Easter Fun 2022

 Hey everyone, it's Easter time again, which is a fun time with our family. This year was a REALLY big year though, because mskate went through RCIA to join the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil. I'll get to that soon enough but first I need to go through everything starting at Friday.

So every year my family makes soft pretzels for Easter, a Polish tradition we normally did with my dad's side of the family when we went to see them on Easter. We haven't done it with them since my paternal grandma passed, but we still do it with my parents, and this year IRA and my maternal grandma joined in. This does put a little challenge for mskate though, since she has pretty much all the food allergies, and most of those things are in pretzels. My ever accommodating parents found a way though, finding a good allergy friendly dough recipe online and making her special dough. We made her pretzels first to prevent cross contamination (no flour on cutting board, no pretzel residue in the baking soda bath, no pretzel crumbs on the baking sheets). The fun thing is we got to use our pretzel making template we got for a wedding present. Since Dad and I like Good Eats with Alton Brown, we made jokes about the unitasker. It was pretty handy though, because you shape the pretzel on the mold, and then it lifts off the mold to put in the bath, and then that can be used to fish it out. After making mskate's we made our normal pretzels, and it was really fun.

After the pretzels we dyed eggs. We had 2 different egg kits going, but we just couldn't get some of the colors to turn out right. This is where grandma really enjoyed watching us, because when we we little we would dye eggs at her house and it brought back a bunch of memories. One of the interesting things in one of the kits was an "egg glaze" which made the eggs shiny after dying. IRA and I had some fun with that, but the glaze was stale or something and didn't really spread well (it was kind of like a gelatin-jelly), and they didn't turn out very well. We also did egg sleeves, and mskate was really fascinated by those. Unfortunately my parents got "large eggs" and the sleeves were more meant for "medium eggs," but we were able to use most of them and they turned out well. It was a really fun time. At some point mskate and I made it to church, but I don't remember if it was before or after my parents.

Saturday was the BIG day, probably the most eventful of all the days. First off, mskate's sponsor and her husband came up on this day. We met them at a restaurant mskate and I discovered one night when I said "I don't want to cook, I want to go out to get Chinese at a restaurant," and while this wasn't Chinese it was a new restaurant. This was really fun since I haven't seen them since the wedding, and I get along really well with the husband (but I don't know him well enough to come up with a blog name yet, lol). We sat together and had some fun discussions about the trip up and jobs. I guess you can say we had brunch, because some people had breakfast foods and others had lunch foods. The restaurant is also along the water, so after the meal we went out and walked along the dock. The really fun thing was pointing out Canada (because we're close to the border, one of my favorite radio stations is a Canadian station, and if I set-up the TV antenna just right I can get like 4 Canadian TV channels). Mskate and I grew up close to the border and had short vacations in Canada in our youth, so we take "look, it's a foreign country" for granted, but for them it was really impressive to be able to be able to see Canada in person across the water. 

After lunch it was time for another big event. IRA and I are fans of Steven Crowder and when they announced that Dave and Steven would be doing a live show at the Royal Oak Music Theater (something that isn't too far from us, and I went there when I went to the Mike and Micky Show), we knew we had to do it. I picked up IRA and we found parking. Then we got in line and it was pretty crazy. The line stretched all the way around the block past the transportation center, a lot of people wearing Steven Crowder shirts, Let's Go Brandon, and MAGA. I know IRA wore one of his Crowder shirts; I want to say it was "piss off youtube."

When we were in line venue security came walking around distributing "legal to drink" wrist bands (this makes it easier on the bar inside, instead of everyone showing their ID everyone just shows the wrist band). I didn't have any plans on drinking, but I wanted the wrist band. While we were waiting in line I remembered I had my pocket knife on me (because if I'm not at my day job, I probably have my pocket knife on my person like a good boy scout), and I remembered "live performances don't want you to have pocket knives." I ran back to the car, dropped my knife in the cup holder, and ran back. I struggled a little to find IRA, but after calling him I reunited.

Once again I assumed my ticket was in the balcony, but the usher told us "no you're on the main floor, center." We weren't super close like I was with Mike and Micky, but it was still pretty close to where we could clearly see the acts. One thing that was really cool was the pre-show music was either Louder with Crowder parody songs or pogo. I want to say that the song before the start was the song they play before the online show, but I can't say for certain. The opener guy was pretty good, I want Steven to have him on the online show some time. Dave and Steven were hilarious. I don't remember a lot of the jokes they told, but it was really fun seeing them do jokes that weren't just about modern social-political topics. Dave's closer about the prostitute and White Castle sliders was gold. What was really neat is that a lot of the jokes were specific to South East Michigan since Dave is from Detroit and Steven's family is from Detroit and Steven used to live in Ann Arbor. Since they're high level comedians the jokes work if you're unfamiliar with the area, and I'm sure they use the same jokes elsewhere in the country, you could tell there was "hometown details" that were added, like Dave talking about "getting high at this house on Gratiot" (a street in Detroit) at this show is probably "there was this Detroit house I used to get high at" in other shows. After the show I dropped IRA off and went back to our house for Easter Vigil. Mskate was worried that the show would go too long and I would be late, but it didn't.

This was quite the ordeal. Mom and Dad brought grandma, and that was quite something. I struggled with mass, because they had a bunch of Easter flowers in the church, and I am allergic to pretty much all the flowers. After everyone was seated and situated, I stood outside by the fire they had going. As I stood out there I had the great idea of "if anyone joins me I will say 'surely you were with him' and see if they say 'I do not know that man.'" Unfortunately no one joined me so I didn't get to use that, but it got some laughs when I told people about it afterwards. My standing out there actually helped with the technical production side since I was able to give them a reference for "average height adult male" when framing the shot for the online stream and projected video inside the church for when they were lighting the candles off the fire. The mass was good, but twice I had to step outside and get some non-allergy air. The first time was about halfway through mass, and the second time was after communion. After the second time I sat in the back away from all the flowers, and that helped some. After mass when we were packing up my grandma, she told me "it's really late, you can stay at my house, I don't want you driving all the way home." I reminded her that she was at my church, and my house was much closer than her house. Bless her heart, but she gets very confused. After mass I took a hot steamy shower to clear my sinuses, and that felt good.

Easter Sunday, the day of celebration. Mskate's friends joined us for breakfast and we made these vegan pancakes that everyone could eat. It was a really weird recipe, since the batter was the consistency of cookie dough and not pancake batter. When we put chocolate chips in I originally said "put the chocolate chips in after pouring the batter," because with normal pancake batter you do that because if you mix it in the bowl the chips all settle at the bottom and the distribution is all off. However, because this was "cookie dough" the chips were all stuck on the top and melted into the pan without going into the pancake, so then I mixed it in with the batter in the bowl like I would with cookie dough. Mskate and I distributed the work; she mixed all the ingredients, I cooked them in the frying pan. The scraping scoop we had dished out the perfect amount, and everyone enjoyed my cooking.

First we saw the in-laws and we gave Easter baskets, just nothing super exciting. After them we went to my parents for the Easter party. Grandma and her accordion friends came over, and we had a fun sing along. We sang some Disney songs and old spring time songs, but what was really weird was singing "you are my sunshine" and "a tisket a tasket." Everyone knows the chorus for "you are my sunshine," it's a pretty common public domain song (and if it's not like how Happy Birthday was still under copyright until recently, it's part of the American cultural cannon). Well accordion friend printed off the verses for it and this was the first time any of us have heard it, and it turns out the song we all thought was an up-beat love song ("you brighten up the day like the sun, I can't imagine life without you here") is actually a depressed break-up song ("my life was full of light when you were here, but now that you are gone my life is dark and meaningless"). That was crazy. Then with a Tisket a Tasket, pretty much all of us only knew "a tisket a tasket, a [something something] basket," and we had the Ella Fitzgerald version which has the line "and if she doesn't bring it back I think I will die," which is a pretty extreme reaction to "I lost my basket." I think we had a pot roast dinner, and it was good.

Because Easter fell on a Sunday this year, I had the Monday after off. Mskate and I largely spent the day relaxing and organizing after Easter (new toys and candy, had to find places for them), and then I was like "it's been forever since I went to the movies, I want to see Uncharted." And so I found a theater that was playing Uncharted and I saw it. Since Uncharted is basically a videogame adaptation of treasure hunt movies, it translated to film pretty well. And that was my Easter weekend. It was pretty jam packed, and really fun. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Easter 2019 Adventures and Fun

(A little backstory to help things make more sense, I have a girlfriend now, and a lot of the events involve her).

Hey everyone, Jesus Christ is risen, and here are my fun stories of the season. First we'll start out with Palm Sunday. Of all the masses in the year, Palm Sunday has to be my favorite, mainly because we're given palm branches. Actually, just because we're given palm branches. I know there are more meaningful holy days, but the "here's a palm branch, wave it for Jesus" thing really appeals to me; always has, always will. This was also when I went to my parents to make pretzels and dye eggs. I texted my mom earlier in the week asking if we were going to dye eggs and make pretzels, and she forgot (so it's a good thing I reminded her). Why pretzels? There's quite a lot of catholic symbolism behind them, so I'll give you the run down. First, they resemble one way to pray (hands across the chest touching the opposite shoulders). Next, they are simple bread of flour, water, and yeast (though we use store bought dough, for convenience), and simple bread is brought up many times in the bible. Then there's the baking soda bath to give them the color and texture, which can be analogous to baptism. There's also the salt, which sometimes is used to represent the tears shed when Jesus was crucified. There's also the Easter Eggs, which everyone is familiar with. I bought an egg dying kit last year after Easter to use this year, and it was still good (yay). There was a little trouble though, my parent's vinegar was old and took the tablets a long time to dissolve. Since I'm into pickling, I said "next time I'm bringing my own vinegar." We rolled and baked many pretzels while we let the eggs sit in the dye to get that bright color. It was a fun time and I'm glad I was able to keep the tradition alive.

Fast forward to Holy Thursday. This was a very special Holy Thursday, because I got to spend the evening with my girlfriend. She lives out of state but was coming in for Easter, and since I was on her way to her parents house, we had a date night. We said our hellos and I had things set-up to listen to some of my records (one of our things is listening to music together), but she surprised me with "lets watch 3 Identical Strangers" (the documentary about 3 triplets separated at birth that were reunited in their late teens/early 20s). She rented it on amazon and wanted to connect her laptop to my TV, but my TV is weird about connecting laptops to it, so instead we watched it through hulu plus (I have hulu, she doesn't, soooooo, plus I already wanted to watch this at some point since I already had it in my watch list). We got comfortable and enjoyed our little movie night. About 2/3 of the way through we stopped to eat. I made a roast in my crock pot that had been cooking all day, and it was good. I lit some candles in the pinch pots I made in elementary school (my mom held on to them all these years and now that I've moved out she said "take them, decide what you want to do with them," so I turned them into candle holders). We each had about 1 bowl, leaving me some left overs. I might have put in too much potato and pineapple, but whatever, good for later. After dinner we finished up the movie. It was a good movie. After the movie we went to church. We were going to get ice cream afterwards, but because mass went late and she had to get to her parents, we just said our goodbyes and called it a night.

Good Friday was a pretty good day. Since my mom worked for the Easter Bunny at our mall, my girlfriend and I decided to pay her a visit and get our picture taken (and "be the cute couple holding hands as they walk around the mall"). Since I knew I wasn't going to eat much for dinner (I was going to have the bread part of the Chick-Fill-E sandwich), I had my large meal at lunch. I had a pickle and lettuce sandwich with some shredded cheese, and mozzarella sticks. Yum. I went to Good Friday mass out by our parent's way (scheduling reasons) and made it to my parents home parish. I ran into mom at mass, so we went to mass together. Yay. After mass I did some thrifting and found some mystery VHS tapes (record TV tapes that didn't really say what was on them, perfect breading ground for lost media). I also found some other interesting tapes, some that I think I'll make videos about; stay tuned.

The Easter Bunny and mall time was an interesting experience. She was doing some shopping with her mom beforehand and met me in line. When we got kind of close we waved to Mom, who was running the cash register at the time. She saw us and waved back. Now for the funny thing, the credit card reader lost it's phone connection, so Mom called me over to try to fix it, because I am the technology boy wonder. Her manager came over and managed to fix it, by unplugging the phone line and plugging it back in. Ahhh the age old "turn it off and on again." After another 20 minutes of waiting in line, we made it to the front. We took a selfie with Mom and then got our picture with The Bunny. Mom told the photographer "this is my son." We placed the Chick-Fil-E order while we were in line with the mobile app, and that made it come faster when we went to the food court. She had the grilled chicken patty and tomato, I had the bun with lettuce and pickles. We split the waffle fries, and the lemonade with 2 straws. It was cute. After that we went to the ice cream vendor and each got a small ice cream. Once we were done with ice cream we walked around the mall, stopping at the Microsoft store (for me) and a clothes stores (for her). Neither of us bought anything, nor spent a lot of time in our respective stores, but it was fun getting to share some of our interests with each other. After fun at the mall we went to her Lutheran Good Friday mass. That was a fun experience for me since I haven't been to a Lutheran Good Friday mass. There were a lot of similarities to my Catholic mass, but also differences. The thing that made us both laugh was when their pastor said "peace be with you," and apparently the Lutherans still say "and also with you" instead of "and with your spirit" (which was a change the Catholic Church made 6 or so years ago), and both of us had a good laugh at "and with your - also with you." We didn't do anything after mass, and so I went home.

Now for Saturday. The fun thing today was I had dinner with my girlfriend's family, first time since we started dating. Now for most couples this would be intimidating; first time spending the evening with her parents and siblings, trying to make a good impression and her dad to not want to kill you. However, that wasn't my case. You see, I've known them for quite a while, because we were friends before we started dating. I remember at her highschool graduation party I really hit it off with her dad, basically spending the entire party talking with him and that was the first time we met. Then all the subsequent times I went over to her house I'd normally spend at least 10 minutes talking with him about our shared interests. I also know her brother well, having gone on a small road trip with him and spending an afternoon at my condo admiring all my cool nerd stuff. I also get along pretty well with her mom, but nothing really to talk about. I will say it was pretty interesting being there and spending time with them in a different capacity, because while everything was pretty much the same, there were some things of "now I'm seeing if this is something I may one day want to marry into" instead of before which was "ahhh different family dynamics, how fun" (and while we both agree marriage is a far off thing neither of us is ready for, we can't completely ignore it since that's the point of dating). It was nice not having any "soooo, what do you do at your day job" kind of grilling, and instead just talked about each other and the home made pickles I brought. It was a lot of fun. I made sure I left by 7 so I could make it to the Easter Vigil at my church. We said our goodbyes and "see you in 3 weeks" (because this was the last in person fun we'll have until next event). The Easter Vigil was your standard Catholic Easter Vigil; start from creation with the lights out and lighting candles, read passages leading up to Jesus's crucifixion and sing Alleluia for the first time when we get to his rising, and bless the holy water and candle for the coming year. We didn't have anyone baptized this year though. Oh well. Still a good mass, even if it was late.

Now it's time for Easter Sunday. I woke up early and went to my parents house, so then we could pile into my car and drive up to my aunt's house to see Grandpa. We brought our blessed Easter food (because we do the blessing of the Easter baskets) and said our hellos. We went to church at their church and this was some crazy planning on their part; they have a 7AM, 9:30AM, and 11AM mass, that pretty much go right up against each other. My brother and I got there early to save the seats, but that didn't make much of a difference because they went in on the side door and we went in the main door, resulting in a constant flow of people coming out and them able to get in before us. Good mass all in all. After mass we went back and had brunch. I brought bacon and home made pickles. Grandpa really liked the pickles, yay. We also had kielbasa and ham, and the pretzels and eggs from before (and some other things not really worth mentioning). Since my brother recently bought a DSLR, he showed it to Grandpa and Grandpa showed him his DSLR. They had a lot of fun talking photography. I told Grandpa about my current events at work, and he likes hearing about them. I also showed mom the pictures I took at the Mike and Mickey Show, and how they still managed to put on a good show. It was a good visit. Near the end I showed Grandpa the picture with the Easter Bunny and my girlfriend, and he had a rather calm reaction (unlike my other granparents, who got really excited and had us married next week, but then again they already knew her and "had us dating" pretty much our entire friendship). That was pretty much my Easter. I also digitized one of the mystery tapes, and it was this 6 hour basketball special without many commercial breaks. It was quite boring XP

The Monday following was a good day off. I recorded a new episode of the Peanut Butter Podcast and did some editing on a Tennessee Vlog installment (because I'm finally getting around to those after close to a year). I also got my allergy shot, because I had the time and was close enough to when I was due. I converted the remaining non-mystery tapes (one of which I have the perfect idea for a video). I watched Lars and the Real Girl, and made a podcast about it. I also realized I have about 2 months before my 10 year anniversary of opening up my youtube channel. I need to figure out what I'm doing for that. That was my Easter. It was really fun. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and if you'll excuse me, I'm going to do some after Easter sale shopping.

A 24 year old Sees The Donut Man Live (and a video store experience)

Hey everyone. A little backstory. 20 or so years ago as a young child, I was quite the fan of the Christian video series "The Donut Man." He would sing songs, do some skits, and teach us about God. It's very wholesome entertainment. My family loved The Donut Man so much that we would wear out the VHS tapes from regular use (because that was a downfall of VHS). I remember as a kid there were sometimes opportunities to see him live, but they never aligned with our schedule.

Fast forward 20 years and my mom finds out he's doing a show not too far from each of us, and asks if we should go together (because it's not AS weird when a 24 year old man goes to a children's event with his 54 year old mom). Well, first off I got turned around. My GPS took me to a party store that was a couple buildings down from the church he was performing at. I found a Baptist temple, but that wasn't the Catholic Byzantine I had to find. Well after drying around a little, and my mom using her yellow Jeep as a flag, I found my way.

We go in, buy our tickets, and tell the ticket sellers how I grew up with The Donut Man. Partially out of excitement, and also to let them know why 2 adults are going to a children's concert without children. We sat in the back to not draw too much attention, again, because 2 adults without kids at a kids concert. We sat down, trying to remember some of the old songs, and hoping he sings some of those old songs. Getting hyped.

Then he came out on stage. He was still very energetic, still looking very similar to the VHS, and still able to do the songs with silly voices. He sang a bunch of new ones that we didn't know, but we still participated doing the call and repeat and hand motions. But then he sang some that we did. When he started talking about Joshua and Jericho, my mom got excited. She remembered this one, and we started singing along. Then he started talking about mustard seeds, and we both got excited. Then when he started talking about David, and how he got in trouble for praying, I got excited, because I really liked David in the Lion's Den song. And then he ended it with Run Peter Run, a song about "you will deny me 3 times before the rooster crows" Peter, a song we REALLY loved back in the day. Needless to say, we got into it, and had some trouble containing our excitement. There was also a thing where he asked the audience "do you help your mom and dad?" I raised my hand, and mom wasn't raising hers. I grabbed her elbow and said "you help your mom and dad" and she said "right, I help my mom and dad A LOT."

Then after the show, he did a meet and greet for the kids and families to meet the man on TV and get pictures. He was very friendly and personal, asking about people's family and talking about his. Really friendly. Then when we got up we told him about how we watched him 20 years ago on VHS and how we really liked hearing the old songs. Then he talked about how great it was singing the oldies and having people that remember them. I even got a picture with him.

Now as I was driving there, I saw a video store on the other side of the street. I thought "I should stop there on my way back." At first I thought it was a "purchase store," but no, it was a "rental store;" and not just any rental store, like an "old school blockbuster" kind of store. They had everything divided by genre, movies and TV shows for sale, games, an anime section, and an adults section behind a curtain. It was like walking into the past. Oh but there's more, they had CRT's hanging from the ceiling, and a VCR behind the counter, and the computers had gray CRT monitors. I didn't rent anything, but I bought some PS2 games they had for sale, for $2 each. I don't know if they were worth $2, but any extra I paid was the price of admission to experiencing this living fossil.

So that was my awesome experience. A real "blast from the past" kind of day. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.