Hey everyone. So 2025 was kind of a crazy year. I lost my grandma (my last biological grandparent) and my grandpa-figure, and my in-laws dog. On a positive note, I went on a cruise, to Universal Studios, and Disneyland. I also saw some cool movies and won some stuff at our Oktoberfest celebration. I also paid off my mortgage in full, which is great to get that monkey off my back and not having to worry about having $900 in my account every month. I also managed to save $1686.46 by couponing and buying sales this year, so yay. If you want to see more, just scroll through past blogs. Now for some New Years festivities.
On the 29th I had a little Christmas visit with my aunt (this happened far enough after the Christmas blog after I posted it, so I'm putting it here). My parents were going to go with us, but they both got a little sick so they didn't join my brother, wife, and I. Here's the funny thing, we live south enough to where our weather can be different than my parents and even more my aunt; it wasn't snowing or all that cold at our condo, so I wore my crocks, but when I got up to my parents there was snow on the ground, and my aunt was not sure about us coming up because the weather was getting kind of bad (heavy snow). It made things kind of annoying, but it went OK. We loaded up our van with the albums mskate scanned in, the gift we were giving my aunt, and some food to have while we were visiting. The drive up wasn't that bad, just everyone driving 10 mph under the speed limit and having 20 feet visibility. When we got there we unloaded everything but the albums. We gave her her presents and she REALLY liked the photo frame. It took some time to get it connected to her wifi, but once it was on we spent like 20 minutes just watching the slide show, looking at the photos we uploaded and the photos mbear uploaded. Hopefully my other cousins upload some. That was the big gift from the entire family, but mskate and I also got her a little something, something we found when camping. It was a box of mason jars since she likes to can, and she really liked them since she likes to can. Kind of funny thing with the food, we couldn't find what my mom sent up with us, so we just had the cheesecake factory rolls and salami I brought up, and the from scratch garlic bread and soup my aunt made. Before we left we moved the albums to her garage, and we brought back soup for my parents. I gave them my rolls since those were really good with dipping in the soup.
The 30th wasn't super special, we just got a chuck e cheese year long pass and I went to the dentist where I used up the last of my FSA. New Years Eve is when things kind of picked up. We went up to our parents neighborhood to get my allergy shot and spend some time with the parents. I got my kroger coupons from my parents (because they mail to my parents and my account is so sold I'd have to go through a long process to move my address, I think I'll do it when I move though). We went to mskate's parents and did a little birthday celebration for her dad. We gave him a Donald Trump paint by stickers book, and he really liked it. We got some pizza for lunch, which was a good little lunch. Afterwards mskate and I went a chuck-e-cheese up by them. We played some games and got some prizes for mskate's easter egg fundraiser. Later in the evening we went to the New Year Vigil mass. Afterwards mskate and I went home and rung in the new year by ourselves (I invited mizorlover over but he was busy). I made a 500 piece pokemon puzzle in one evening. Normally a 500 piece puzzle will take a week, but because there were 38 characters it was like 38 small puzzles with 4-30 pieces each. I typically dump all the pieces in 1 half of the box, go through it trying to find like pieces (a character or edges), then go back through, again and again for at least10 times, but this time I only had to do it like 4 times. Fun. Around 11:30 I pulled mskate into the living room where we watched Dick Clark's Rocking New Years Eve since I've always used that, and then when the new year hit I lit off 4 fireworks. Those were a little hard since it was windy, but I got them lit and they flew off.
New Years day was kind of eventful. We did some after Christmas shopping (because there is still clearance sale stuff) and while out mskate ran into a family that goes to her catechism, and mailed out an ebay item, but the big thing was going to a hibachi restaurant by us. I've never done hibachi before but it definitely seemed like fun. "I've never done it before" is going to play in big. The chef put on his show, light the grill on fire with a heart, flip and spin his cooking utensils as the grill heats up, flip an egg into his hat and then pull out a toy chick, crack the eggs and make the fried rice, toss some vegitables into my mouth (I caught a piece of broccoli), spray sake in our mouths, do some fun flipping of the foods, and then do the onion volcano. So the sake thing was where "I don't know what I'm doing" came in. He kept spraying me and I just keep taking it, expecting him to stop "when I got the serving that's included with the price," but apparently I'm supposed to close my mouth when I'm done, so I just keep getting sake until it all spills out of my mouth. He thought that was kind of funny. Our meal was quite good, and I'll definitely go there again (dinner and a show). The main thing though is this is when I learned I'm allergic to shrimp. I've never had shrimp before (it's an expensive food and I don't particularly care for seafood, so I never felt like I was missing out on something), and I'd normally give it to mskate, but because he cooked it with gluten soy sauce or something she couldn't have, I decide to give them a try since I had them and didn't want them to go to waste. Shortly after eating though my upper lip started to swell and I was kind of dizzy, with a couple hot flashes. I look ups shellfish allergic reactions and yep I was having one. I had mskate drive me to the emergency room and they gave me an IV with antihistamines and steroids for the swelling. I then slept most of the observation period since they gave me benedril and it made me sleepy. Now I'm going to get an epipen, so when people ask me "what did you get for Christmas" I'll say "an epipen" before going into the real list.
The 2nd was pretty calm, only big thing was going to Chuck E Cheese and disassembling some omnipods using my new table vice. The 3rd was also kind of calm. We went to mass since mskate is traveling for skating nationals. We went out to dinner with her mom before setting them up in the 1 night hotel that is close to our house. The 4th was also pretty nothing. We apparently forgot to put in the donut order for coffee and donuts for church, but the ushers (who were in charge this week) found a work around. I went to the meat market and restocked the freezer, we basically ran out of meat in the deep freeze at the end of 2025, so I bought a bunch of steaks, pork chops, and stew meats, got them processed, and resupplied the freezer. I went to chuck e cheese and BJs to get some additional stuffs. I'm also keeping up on my new years resolution of "watch at least 30 minutes out of my DVR a day so I can get back down to the smaller cloud DVR on sling. Yay. Well, this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.
Hey everyone, during all the Christmas fun mskate mom-in-law and I decided we would go to New Mexico to see her aunt that's on hospice over the New Year holiday. It wasn't going to be an easy trip for them, but it would be important since she doesn't seem to have much time left and the rest of the family was figuring out when to see her as well. Plus, this would be my only time to meet her and would basically be the only time I could see her, so it was pretty perfect. I took this as an opportunity to try out my new fire stick and luna controller (I basically bought it so I could have my streaming when traveling and so I could play my twitch prime luna games, and this was a great time to try it out). We basically spent the week between Christmas and New Years prepping for this trip, and while that was kind of stressful and ate all my time (I wanted to finish a bunch of blogs and videos, but that didn't pan out, though I did get my book published digitally, so win), it all worked out. Mom-in-law stayed with us the night before the trip so we could get to the airport easy.
It's now New Years Eve and we're getting ready to travel. Our bags were all packed and we loaded everything in the jeep. This time when we got to the airport we made sure to park in the cheaper long term parking structure (because when we went to Texas we parked in the twice as expensive short term parking structure). The craziness starts here because it was way hard finding a parking spot; we drove around 3 levels and just narrowly found a spot at the 4th level, and the navigations was confusing so that made things all the harder. TSA wasn't too difficult, but there was a problem with the TSA cares thing mskate applied to so she wouldn't have problems with her diabetes pump (they didn't know what it was so we had to go through normal security). After that we got to our terminal no problem, and just waited for the plane.
The plane ride was kind of interesting. Normally we fly Delta, but American was much cheaper so this was the first time flying that airline. The last times when I flew Delta the airplane had a screen in the chair in front of you to watch movies and TV shows, and the built-in nature made it pretty convenient and easy to use (just plug in headphones and select your entertainment on the screen). American was kind of different, since it was basically the exact same service (free movies and TV shows), but it required connecting to the in-flight wifi hotspot and going to the free section (not pay for in-flight wifi) in a web browser. The interesting thing is the plane seatbacks were then build with smart device holders. I was just a little fascinated by it. I ended up watching A Charlie Brown Christmas since I haven't watched it yet this year and then the apple tv plus episodes of Peanuts. The episodes were good, but definitely not worth apple having it's own streaming service. Next is where things got bad. After the Peanuts I found a 2020 version of Saved By The Bell, apparently a Peacock original. I wouldn't say I'm a "giant fan" of Saved By The Bell '89, but I enjoyed watching it in middle and highschool in the summer on TBS, and watched all 4 seasons, the college years, and the TV movies on hulu in like 2017, enjoyed the unauthorized story on lifetime that covered Duston's story, and enjoyed the people reunion article from 2009, so I'm definitely "a fan." I just like the cheesy sitcom format of characters getting into simple problems and everything gets solved at the end of the episode, it's just fun. So when I saw there was a 2020 reboot I was curious, and then when I saw it had the old cast reprising their roles as adults with us following their kids I was excited (because that worked so well with Girl Meets World). After 2 episodes I found myself incredibly disappointed. This wasn't a reboot, this was a cynical commentary-satire of the original series and it's fantasy elements, with the Zack Morris stand-in (Zack's son Mack) and a Jessie stand-in basically getting called out for their priviliage constantly while the inner-city kids struggle to keep up, it just wasn't entertaining. I'll probably go into deeper detail with a full review later, but this truly sucked and I do not recommend it. Like, there's a plot point about how expensive it is to hang out at a sit-down restaurant after school every day, and how unrealistic it is for kids to afford that. Uh yeah, it's escapism entertainment, that's why I like the original show. I don't remember what else I watched on the flight, but it was better than that. I also played Animal Crossing as I worked on catching up to reality.
After the plane ride we got to our layover in Dallas. This was kind of interesting since it's a really large airport, so large that we needed to take a people mover to get from our arrival terminal to the departure terminal. Before we took the people mover though I went to the candy store in the terminal we arrived at and got a Spongebob Finder's Keeper's egg with Sandy as the prize (I'm currently working on a full collection, and have a list of product codes with the corresponding toy, and one day will hopefully get enough to make an article on how to tell the boxes apart, but for now you can enjoy this food review). When we got to our terminal mskate and mom-in-law got Panera Bread while I got McDonald's. I was going to get points with the app but unfortunately my phone died so I wasn't able to get my points. Oh well. Something cool that happened was someone gave mom-in-law a food voucher which saved us $12 on their order (but they had some trouble entering it so I had to do it for them). We ate our lunch and then waited for our plane.
The flight from Dallas to Albuquerque was generally uneventful. I decided to check the movie section and finished Minions Rise of Gru, and some other movie that I don't remember. The thing that was more memorable is I think the cabin lost some air pressure because I was getting altitude sickness and mskate's diabetes pump had an altitude alarm. That was uncomfortable, but I still made it through. One thing I did while on the plane was take some stock footage of take off and window views. I plan on releasing some as creative commons.
When we got to Albuquerque things were pretty calm. The airport had a lookout point and we made the note that we had to check it out on the way back. We also stopped at one of the gift shops to look around and they had something like chili lemon pistachios (or something else that was a unique flavor and sounded really good). I almost picked them up to try it out and would normally pay like $7 for the bag but would be willing to pay $3 airport markup (I want to say my spongebob surprise egg was like $1-2 more expensive than normal), but the bag was a whopping $16, no thank-you. Leaving the secure terminal was also pretty nifty. At most airports I've been to one takes an escalator down to a level and it's all 1-way traffic, but this had like an airlock system where one walks into a room to where there is a door gate style, and the gate style doesn't open until the back door is fully closed, and then the exit door doesn't open until the gate style is fully closed.
Now the fun begins, because we had a 1 hour drive from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, which meant a pretty large uber fair. We ordered it no problem and just waited at the ride share pickup location, and I ate snacks to hold me over until we got to the hotel. I packed a decent amount of snacks with a wide variety to make sure we had food for everyone when we needed it, and that was good because I needed some. Mskate was worried that I wasn't wearing my coat while we waited outside for the uber (despite being in the desert, it got kind of cold in the winter), but it was only like 50 degrees which when I have my warm winter blood for 20 degrees and below, 50 is cool t-shirt weather (which is what I happened to be wearing). The ride there was pretty neat, I got a lot of video of the mountains and roads, and our driver drove Dean Norris of Breaking Bad fame (Hank). His story was "I picked him up and he's wearing these large sun glasses and I said 'do I know you' and he said 'no I have a very familiar face, you're confusing me with someone else' and I said 'no, you're Hank,' and he said 'dang-it, you Albuquerqueans always find us Breaking Bad guys.'" That's pretty neat. Since mskate had the problem with her insulin pump we had to find a pharmacy to get syringes. Our driver stopped at a Walgreens that was kind of on the way and let us get some. We gave him a really big tip for how accommodating he was.
Checking into the hotel wasn't too difficult. I had the confirmation printed off just in case but all they needed was my ID. When we got to our hotel room I pulled all of the extra snacks that were packed in the clothes suit cases and put them on the desk for getting to. I also set-up the firestick and got set-up with that. The cool thing about the wifi is since it was a Drury Inn my phone recognized it from other Drury Inns so I didn't even have to add the network. That was pretty neat. Dinner was soon after unpacking and it was pork sliders and baked potatoes, and it was really good. I also had a vodka cranberry sour with my dinner. Best part, Drury Inns have free dinner and drinks. The cost might be a little higher than other hotels, or the room quality might be lower quality than other hotels for a similar price (the place mskate and I go to in Columbus is about the same price or cheaper than Drury Inns with higher quality rooms), but a continental breakfast, continental dinner, 3 free drinks a night, and unlimited fountain drinks and popcorn any time is a great value.
OK, now it's time for us to see Aunt P. We chose this specific hotel because it was within walking distance to her house (I want to say 4-5 blocks away), and even though it was getting dark we walked over to her house. I was pretty interested with all the adobe architecture, but I couldn't really take it in because I had to be very aware of my surroundings. In general Santa Fe seems to be a pretty safe city (with stories I'll get to later), but even then there wasn't a lot of street lights where we were (using our phone flashlights) and there were a fair amount of dark corners a mugger could hide in. I lead the way while carrying the semi-heavy bag that could be used as a weapon if needed (nothing to incapacitate someone, but enough to break their focus). Thankfully it didn't have to come to that, but there was still risks due to ice resulting in us taking an uber on the way back (but I'm getting ahead of myself). Getting there on the Saturday we did was really good because Aunt P was having a good day and was pretty animated. Mskate talks about her a lot so it was great to finally meet her in person, along with the care taker that is the favorite. Even though it was a good day for her, it was pretty late, so we only stayed for about an hour before she said "not to poo-poo you, but it's getting late and I want to go to bed." We said our goodbyes and when I gave her a little hug I also shook her hand, and Aunt P didn't want to let go of my hand. I asked if she liked my hand and she said yes, and I said "thank-you I've been moisturizing," the first of many silly exchanges between the two of us. Our Uber back to the hotel was in a Tesla, and we were all pretty impressed with it. We had some trouble opening the doors because you have to press on the handle to get the handle ready to open, and then it can be pulled to open, and I don't remember the door open from the inside but the ladies had some trouble getting out of the back so I had to open the door for them when we got back.
One detail that was a little "overlooked" I guess you could say, is it was New Years Eve, and I pretty much always stay up for New Years even if it's just me. The kind of challenge though was the 2 hour time difference on top of the traveling with a 1 room hotel room (no sitting area like last year), so I basically had to keep it down as I wrung in the new year. I watched Animaniacs on my phone for some hours while everyone else went to bed, and I intended to just stay up to watch the east coast NYC ball drop (because I live in eastern standard time and that's my normal new years count down and ball drop), but I ended up falling asleep at about 9:30 PM local time-11:30 PM normal time and missed the NYC count down, but I ended up waking up at about 10:55 PM local time-12:55 AM normal time so I pulled up Dick Clark's Rockin' New Years Eve and watched the Puerto Rico ball drop (at least I think it was Puerto Rico, as I do the math while researching this blog they're actually 1 hour ahead of eastern standard time and normally the central time countdown is out of New Orleans, but whatever). Either way I had fun.
Sleep through the night to New Years Day Sunday. I wanted to keep on my normal sleep schedule so I woke up at like 6AM local time 8AM my time, and after an hour of hanging in the room it was breakfast time; a simple continental breakfast with pancakes and hash browned potatoes. 9AM though is when things got really cool. The St. Francis of Assisi Cathedral Basilica is like literally next door to the hotel (there's some court yard area, but nothing significant between hotel property and church property), so we got to go to mass there. It is a really big and pretty basilica, with a lot of stained glass and murals, but it doesn't end there. Since there is a large Hispanic population all of the hymns were half English half Spanish, and the old testament reading was in Spanish with the English translation available with the hymns. Oh but it gets better. I don't know if this was his home parish or he was just there for the weekend, but the bishop lead mass while we were there, and since that happens about every 2 years or less at my home parish that was pretty cool; and if it ended there that would be enough but it just keeps coming. At this particular mass they were honoring 2 police officers that died in the line of duty, so there were a lot of police officers in dress uniforms and what I believe was a "police march snare drum beat" during the opening hymn (maybe that's just how they do it at this parish, but it had that "honoring a serviceman" sound). Oh but that's not all, to top it all off the incumbent New Mexico governor was at the mass as well because it was inauguration day, and she and her husband brought up the gifts and after mass received a blessing from the bishop in front of the basilica with a lot of media attention. It was quite ordeal. Mom-in-law said she saw people with ear pieces, meaning that her secret service security detail was there. Talk about cool. After mass we went back to the hotel and just rested for an hour or 2 before we went to see Aunt P.
Now that it was day time I was able to enjoy the walk over much more. There was a lot of cool Adobe and some interesting architecture.
Today was a lesser day for Aunt P. We planned on staying most of the day with a lot of non-visiting time so I had my switch and phone ready for wait around time, and I'm glad I did because I think about half of the time we were there Aunt P was napping (not in a row, but on and off she would just nod off). One of the funny things is she zoned out a lot and the caregiver was saying she was going to her own world. Here's a fun interaction from this.
Caregiver: [P], are you in your own world right now?
Aunt P: yeahh...
Pokematic: can I join you?
Aunt P: nooo.....
Just a funny little thing that happened. We had pizza together for lunch and that was good, and later mskate and I went to Kakawa a specialty chocolate and ice cream shop to get Aunt P a milkshake and us some specialty treats, but unfortunately they were closed, so we saved that for the next day. In addition to us one of Aunt P's friends that also lives in Santa Fe joined us for visiting, which was nice since I heard about her a lot as well, and that helped break up the time while we visited with Aunt P the whole day.
When it was time to go the friend gave us a ride back to the hotel and hung out with mom-in-law for about 2 hours while they caught up, and mskate joined them for some of the time, but since I had multiple degrees of separation on this I just hung out in the room until dinner (which was about 2 hours from when we arrived back to the hotel). Now as we were driving back to the hotel there was a sign that caught my attention, but you'll just have to wait until that part of the story. For now I'm going to tell you about Drury Inn dinner on Sunday night. I want to say it was some kind of chicken, and since I don't like chicken I had the hotdog. Now it just so happened that the soup of the day was chili, so I ended up having myself a chili dog and baked potato for dinner in addition to a whisky sour.
After dinner mskate and I went a few blocks down from the hotel to downtown Santa Fe. For the most part we just walked around the various shopping areas and enjoyed the Christmas lights that were still up in the city square. It was really quite nice. We went into some mini-malls and "shopping arcades" (the Santa Fe arcade, with no coin-ops), and even though a lot of things were closed it was still fun. What gave me quite a laugh was going into the five and dime. I don't think this was a "traditional five and dime" since there was a lot of touristy items and souvenirs, and no one was wearing raspberry berets (and I didn't feel like giving the cashier a hard time by asking if he worked for Mr. McGee since I'm sure he hears that joke multiple times a day and I wasn't buying anything), but it was still fun. One thing mskate and I enjoyed doing when we were dating was walking around city areas and it's fun to still do that now that we're married.
Now it's Monday and after eating hotel breakfast mskate wanted to go to a local restaurant to get some breakfast food she could eat (food allergies). It was a little Mexican cafe 1 block from the hotel and she got breakfast tacos. Now because I live in the north and most of my experience with Mexican food is Taco Bell (blasphemy, I know), my perception of a "breakfast taco" (along with other "breakfast versions of lunch and dinner foods") is "a normal taco with scrambled eggs in it." Since eggs are one of her allergies she asked for them on the side (I ate them) and I expected a "pretty standard taco" after that. To my surprise it wasn't that, it had hash browns, sausage chunks, and bacon pieces, and not a whole lot of other "traditional taco ingredients." That was pretty neat. After breakfast we walked around some of the shopping that was closed the previous night, and as we were walking we found a place that had free dog treats, so we picked one up for the dog of the caretaker that would be taking care of Aunt P today.
Today was going to be our last day visiting with Aunt P, and it was pretty fun. Today for lunch we had Chinese food, and I had sesame beef which was pretty good. After lunch mskate and I went to the chocolate store again this time knowing they would be open. This was quite a cool place. First, they had all sorts of fancy and exotic chocolates, many of which were allergy free. Mskate said "I'm going to limit myself to 3 things, and I want 2 of the peppermint patties, and I can't chose between the truffle and raspberry filling." I suggested just getting one of each and that ended up being the right decision. Since it was expensive I wanted to get something I couldn't get anywhere else (sure, it won't be Kakawa quality, but I can get peanut butter cups and chocolate covered cherries anywhere); this is why I chose the Aztec chocolate chili ice cream. I knew about Aztec chili chocolate from The Polar Express and other sources and it seemed intriguing, but in my half a dozen or so adventures to border states this was the only place I've seen that had Aztec chili chocolate, and for it to be in ice cream (a food that is a "spicy food antidote") I was even more interested. And of course, we got Aunt P her milkshake since that was our primary reason for going there. It was quite a busy place, where I think we spent somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes just waiting for our milkshake and ice cream.
When we got back I sampled some of my ice cream and wow was that an amazing flavor. The Aztecs were definitely onto something when they put chili in the chocolate. For the most part it tasted like a rich chocolate ice cream and would be another "it's high quality but I can get this anywhere," but the heat added by the chili was a very unique addition that didn't change the flavor at all (like, it wasn't "chocolate and hot sauce," it was "chocolate, that was spicy"). It like, woke up my taste buds to bring more of the chocolate flavor in. Add on top of this that my mouth was very confused because it felt like it was hot due to the chili but was actually cold due to the ice cream. If you're ever in Santa Fe and enjoy spicy foods some, I highly recommend getting the Aztec chocolate ice cream from Kakawa chocolate, because it is an experience like nothing else I've had.
Aunt P really enjoyed her milkshake, and this is when this day's funny Aunt P interaction happened. She drank about 1/4 of it and then kind of "lost the straw" as mskate was holding it for her. After not going for the straw for a minute or so I said "I think she might be done," and then she gave me a look of "the hell I am" and started drinking again and had about half of the milkshake before putting it in the freezer. We visited for about another hour and then said our final goodbyes. I said "it was good meeting you Aunt [P]" and she said "it was good to meet you too," and that made mskate and mom-in-law quite happy since that was like the largest sentence she said the entire trip.
We went back to the hotel and rested a little bit, and this is when I had one of the coolest things happen on the trip. Remember that sign I mentioned some paragraphs back? The sign said "video library," and I was very curious to see what that was, and since it was just a block away from the hotel I decided to find out. It was kind of in the back of a tiny strip mall, out of view of the main road in a kind of unassuming store front (I think it just had a sign that said "video library" in basic font, and nothing in the windows), but some times that is a sign of something really special, and this was no exception. It turns out this is a 41 year old video rental store, the oldest in the United States and 2nd oldest in the world (the oldest being a German store that is like 3 months older). This place was SO COOL! And when it says "library," oh it means it. Most video stores have the cover of the movie facing you to try to get your attention and make it easy to see the movie you're looking for (or in my case when I would go to my local video stores, the movie I didn't know I was looking for). They have them on a shelf with the spine facing you to maximize the amount of DVDs they can have on the shelf similar to a library, and this place easily had thousands of DVDs on the shelves typically with only 1-4 copies of a movie that wasn't super popular like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, or Hitchcock, so there had to be at least 1000 different movies on the shelves. They also had "check-out slips and return date stickers" like one would find in a library book, just adding to the whole "library aesthetic." I didn't rent anything because I had no way of playing them, but I did buy a T-shirt because I had to support this business. Then the thing that was super amazing was I asked the owner if she would give me a small interview for my vlog and she said yes. She told me about the history of the store and how she has all sorts of media, and off camera she said she I wasn't the first person to ask her since there was someone that was making a documentary on video stores that were still open long after many were gone. And then she gave me some stickers for the store which was really awesome of her probably because she could tell I was into it (and probably because I bought a t-shirt). If anyone is in Santa Fe, you need to check out The Video Library.
Dinner was pretty low-key. Mskate ordered a Frito salad from one of the restaurants in town since she couldn't eat whatever the hotel was serving, so we went there together and while we were waiting for our food we found the t-shirt store she went to last time she was there and got me a Santa Fe shirt. Hotel dinner was nothing super special, I want to say they had chicken so I ended up eating a hotdog again. Mom-in-law and I both got double drinks (her a wine, me another cranberry vodka sour) to help us fall asleep in prep for the early morning, and that was basically it. It just so happened that there was a Barbra Walter's special that the ladies wanted to watch on hulu, so I set it up for them on the firestick and got a lot of praise for bringing it (because before it was just me watching cartoons on it). I have a feeling the firestick is going to be a staple travel item in the future. After the special we got everything packed up and ready for the trip home.
Tuesday morning had to be the most crazy part of the trip. Packing up and checking out wasn't a problem, but the Uber was. Despite reserving the ride 12 hours in advance and having multiple confirmations, the driver canceled on us leaving us kind of stranded. We didn't have a back-up plan since we haven't had problems with uber in the past, but that wasn't a great thing. I was the calm one in the situation so I asked the hotel staff if they had any suggestions. One of the valet guys said "I got you, call Rob he's very reliable, he has 6 or 7 guys and if they won't drive you he'll do it" as he handed us a business card. Within 15 minutes Rob picked us up and we called him "Rob to the Rescue," and he said he liked it so much he might start using that since he gets a lot of business from Uber and Lyft sucking. (his business is independent from major ride sharing and taxi services). If you haven't noticed, I normally don't like referring to people by their real names in my blogs unless they're a public figure like Tommy Wiseau, but his company doesn't have "a brand name," it's just "Rob," so ask your hotel for Rob if you need a ride when you're in the area because he's good. He also had some cool stories, like giving Dwite from The Office and Danny Trejo a ride once in addition to some singers I didn't recognize. I want to say he was a little more expensive than Uber, but the reliability was definitely worth it.
Going through TSA was pretty easy this time. We had the information for TSA cares and this time they actually knew what it was. We had a TSA officer specifically assigned to us, and she took us through an xray machine that was just for us and it was really nice. Mom-in-law forgot a water bottle in her bag so that got flagged and made things annoying. I also had my pocket bunched up from emptying it into the bin, and had to get patted down. It was cool being able to explore the airport some, like sitting in the observation deck and looking at the planes. I did a little exploring but as a small airport there wasn't much to look at, so I just ended up back at the terminal and waited for the plane. Something that was really funny to me was this one boy keeping himself entertained by talking about a game he had and how "if you have 15 things then you have 15, but if you have 20 things then you have 20" or whatever it was. To most people this would just be kind of cute and kind of annoying, but I thought it was hilarious because that reminds me of the "and you know what happened next" story. A little back story, when I was like 5 or so I went to a family reunion with my parents and grandparents, and supposedly I didn't stop talking over the entire 10 hour ride and like every other sentence in my recounting of the cartoons I watched was "and you know what happened next." When I heard that I was thinking "that must have been what I sounded like back then." The plane ride to Dallas was pretty uneventful, I just played Animal Crossing while watching Movie Money Confidential (a documentary on independent movie financing), and some of the Apple TV Plus movie Luck.
Dallas though is when things got crazy. I want to say that our gate changed 3 times (one as we were getting off the plane and going to the gate, two after we had made it to the gate and settled in for waiting); always in terminal C so we didn't have to take the people mover, but still "gather everything and move" while we were trying to get lunch (mom-in-law and I each had a cheeseburger from TGI Friday's quick service, and mskate ended getting Chick-Fil-A by the way). It was kind of interesting though, since we experienced 3 different types of gates; the first was kind of open with some modern design in the chairs, the second was a pretty basic gate with the "connected leather airport chairs," and the third was kind of a mix with "updated connected leather airport chairs" with power outlets and some with recliner leg rests. I also stopped at the same candy store from some days ago to see if they had any different spongebob eggs, but they didn't and were all Sandy. Oh well. On the final flight to home I finished Luck and watched most of an episode of Bell Air, the Peacock Original drama version of the Fresh Prince of Bell Air show. Unlike the Saved By The Bell show, this one was kind-of good since it wasn't trying to critique the original, and I guess the Fresh Prince story lends itself to drama stories more than Saved By The Bell (especially since they tackled some heavy plots in the original Fresh Prince), but it was just kind of lacking since it didn't have the original cast (Will Smith was Will, Alfonso Ribeirto was Carlton, James Avery was Uncle Phil) and I for one watched Fresh Prince for the comedy not for the situations.
When we got back things were pretty simple. We left the airport and went to the parking structure. It wasn't very hard to find the car, and no difficulties on the way back. The parking was a little expensive ($80), but whatever. Since the replacement xbox media remote for IRA and dad-in-law it came while we were away I sent it home with mom-in-law. This was a great trip. It was great meeting Aunt P, and then I saw the governor and bishop at mass, and then I went to the oldest video store and got an interview with the owner, on top of all the other neat things that happened. This was a great way to spend the New Year. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.
Hey everyone, it's that time of year again, the time when I give thanks for all that's great and fight some people for $10 off a microwave, Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Before I get into things, I just want to say taking a month off was not intentional; it was just my first anniversary around the 1st weekend and we celebrated by going to Disney World, so there was a lot of planning and prep that went into that, and then I had to recover from that the next weekend, and then it's Thanksgiving, and then mskate went to see her aunt so there was work with that, and work is a little crazy so when I get home I'm tired, and it's just been crazy. Now that I have some time to myself I figured now would be a good time to get back to things.
OK, so it's the second Thanksgiving as a married man, and we've basically agreed that mskate's side gets Christmas and we stay with her parents for overnights, and my side gets everything else. This is because the only holiday they get really into is Christmas and mskate's parents kept her room a bedroom, whereas my parents get into every holiday and my dad turned my old room into his home office. We had 3 days of festivities planned so we packed for 2 nights. We left shortly after waking up and got to our parents around mid-morning. We unpacked and did "Thanksgiving Ornament Presents" with her parents. When I say mskate's family is into Christmas, I mean they would be "our lawn and house is covered in decorations" people "if it wasn't so gaudy," and as such her dad bought us a bunch of ornaments and wrapped them up for us. His logic for giving them to us on Thanksgiving is "if I'm going to give you Christmas decorations, I'm not going to give it to you after the decorations are no longer needed, this way you can keep them out for the season." That's actually some pretty sound logic. We got some cool Disney Hallmark ornaments, and some Christmas Lego sets and crystal decorations (like the REALLY fancy kind, but her dad got them used for a good deal). After presents mskate and I made brussels sprouts for our contribution to Thanksgiving dinner. It's not a very complicated recipie, just sprouts cut in half with olive oil and garlic salt.
Anyway, food is cooked, now it's time to head to my parents. We were the 2nd to arrive I think, and it was just visiting. Not soon after that pepperbc and her family arrived and then my grandma got there, and then grandma's friends got there. A lot of visiting, talking about the different things we're working on. It was fun time. I had a bunch of hors d'oeuvre before dinner for lunch time, and got a paper for us to look at circulars for black Friday. It was a little difficult since they didn't have a lot of ads due to the supply chain shortage, but the website was up to date and got a lot of information from them. My family went through them and found some things for everyone (details later). Around 4PM we had dinner. I had ham, green beans, brussels sprouts, and rolls. Everyone else had turkey and stuffing with all that good stuff. We had no brussels sprouts left so that's a good sign that everyone liked them, yay.
OK, dinner's over, now it's time for the accordion, because that's part of our traditions. We sang some polkas, Christmas songs, and Small World for mskate. We had a lot of fun. After the accordion we had deserts; home made chocolate cake, chocolate pudding pie, apple crisp, and some other things. Since we had 3 people celebrating birthdays around this time we sang happy birthday and had some birthday candles in the cake. Really fun time. We did some more visiting, and then it was time to go. Mskate and I returned to her parents house and got some sleep for IRA and I to go black Friday Shopping.
OK, it's 5AM. I get up, grab some pop tarts, and tell IRA "get up, time to go shopping." The first store we went to was Best Buy. We got there before the store opened and had to wait in line. We were both cold but it was managable. The main thing I wanted there was an outdoor antenna that I can use for now while we're living in the condo and then get it installed when we move to a permanent house. I got it and IRA bought some DVDs and BluRays. Our next stop was Walmart. I wanted to get sonic colors ultimate on an 8th generation console (because I hate the wii) and jedi fallen order, and I was going to get a $20 roku at ABC Warehouse for my aunt but they had a $15 roku at Walmart so I got it there. IRA got some more DVDs. Our next stop was Macy's where we got a Minnie Mouse stuffed animal for mskate and slippers for my mom. IRA enjoyed the adventure even though he didn't get anything there. Our next stop was Meijer where we were going to get a Disney welcome mat and dog toys, but the dog toys were all made in China and the dogs we were buying for only have toys made in America (or at least, not China), but we were able to find pop sockets at Meijer and wouldn't have to get them at another store. Finding the welcome mats were difficult because I was looking for them in the seasonal section since they are seasonal mats (Micky wishing Merry Christmas kind of things) and the stock person saying "it's somewhere in seasonal," but they were actually standing alone in the outdoor section. Lucky for me IRA was there because he found them. Now it's time for the big one, Target. We went to the target that was close to Meijer and had to stand outside for this one. The employee was funny, he was walking around with a baby Yoda strapped to his chest counting people and then said "OK, now we're not going to shove or fight, and we're going to have a good time, otherwise baby Yoda is going to have some problems." This is the picture I got of him.
There weren't any problems. IRA bought some Super Smash Bros Ultimate DLC packages and I bought $100 worth of apple gift cards to get a $15 target gift card. The cashier didn't understand how the DLC receipt worked and she thought it was something for the store. I stopped her and explained what it was, and how that was IRA's. Good thing I was there. After this Target we went to another Target that was close to best buy and here IRA found some DVDs and I got Skinny Pop popcorn for mskate. Technically it was for our parents and my grandma to have at their houses for mskate since her allergies make snacks a little difficult to have on hand for her, and Skinny Pop is something she can eat. I was looking for 5 feet apart since mskate loves that movie but doesn't have it yet and it was on sale, but this target didn't have it in stock. It was getting to 8AM normal morning time, so we had maybe 1 store left. I had some things to look for at Menards (well just the hope of dog toys), but it was too far away. However, on our way there we found another Target that I forget about and this one had 5 Feet Apart. IRA bought it with some other movies (because the deal was buy 2 get 1 free), and he's going to give it to mskate for Christmas. IRA and I probably could have gone longer but mskate wanted us home for breakfast and shopping show and tell. IRA and I showed off all our finds, and it was fun.
OK, now it's time for 2nd Thanksgiving, this time with my grandpa and aunt. We all drove up together (or maybe we drove separately, I don't remember) and it was good. We arrived around mid-morning and it was a good little visit. We told grandpa about our trip to Disney and gave him the souvenir smashed penny we got him. He really likes Jiminy Cricket, and with it being the 50th birthday of Disney World they had Jiminy Cricket pennies.
He didn't want anything special (he's 95 years old and doesn't want any more possessions), but it's a $1 token gift of his favorite Disney character that I also got as a souvenir so he liked it. I gave my aunt the roku but she didn't know what TV she wanted it installed on so we'll install it another time. For lunch-dinner we had left overs from the day before. It was a fun little visit.
Afterwards we went back to mskate's parents house and visited with them for the evening. We also went to see Encanto, the latest Disney animated movie. I really enjoyed it, a lot of fun music and it strayed from "the animated movie" trope of "buddy roadtrip film." IRA didn't really care for it because there wasn't a grand adventure like so many other animated films of recent years, but I really enjoyed that aspect of it, and mskate was kind of in the middle. Mskate and I had a cuddle couch and IRA sat behind us. We spent the night again, and then in the morning mskate and I went back to our house. The rest of the weekend was pretty tame, just our normal weekend stuff and finding some things on cyber Monday, and planning for mskate's trip to see her Aunt the following weekend.
OK, on Wednesday morning I took mskate to the airport and Thursday and Friday were pretty basic, only special thing was I made a lego gingerbread house for our Christmas display.. Mskate suggested I go see a movie because I don't do that very often anymore now that we're married (because our tastes in movies only really overlap with Disney films), but I realized "actually, this is my opportunity to eat at restaurants we normally can't eat at because of mskate's allergies, I'm going to eat at restaurants that have a bunch of gluten and dairy." On Friday I walked to the takeout pizza and subs place that's a block away from our house and got a side of cheesy garlic bread to go with the pork roast I made. The city did a small firework show in memory of the school shooting that happened earlier in the week, and I happened to catch it as I was walking to get my garlic bread. That was a good way to start the weekend. I also watched 2019's Joker and ate pop-secret buttered popcorn, 2 things I don't really do with mskate around (she can't eat the buttered popcorn, and doesn't like movies like Joker). On Saturday I had a personal pizza from Pizza Hut for lunch and Chinese food from the Chinese takeout restaurant that's also a block away for dinner (mskate isn't confident there wouldn't be cross contamination from there). Sunday was really fun. I went to my parents house to do Christmas chocolate dipping with my family and get pizza from our favorite pizza place (more gluten and dairy). It was just a fun half afternoon. I also did some straightening up for mskate's return this Sunday night. It was a fun weekend. I was going to film a food review, but I got busy with a bunch of things so I ended up not. It's been a crazy busy month. Hopefully December has more opportunity to do content. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.
