Hey everyone, it's Labor Day weekend here in the US, and with the amount of work I did it most certainly was a laboring weekend. On Friday I had my highschool reunion, Saturday was full of shopping and errands while mskate was on a trip with her best friend, Sunday was my friend's daughter's 3rd birthday, and then Monday mskate and I were hosting a labor day party with my side of the family. I'll go through it day by day.
Friday was when I had my 10 year highschool reunion. Yeah, apparently I've been out of highschool for 10 years, and one of my former classmates organized a reunion. Mskate and I went to highschool together, but since she was going on a trip on Saturday she decided to sit it out. I was really excited to go though, and when I saw that some of my old ilose friends were going I knew I had to go. I pulled out one of my safety vests (because I wore one daily junior and senior year) and got ready for a night of fun. I'm glad I left an hour early because it was kind of hard finding the pavilion we rented. I was one of the first to show up, and a lot of people appreciated that I wore the vest because they wouldn't have found it otherwise. One of my friends said "[Pokematic], I'm really glad you wore the vest, that was the only way I would have found this." Since only about 10 people were there in the first 30 minutes the girl that organized it said "hey, let's go around and say our name, what we're doing now, and what our highlight of the last decade was." When it came to me I said my highlight was getting married to our old classmate [mskate] last year, and my lowlight was selling 30 shares of gamestop for a $200 loss 2 years ago and converting 80K dogecoin to $5 worth of bitcoin 5 years ago. I basically spent all night hanging out with my ilose friends, catching up on 10 years of lunch conversations; things like our jobs, tabletop games, videogames, 3D printing, and our general geek hobbies. It was cool because we had everyone except zeldamaster and Trusdale. I also saw some other highschool friends that I kept a little contact with, and we caught up some as well. Dinner was unfortunately chicken, so I ate a lot of collard greens and corn. I'd guess that there was about 60-80 people that showed up, but I only recognized some. It's not that I wasn't paying attention or anything (like mskate likes to point out that I do a lot), it's just that I haven't seen a lot of these people in 10 years and people change a lot in that time, and there were only like 4 people that look almost the same as they did back in highschool. At about 8 before it got dark we took a group photo, and after that it was more hanging out. Before we left for the night we decided to exchange discord names so we could keep in touch. It was a great night. A number of people asked about mskate and I let them know she was going on a trip on Saturday and wanted to be well rested, but I said I'd see to it that she made it to the 20 year reunion.
OK, now it's time for Saturday. This was my "day to myself" with lots of errands. I had to get my allergy shot this week, so I went up to my parents area for my appointment. Nothing supper special, except that I took a long way home so I could stop at Ollie's and the meat store on the way home. Since we were hosting a grilling party on Monday I wanted to make sure we had enough potato chips and snacks, and meat. I picked up some spices and a power bank as well as chips, and got a variety of chips because I didn't know what everyone would like. Then I went to the meat store and bought over 50 pounds of meat. Over August we decided to try to not buy groceries or spend other money, and got our freezer pretty low. Now that it was September I decided to stock up again, and get hamburger meat for our party. I pulled all our meat in the house and reorganized the fridge to hold all this meat. I processed about 40 pounds on this day (which means taking it out of the butcher packaging and putting it in labeled freezer bags in single servings). I also had to move some stuff around the deep freeze as well, and it's about as full as it can get now. After the shopping and processing I did some more cleaning and prepping for the party on Monday, but otherwise pretty chill. Also, the replacement battery for a PS4 controller arrived so I finished that fix from a week ago (I bought a controller for $4 at a garage sale, but the battery was shot and needed replacement, so I bought a replacement on amazon for $15 and brought this controller back to life for under $20). I bought a replacement battery years ago when I thought my main controller lost it's charge but it wasn't the right type (battery was for an older model, and this controller was the newer model), so the controller laid on our coffee table disassembled until the battery came. Now it's assembled and working, so win (plus mskate is happy that the controller is no longer on the coffee table).
OK, now it's Sunday. I went to church and mskate got home a little later. I missed her friend when she arrived (I was already off to get my shot), but I saw her on the return trip. It was cool seeing her again since I hadn't since the wedding. Sunday day was pretty low key, but around 5 PM I went over to our friend's house for his daughter's 3rd birthday. This itself was also a little reunion, because this is my mom's godson and we would typically see each other 2-3 times a year, but haven't since 2019. What's also really fun is godson's wife's aunt was a counselor for my k-12 education and she was pretty involved in my educational development, so it's fun that she is able to say in my family's life beyond my k12 education. Mskate wasn't able to go to this one either (again, too tired), but she'll make it to the next one (which will probably be the son's 6th birthday). So this was funny, the mom decided she wanted to have a magician WAY to close to the party and didn't hire a real magician, so when I got there she asked if I could do some coin tricks, and I'm like "uhhh, I guess so, it's been years since I did magic though." She bought some plastic pirate coins, so I looked up some coin tricks after dinner and visiting with people. I learned 5 tricks but only managed to feel confident with 3 (2 of them required dense metal coins for the fast "toss the coin between hands," and the plastic was just too slow). I was summoned before I could find other tricks, so I did the "there's a coin behind your ear" tricks, and I rubbed the coin until it disappeared, and I rubbed the coin on my forearm to make it change color only to have it "accidentally" disappear. I was a little worried I wouldn't be very good (again, I probably haven't done magic tricks for 20 years), but I told myself "I'm entertaining 4 year olds, they're easy to fool." I ended up doing a really good job, everyone was fooled even though they were sitting all around me. Part of the success came from my ability to play a convincing character. I played an "incompetent magician who is always making things disappear." It ended up going over very well.
Not long after it was piñata time. Since they were little it was a pull string piñata, and that got a good laugh from my mom and I; when my brother and I were growing up, we reused the same pull string pinata for probably 6+ birthday parties, and I knew the winner string because it was always in the same spot. We joked about it and when it was getting low on strings I told mom "I think I know the winner." The parents handled it well though, because each kid got a whack at it before saying "OK now for pull string." If we did that I would have probably enjoyed it more, because I wanted to hit the pinata when I was little. Presents and cake were "what you would expect from a 3 year old's party;" the birthday girl was too distracted to really focus on opening more than one present, and the non-birthday brother wanted to open presents but it wasn't his day, but it was still fun. The cake was also nothing too special, except that it was a dairy free gluten free cake, which ended up being pretty good. After cake it was getting pretty late for the kids (8PM), so it was clean-up and go home time. I stayed behind after to help clean up some and maybe enjoy adult company after the kids were asleep. During this time when the other adults were busy one of the older girls (maybe 7 or 8) needed entertainment so I kept her busy by continuing to "screw up" the color changing coin trick. I did it probably 5 times and I was getting tired, so I'm just like "oh man I hope I don't let the trick slip," but I kept her fooled every time. Cleaning took longer than expected so I decided to leave not long after. Before I left though, I did the "color changing coin" trick for the dad since he missed the main show. I changed up the act before I left, and now instead of being incompetent I was just tired and "prone to accidents." After I did it he was very confused, looking for the coin, and asking "how'd you do that?" It was a fun time, and I said "next time I'll do balloon animals, I have a lot more experience at that."
OK, now it's Monday, Labor Day, and the first party mskate and I hosted at our house. Sure, our "first dinner party" was earlier this summer when camping, but this was the first time it was at our condo. We had been prepping for about a week, and I did all the final shopping on Saturday, it was now time. We had some hours to prep, and around 2 people started showing up. We basically talked for about an hour, and then prepared the burger patties and processed the ground beef. We pulled 2 pounds to make into tacos later, and pressed 11 patties since that's how many would fit on the platter with 2 levels, and rolled the remainder of the beef into meat balls. I grilled up 5 hotdogs and baked 5 potatoes in addition to the burgers. The fun thing is I grilled up everything on my little grill Dad called "the little grill that could." Everyone enjoyed it and the party went off without a hitch. After dinner my mom, aunt, brother, and I walked down to the park that's by us, just for a walk, while mskate and dad just hung out at home. Our park has a splash pad that my aunt and I splashed around a little in after some peer pressure. Overall, fun little party, and it was good to actually celebrate labor day for once instead of crying over it being the end of summer vacation (our school year started not long after labor day, and with mom as a teacher it wasn't a "fun holiday" for anyone).
Busy as it was, this was a fun weekend. Sure, it would have been better if things were spaced out a little more, but that wasn't the way things worked out. Since a lot of people missed out on the class reunion, I think there is going to be more of an effort to let people know for the 20th. I also know that the next children's birthday party I'm going to I'm going to make balloon animals, so that will be fun. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.
