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.

Gymnastics Exhibitions, Christmas Concerts, and Light Displays

Hey everyone, Christmas is coming quickly and there's a lot going on, including this weekend. I'll start with a little thing that started the weekend out. I have some vacation days I have to use up so I took Friday off and mskate and I spent the day with my almost grandparents (tanman's grandparents who we're still close with), the accordion friends. Since they're into music we watched the new John Williams documentary with them on disney plus and they really liked it. I also set up a call blocker on their phones since they get a lot of spam calls. After the movie we went to PF Chang's. It was a good meal. Great little day.

Now for the main-er events. The University of Michigan gymnastics is starting up again and we went to the first exhibition match just between the UofM team. If you've been paying attention, we never JUST go to the meet, we also go to Blimpy Burger. This time it wasn't just Blimpy Burger though, we also met up with my old highschool friend mbinski. He met up with us at Blimpy Burger and it was great fun catching up. He's doing HAM radio and vintage computer collecting, which was fun just talking about experiences with broadcast standards. At Blimpy Burger I got a double with grilled onions and banana peppers, and raw onions, lettuce, and pickles. and finally on a pumpernickel bun (I like pumpernickel and they advertise having it, but they never seem to have it). I also had fried broccoli because they have good fried broccoli and I like to justify it by saying "it's a vegetable so it's some kind of healthy" (I know not really, but I think it does have some fiber and vitamins). Mskate did some shopping while mbinski and I talked about our interests. After Blimpy we went to a coffee place and visited some more. After about an hour we had to get to the gymnastics meet, so we said our goodbyes and went on our way.

Time for gymnastics. Since Fred Richard and Paul Juda competed in the 2024 Olympics and the gymnasts sometimes sign things after the meets, mskate brought her 2024 Olympics shirt for them to sign. As I said, this was just an exhibition match within the UofM team, one was team blue and the other was team maize (the school colors). They split the Olympians between the teams to make it "fair." They also didn't do all 6 events, just floor routine, pommel horse, vault, and parallel bars. They also didn't have everyone compete, just split the teams. The first even was floor routine, and we were sitting in the front row and got some close up pictures. They also now do a new balance technique when doing floor, one of them is a splits like thing where you grab your foot and raise it up to your head, the other is standing on one foot and doing like an airplane pose. Because I took karate for many years and am very good at balance, I said "I bet I could do that," and yes, I can (maybe not with great form, but I can do it for about as long as they did).

After the floor routine it was pommel horse. It was fun because we got to see Fred compete. The somewhat annoying thing was that there was always someone standing in the way of us having a clear view. You could tell this was a little more relaxed of a match because there was a lot more falling. There was some with the floor routine, but we saw the most with pommel (they dismounted prematurely and some just fell on their butts). There were some chants when the freshmen did well (everyone chanted "he's a fresh-man" clap, clap, clap clap clap X3), and that happened maybe 3 or 4 times. I did get some pictures.

Between events they tossed free T-shirts. We won one another time and it was mskate's size, and this time the one we got ended up being my size. We didn't get one from the first give away, but after the second event we got one from "Chicken Nugget." I don't know if he remembered us from last year or not, but it wouldn't surprise me if we got it because "oh those 2" (because I do have a somewhat memorable/unique look). The next event was vault, and thankfully no one fell this time (or if they did it wasn't that big like the other events). After the vault they did the parallel bars, and that was pretty good but again there were some falls. What was really fun though is they had a lot of team comradery, team maize had a cape from last year that they made a flag out of (taped it to a dowel) they'd wave after victory, and they had an oversized novelty UofM hat that would be worn by the guy that did well. Team blue didn't have too much of that kind of thing, but they did cheer. Funny thing was because they were the same school and same team, they would cheer for either side whenever they did well.

After the meet they did a little ceremony to award victory, and there was a little trophy that the winning captains (or someone) signed. Afterwards the team did come out and sign autographs, and we got Fred and Paul to sign the shirt. We hope to get 2 more Olympians to sign that might show up at other events, but even if we don't it's still great. At some point we need to frame and display all the autographs that mskate gets at different sports things, because she has quite the collection and they're kind of just sitting in different places. Rest of the day was calm, just getting ready for the Sunday.

Now for Sunday. We started out by getting coffee and donuts ready for after mass (because we are one of the groups that does that semi-ministry, after the 9AM mass our church has coffee and donuts for fellowship and socialization). Nothing super spectacular, but our maintenance guy did end up setting up a lot of things "because he was bored." Since we were early and had a lot of things for the giving tree (a thing many churches do where parishioners buy things for children in need so they can have a good Christmas). We had a pokemon kid, lego kid, batteries kid, pajamas kid, and then some odds and ends that we picked up from closing rite aids (diapers, pull ups, pacifiers, bath tub cups, and some other toddler things). Mskate wasn't exactly happy when I filled carts and baskets with baby things at the going out of business sales since our condo was kind of full, but I knew it was going to end up at a good place.

Later in the afternoon my parents came down for the Christmas concert at our church. Before the concert we went out to an Italian restaurant that gets decorated nicely for Christmas, and is quite good as well. Dad and I each had ravioli, mskate had salmon, and mom had pasta alfredo. After lunch we went to the Christmas concert. It was like 1 hour before the show started, and it was already really pretty full. The concert was really great, lots of great Christmas music with some Trans Siberian Orchestra rock music. Really fun time. After the concert we went to the county lights. I've done this multiple other times, it's something mskate and I have done basically every year since we got married. It's typically the same thing every year, but they had some new light displays, things were in slightly different locations, and this year my dad was there. I didn't take any pictures since I've done that a lot already.

It was fun packed weekend, with lots of things. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

A Saint Patrick's Day in Ann Arbor Gymnastics

Hey everyone, wow I wasn't expecting to go back to Ann Arbor so quickly, but here I am going on Saint Patrick's Day. Before the story, I just need to start out with some initial stories. We went to mass like we normally do and our priest mentioned corned beef in his homily. This had me thinking "I should make some if I can find it." After mass we went to the grocery store to pick up a few things and they had corned beef on sale. Yay. I picked up a pack and some crock pot liners and when we got home I got it started for when we get home to be ready after the day out.

This time because there was some more planning, mskate's mom joined us since she's also into gymnastics. When we got to Ann Arbor it was about lunch time and I said "we need to go to Blimpy Burger." Yeah, after seeing it on Tripple D and going there myself, every time I'm in Ann Arbor I need to go to Blimpy Burger. It's just so good, and a good value. I had fried broccoli like normal, they had the pumpernickel bun so I had that for my bun, and I decided to try a fried egg as my hot topper this time, plus lettuce, pickles, onions, and banana peppers for my cold toppers. Mskate and her mom got their burgers on lettuce bowls, mskate having tomato and pickles, and mom-in-law getting onions and ketchup I think, and a side of french fries. Mom-in-law as very impressed with the flavor. I said I think it's the seasoning of the grill. Really good.

After lunch we went to the meet. It was pretty crowded at the sports complex because there was both the gymnastics meet and a baseball/softball game happening. I let mskate and mom-in-law out and went to find parking. I was expecting to have to drive around for a long time, but I got lucky and found a spot not super far away not long after the women got out. This time the freebie was a poster of the team and coasters. It wasn't as cool as the cape, but still good to have free. We were able to sit front row to the floor routine area, which was great. Mom-in-law made some posters, one rooting for Fred and the other just saying "lucky wolverines." The show was pretty good I'd say, I'm not a sports fan so I wouldn't know. I did manage to get a lot of good pictures, including the guy who offered me a chicken nugget. Between the events UofM was throwing t-shirts, and mskate and I went to area where they were throwing the shirts. We brought the lucky wolverines sign and that got the attention of the person throwing the shirts and we won one. Yay.

Right at the end is when things got really bad. On the high bar, the final event, one of the competitors missed the bar and fell flat on his face. Falling isn't exactly uncommon from what I've gathered, a lot of people fall during the warmup, some people fell at meet, and they have all the mats to lesson the fall, and they always jump right back up. Not this time, he was not moving, all the emergency responders jumped and went to him. The music was turned off and everyone was silent, complete absence of sound. Really scary. He did get up and walked to the physicians office. I'm sure he went to the hospital afterwards, and the competition let an alternate compete. UofM ultimately won, which was great for them.

Getting home was pretty easy. We had our corned beef for dinner and it was quite good. I put some sauerkraut on it and mixed some German with the Irish. That was a great way to finish a generally good day. Hopefully the gymnast who fell is doing well, I don't know if there's any updates due to privacy reasons. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Pokematic's Dolls and Gymnastics in Ann Arbor Adventure

Hey everyone. Little backstory, mskate is into American Girl Doll and Gymnastics, and I'm into Diners Drive-Ins and Dives. On Saturday March 2nd all 3 of those things came together in Ann Arbor Michigan. In one of the nearby cities there was a major local American Girl Doll sale where multiple people were selling parts of their collections. Not to far away in Ann Arbor there's Crazy Jim's Blimpy Burger, a small burger place that was featured on Diners Drive-Ins and Dives. Then at University of Michigan, the state college that's in Ann Arbor, there was a men's gymnastics competition between them and Oklahoma University. I'll get to all this in a moment, but first I'd like to thank my sponsor, good luck. Have you ever wanted to live an interesting life, one great for being an influencer type person like myself where you have things to talk about online? Well with good luck you can get this. Go to the good luck store and mention pokematic, and you can get a fun life so you can make blogs and vlogs like me. Jokes aside, lets get into the story.

OK I'll actually start out with a funny story from earlier in the week. Mskate was taking care of my grandma on Thursday and without her around I decided I was going to see Madame Web because it seems like it might be leaving theaters soon (because it's bombing hard) and I like the Sony Spiderman Universe. I didn't tell her I was going to the movies because I didn't think it was that big of a deal, and it wasn't known when she'd get home so she might not even notice I left. Like a responsible theater goer I silenced my phone before the movie started. About an hour and 10 minutes into the movie I decided to check the time on my phone because I forgot my watch at home, there are 12 missed calls and multiple missed texts trying to figure out where I am (my brother in law asked if I died). Apparently mskate was freaking out that I wasn't home and thought something bad happened, so she called my mom asking if she knew where I was and called her dad to try to figure out what was going on. I didn't mean to cause problems, I just wanted to see a movie. That was funny.

OK, now for the main story. Mskate found an American Girl Doll swap meet about this time last year that we missed out on, and kept it in mind to make sure we didn't miss it this year. I'm not much of an AG fan but I appreciate the neat dolls and the stores as seen in my vlogs to the Columbus store.

We got there pretty close to when it opened and started looking around. Mskate wanted to get the Christmas outfits and Addie books, and maybe some other things. There were many venders of different types. Unlike things like craft shows or flea markets where everyone is kind of "a professional seller," there were some people who were like professional sellers and some that were just collectors that are leaving the hobby. Basically it was everything American Girl had to offer, mostly clothes and accessories, and a number of playsets and dolls, but some people had the books and one person had a bunch of empty boxes for sale. One of the venders was a former employee of the Columbus store that was selling display model dolls and an employee apron she picked up when the store was closing (because it's unfortunately closed now). I almost bought one of the store display dolls that was mounted on a piece of display wood since I love "store things" (I have a "thank-you for shopping at blockbuster sign," a family video "free kid's movies" and "new releases" sign, a Chuck-E-Cheese table topper, various display stands, and some other things), but as I said I'm not super into American Girl Dolls so $50 for something that only has some attachment to and interest in is not really worth it. It was pretty fun. skate found some books and outfits that interest her, and I found a toy camera and can of almonds (the same brand that Mskate really likes). After the first purchase we didn't have a bag, so I pulled out the grocery bag I keep in my picket and used that for our purchases. She got one of the first outfits from the 90s and a christmas dress (don't remember which doll it's for though).

Now that the American Girl Doll sale was over, we went to Crazy Jim's Blimpy Burger. Part of the great thing about Tripple D is that it spotlights restaurants that aren't like 5 star and super expensive, but are still very good and successful (it's not like a "bar rescue" or "restaurant impossible" where the restaurant might be bad again by the time that the episode airs, or completely out of business, making them a "safe pilgrimage"). Then there's the other great thing that the featured restaurants are all over America, and I've started keeping a list of restaurants in places I might go to one day. One of the restaurants on that list is Crazy Jim's Blimpy Burger, a burger stand in Ann Arbor Michigan. This isn't the first time I've been there (vlog below), but this is the first time they had pumpernickel buns (and I love pumpernickel bread when I can get it on special occasions). On their bun options they have pumpernickel listed, but they didn't have it the other 2 times I'd been there. Anyway, it was great. I had a triple with cheddar cheese, grilled onions, grilled banana peppers, grilled salami, lettuce, raw onions, and pickles on the pumpernickel bun. Mskate had a double with pepper jack cheese and grilled mushrooms on a bed of lettuce. Definitely not healthy, but REALLY good, definitely recommend. On the TV for customers they had food network on (as I think they always do), and it just to happened to be Triple D; it wasn't their episode, but it still was Guy.

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And here's the vlog from one of my other times.

While we were on our way to Blimpy Burger, mskate looked into the gymnastics meet. She knew it was a gymnastics meet happening but couldn't figure out how to buy tickets. While we were at Blimpy Burger mskate figured out it was a free event so we just had to go to the arena. We drove to the arena and found parking while finding our way to the arena entrance. Apparently UofM gives out free souvenirs at every event, and this time they were giving out capes. The even cooler thing is the seats were unassigned, and we were able to sit right up close to the floor routine mat. Mskate wanted to sit up higher but then I said "babe, when are you going to be able to sit almost front row again?" so we sat right close to where they do the floor routine. I'm not into gymnastics or sports in general, but I do kind of enjoy watching things in person and stadium energy; I have no energy watching alone on TV or online, but if I'm watchin in person surrounded by excited fans I have some energy. What was really cool is I got a picture with the Wolverine Trooper.

The event was pretty cool. I got a lot of videos and pictures of the competition, specifically the competitors that mskate and her mom like. What was really funny is they steadied the rings for the ring event using a crutch. I also saw some pretty wild falls, which was interesting. They also gave away t-shirts between events, and while we didn't win them I did take note of how they did the tight roll for throwing, and learned how to do that for when we travel since it will make it better for packing (less space).

Good news is UofM won, which made everyone very happy. After the event the entire team was signing autographs. I had them sign the picture they were giving out, and mskate had them sign one of the capes we got. I was able to get the picture signed faster than mskate, mainly because I was willing to hold my arm above the children that were taking a long time to get through the line. I ended up getting pictured and ending up on the U of M website in my yellow shirt and puffy jacket and blue jeans (school colors) as I'm reaching over children to get the autographs of the team.

Protected picture of me in the crowd.

It was quite a fun and full day. Sunday was pretty basic, just went to church, got my hair cut, cleaned my shower, and my kitchen faucet decided to break so I got the replacement and called a plumber. It should get fixed on Tuesday. Yep. Well this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.