, and I like to try "the cliffhanger" and similar. Unfortunately there wasn't "the fry cook" or "Texan squirrel" or similar, so I didn't have anything. Just like with The Monkees we went to a higher floor thinking "based on what I paid we're probably up higher," but then the usher told us "no you're on the 1st floor." After finding our seats I decided to walk around some and take in the sites.
After doing my blogger/vlogger thing, I sat down and enjoyed the band.
It was pretty fun. Mskate got a little frustrated when they just kept going beyond when the show was supposed to start. Anyway, about 5 minutes or so before the show started there was a guy dressed as Patchey that was walking around taking pictures.
Appreciate the pictures, because I almost got in trouble for them. One of the ushers came up to me and said "no pictures." I thought he was just a super fan cosplaying as Patchey, but apparently he was part of the show. Anyway, the show started not much longer after that and you can check out the companion review podcast.
It was a really fun day. At the end of the show they shot streamers over the front of the audience. The last time I went to a show where they shot streamers over the audience I stuck around to collect the streamers. Then again, the last show I went to with that was Sesame Street Live when I was 7, so there's that. Seeing that it's almost 20 years later I didn't do that. We left the theater pretty much immediately after the show. We went to our respective sleeping locations and that was it for the night.
Now comes Saturday. We went to our favorite breakfast place once we were both up. I decided to try something different this time, super breakfast sandwich; scrambled eggs, bacon, and cheddar cheese on white toast. She had an omelet. After breakfast we went shopping. We went to TJ Maxx to get clear nail polish and a picture frame. The clear nail polish was to seal the decal I put on a hair brush for her birthday gift, and the picture frame is for a Christmas present for my grandma. After TJ we went to Bath and Bodyworks for a little Christmas soap present shopping for the ladies in our life (moms, grandmas, and her) since all the hand soaps were on sale. We did some more walking around the mall, but there wasn't anything else worth noting. We just hung out at her place and watched Home Improvement for a few hours until our next activity. It was fun watching it with her because we were both little kids when it first aired and our dads really enjoyed it. "I remember watching this when I was really little, my dad really liked this show," "mine too, I remember watching it at our old house." I had soup from the grocery store that's across the street from her for lunch. We also made a gingerbread turkey as a little art and cooking project. The turkey turned out good.
Now for the next activity, Christmas village thing at the Dayton historical village. The historical village is a bunch of different buildings and such that was around Dayton for the last 200+ years, like from the time before electricity to the late 40s. They were making gingerbread cookies, roasted chest nuts, and hot cider in the pre-electricity area, and I had a gingerbread cookie. It was a good cookie, and the first one I had this season. After the cookie place we walked around the village some more. We went to a working printing press, and it was cool to see all the old equipment and old way of doing things. They also had the backgrounds on some old sayings. Like, "mind your P's and Q's is based on how lowercase p and q look similar, and with print mirrored it's easy to mess up," and "dingbat is actually fancy way to fill empty space." We also went to a history of bikes from this factory. Here are some pictures.
Bicycle built for 3, and a bike with a radio. It was neat.
The next place was this train museum. They had cabooses, trolley cars, high class train cars, and souveniers. There was also a little train we could ride on. Like, it was this mini-engine that could pull 4 cars with 5 people to a car around a little track. It reminded me of this part that was by my house we called "the train park" because they had the same kind of thing. Mskate and I had a fun little ride. Here are the pictures of the train car.
We also went up this observatory tower thing. The sign said it was 120 steps, and by the top we were tired and I felt like I had a good work out. However, we did get a really nice view of the lights, and it was worth it for the exercise. After that we went to a Wright Brothers museum. They had the work shop they worked in, some prototypes, a 13 minute video of the history of their experiments and journey to flight, and the piece de resistance, the actual plain the Wright Brothers made their flights on and the final project of Orval (bring the plain back home and build a museum around it).
I had some cheese fries after the Wright Brothers, and after that we looked around the historical museum. Apparently cash registers were a big industry in Dayton, as was prohibition.
The next place was this train museum. They had cabooses, trolley cars, high class train cars, and souveniers. There was also a little train we could ride on. Like, it was this mini-engine that could pull 4 cars with 5 people to a car around a little track. It reminded me of this part that was by my house we called "the train park" because they had the same kind of thing. Mskate and I had a fun little ride. Here are the pictures of the train car.
We're definitely going to go back there for a day trip sometime, because there is a LOT to see, and we were getting pretty tired. We had take-out for dinner, and I made it romantic with candle light, and watched more Home Improvement the rest of the night.
Sunday wasn't too spectacular. I had my left overs from dinner for breakfast and went to church. After church we packed up my stuff and I went home. It was a really fun weekend, full of a lot of fun things. Well, this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.
