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, it's that time of year again, the time when I talk about my Christmas fun. Things kind of started on the 15th when my department had a little Christmas party; nothing super big, just some people from various other locations coming to our place. I did get a poinsettia flower for our friend since they had extras after the party and I knew someone would want it. Nothing too spectacular though, but it was technically the start.
Things really started on the 20th when I went to my parent's house to do chocolate dipping with my mom, and help our accordion friend set up her life alert and give her her gifts. We got her a bag of hot hands hand warmers since those are good for her arthritis and a PF Chang's gift card since she likes to take us there. She got mskate socks and me a Pokemon Time magazine. I had 2 of them and now I have 3; Pikachu, Charmander, and now Arcanine. In addition to helping her get the life alert watch set-up I also installed a lock box in her door frame. She was really happy to have us all over.
After that we went to my parent's house. I started the chocolate in the double boiler, and as I'm melting it down it was getting kind of clumpy. That was not great since you can't really dip pretzels and potato chips and cookies in clumped chocolate. Mom pulled about half of it out and we tried adding water according to multiple sources. Well, that only made it worse, so we made what we call "Christmas crap;" when chocolate gets ruined, it still tastes good, so we clump it and stick pretzels and m&ms in it to make something fun that looks like poop (hence the name). We put it between parchment paper and flattened it out to add the stuff. We were able to melt down the other parts by putting it in the microwave. With that done we cleaned the pot and dried it REALLY good before melting more. That went along much better. It was a fun time and we made a lot of treats for the upcoming festivities.
After our dipping fun we went back to our accordion friend and finished setting up the life alert. We didn't know her son already got everything and we just had to activate. We showed her how it works and tested it. It worked in the house, so that was great. After that she took mskate and I out for pizza. We got a salad to split and it was quite good. Instead of pizza I got the barbecue cheese burger, and our friend was surprised I was able to eat it all. Mskate had some left overs so that was good for her. That was the end of that little fun.
It's now the 23rd, and I used my final vacation day. I had the day off, but not mskate, because she works for Santa at the mall, and I was going to see her, but only at the end of her shift. This meant I had some time to myself before I had to go up to the family. Well I filmed a "food review" of building a snap together model that I got last year and has been sitting on my dining room table waiting to be built. There was also a 2 hour window where bio and I could record a podcast, and so we did.
Going to the mall to see mskate was fun. She does stuff for the mall when there's a seasonal thing, and apparently I was wearing the same thing I did when I saw her last time. Kind of funny. After that we went to her parents house and got set-up for the half week. In the evening we went to the bar vikingpolak works at some time. It's a little local microbrewery where they make their own beer; and I really like their sour blueberry beer. They also have some pinball machines and a couple arcade machines. I got $5 in quarters and played the pinball machines. I also kind of accidentally ended up paying for everyone's drinks; I originally opened a tab just for mskate and I, but then she put her mom's drink on the tab (no problem there, I am staying at her house this half week), and then IRA got added (again, unexpected but his parents are putting us up), and then my parents showed up and they ended up on the tab as well (which is fine, they're my parents so I'll buy their drinks), so I guess I ended up starting the giving lol. There was actually something kind of funny with the pinball; I was playing the x-men table and the ball got stuck in the ramp. I told vikingpolak about it and he said he'll let the guy they rent their machines from about it. I could have fixed it myself, but that could have voided their warranty or something. That was it for the 23rd.
It's now December 24th, Christmas Eve. The morning at my in-laws was pretty calm, nothing super exciting. Noon is when things really started. Just a reminder, on Christmas Eve we go to McDonald's for lunch because when I was little that was when Santa would come to my grandparents, and we keep the tradition alive, even though my grandma is no longer with us and that was her thing. Mskate wanted to get a Grinch Meal but they were all sold out. We still got a happy meal with my points, and then got deals with everything else; a $2 large fry, a $6 10 piece mcnugget meal, and 20% off $10 or more (which we used with a quarter pounder meal and value cheeseburger meal). In total we saved $17. The food was good, fast food, nothing special but filling.
We now did the gift exchange with my parents on Christmas Eve since we didn't have my grandma this year. We set-up the living room moving the coffee table and positioning the presents with everyone getting in their positions. We got my mom a helium tank at the Party City going out of business sale since she likes balloons, and since it was big and would require a lot of wrapping paper we put it in a bicycle bag, along with all her other presents that were wrapped. Since it was a bike bag and was called a bike bag the joke we said was "we got you a bike since that's what comes in bike bags, some assembly required." We also got her some mylar balloons to inflate with her tank, and that was fun. We also got her a box of variety coffee pods since they recently got a kcup coffee maker and like the options now and princess plates and napkins, and a Disneyland sweat shirt. For my brother we got him some things that were of his interests; a power bank thing for camping, emergency blankets, a VHS copy of Strange Brew (he loves Bob and Doug McKenzy), and a Hot Wheels Barbie McDonald's cup based on a story from when we were kids. For my dad we got him some Peanuts comic things (socks and a magnet), decaf coffee pods, and speed racer. Now for my presents; I got peanut m&ms, peanut butter m&ms, spongebob socks and Patrick socks, Napoleon Dynamite socks, nerds clusters, a drone, a puzzle vase, some switch games (epic micky, hello kitty, and pacman world), a tigger jersey, some different PS2 gmaes that I bought on black friday, sunflower seeds, bullets, and star bills.
Christmas mass was Christmas mass. We went to my parent's church since we were in the area. Apparently at our home parish the priest gave the children snow wands, nothing like that at my parent's church. Mskate and I got there first so we found space for everyone. After mass we went back to mskate's parents for diner and some early Christmas. We had the spring rolls we got from a church acquaintance and meat balls. The spring rolls went over very well. Early presents went well. I got a voice modulator microphone, a gameboy lego, and a spongebob mug that IRA bought me when we went to Universal Studios. Funny thing, he bought it when we went to the Spongebob store and I was busy playing in the musical pineapple. The big winner present of the night ended up being the Go On DVD set we got IRA. I watched it back when it was airing and thought it was entertaining, and I knew he would enjoy it. Little did I know he would REALLY like it as does my father-in-law; we watched 3 episodes before bed time and the laughter was heavy. I also made my vase puzzle and it looks quite good. Before going to bed I started my "watch A Christmas Story on TBS" tradition. I came in with about 30 minutes left, and watched the first hour of the next airing, so all I had to do was watch the 3rd quarter to have seen it all.
Now it's Christmas Day, we slowly wake up as IRA is super excited to open presents. I watched the remaining quarter of A Christmas Story after waking up, so now I had completely watched all of A Christmas Story on TBS. We all gather in the living room and start passing out the tree. We got a letter from Santa about how the dogs were gone now. A lot of the things we gave were from Disneyland, and everyone was happy. I got gift cards to McDonalds, Chuck E Cheese, and Visa, a capsule machine lego, a table vice, a Gaston shirt, Rocket Power the complete series on DVD, warhead candy, chocolate marshmallows, some other candy, a Disney pressed penny book, a stitch rubber duck, a rabbit Ralphy stuffed animal thing (that I initially thought was a labubu), and many socks (popeye, kirby, snorlax, and yoda). One of mskate's highlights was a stuffed animal tower since our stuffed animal hammocks are getting kind of full. Afterwards we had breakfast, eggs and bacon with some cut fruit.
After playing around with some stuff and just relaxing, we went over to my parents for Christmas. Mskate and I went to CVS to get a present for our friend's Aunt Bird; she specifically asked for coloring books but all the coloring books were really expensive, so we got her a little lego creator stocking stuffer for $5. Mskate looked up the set online and it's going for a lot more online, and then because it was CVS I had a coupon on the receipt I was able to get another for 72 cents. We went to my parents and it was kind of different. My dad came down with something on Christmas Eve so he spent the entire evening upstairs in his rooms. It was still a good time. Our accordion friend came and our other friend with their Aunt Bird. PepperBC's family was going to join us, but they decided against it since my dad was sick and they have some health problems. It was really fun, we put on A Christmas Story to just let it run in the background, and we facetimed TanMan since accordion friend is his grandma and they're expecting. Dinner was pretty good, we had ham and chicken, green beans and green bean casserole, corn, and rolls. After dinner we did our sing-along with the accordion. The fun thing is we have these bell sticks that we made back in cub scouts with the other friend as our pack leader, so that was fun to say "look, the bells are still working." Whenever there was a song that mentioned bells we all shook the jingle bells. Then there was one song where I pulled out my new voice modulator microphone, which got a good laugh from everyone. IRA and mom-in-law came over for this as well. After the sing-along we gave the gifts to IRA and Aunt Bird, and they really enjoyed them. IRA got a special disneyworld football that was signed by the characters that was found while cleaning out another aunt's house, and a Courage the Cowardly Dog DVD set. It was a really fun time. Afterwards we just went to my in-laws and hung out until the end of the night.
The day after Christmas was pretty calm. Mskate, IRA, and I went to different stores for after Christmas sales. We went to CVS, Meijer, Target, and Walmart. We found some things, but nothing too spectacular. Later in the day IRA and I went to see Spongebob Squarepants the Search for Square Pants, and mskate and mom-in-law went to see Wicked for Good. It was a pretty funny movie. We had dinner at the movies, I had a Freddy Fasbear spicy pizza (pepperoni, jalapenos, and a "sweet drizzle" whatever that was). It was pretty good, and they delivered it to our seat. IRA had loaded French fries (fries, nacho cheese, and bacon). The next day we loaded up the van with all our presents and I'm loving having a minivan, and now it's just finding places for all our new stuff. I've found a place for about half of it, yay. Well, this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.
Hey everyone, Christmas time is here, time for joy and cheer. My last day of work was December 18th or something and then I was off until January 2nd. There were a lot of fun things that happened this year, and one of the fun things is that mskate worked for santa this year with my mom. I went to see her and my mom one day and it was fun seeing her. I also don't remember exactly when this happened, but at some point we went to see mskate's aunt who is now in assisted living for their holiday party. We got her a stuffed flag heart that is also an ornament. At the little party I sung Christmas song karaoke and did some songs in my goofy voice. That went over well with the residents. Mskate and I also went to see The Nutcracker as presented by the Royal Ballet and Orchestra at fathom events. Review experience here. We also did dinner with the accordion friends early in the vacation before the vacation where we gave them some small presents and one of the call blockers from my grandma's old house.
I think I should start things off with the Christmas party my mom has with her old college friends and their kids on like the 20th. All her friends had kids around the same time, so all of us are around the same age, and back in the day we'd all play together, great time. Now though, there's only like 3 of us that are still local; myself, my brother, and one of my mom's godsons. Still fun though, the godson has 2 kids, 7 and 5 years old, and they're really fun to play with. We played with the playmobile Christmas sets that my parent's have had since I was a kid that they still put out as part of their Christmas displays. Mskate and I also brought some happy meal toys for the kids that we got from our fast food meals (I try to not eat big meals when I go to fast food, which typically means kids meals with a toy that I'm not always collecting). The kids really liked the toys we got them, though a lot of it was probably just that it was a "new toy." The hospital by my parents does a community thing for the children that are hospitalized over Christmas, people come with flash lights and other lights and shine them at the windows (it's like 5th story 100 feet from the building, so it's not like people are sticking flashlights in the window and blinding the kids), and then they shine flashlights back at the people outside. Most of the time the police and fire department gets involved, bringing a car or truck to shine their lights since that's a fun thing for kids. Since my parents live 4 blocks from the hospital with a path to the hospital mskate, godson, his kids, and I walked there to shine the lights. Since mskate worked for santa she got a snowflake wand that we let the kids borrow for the event, along with the snowflake wand that my in-laws got when they went to see mskate. They really liked the wands, and I made sure to remind them that they were borrowing them so they wouldn't get too rough and accidentally break them (because they did get a little rough some of the time). We shined the lights but didn't stay the entire time because it was below freezing and snow everywhere and everyone was getting cold (I could have stayed a little longer, but everyone else didn't want to stay the entire time). Rest of the party was fun, but nothing else super worth discussing.
Not sure exactly when this happened, but I think it was between the college friend party and full festivities. We went up to my aunt's house and did some Christmas celebrating. It was the first Christmas without my grandpa, and was pretty hard on my aunt. Grandpa had lived with her for the last 7 years and died in October. It was a bit of a rough celebration, but we still had good dinner and some gift exchange. My aunt basically gave everyone some valuable-like things from my grandpa's condo (mainly super old ornaments). Then we were able to pick an animal wood carving from my grandpa since he was a master carpenter (maybe not "fully classified," but he was quite amazing). Mskate and I both chose the moose, and now he looks down on the front room from on top of one of our curio cabinets. Speaking of wood carvings, my grandpa would carve a Santa every year and instead of putting up a tree my aunt puts up a Santa village with little fake trees and cotton snow. Mskate and I made her 2 Santa ornaments to add to her village and she puts them up (not this year, but I think she just wanted to put up grandpa's this year). We gave her a banzai tree kit as a present this year and she really liked it (she gardens and this inside gardening kit is perfect for her). Hopefully there's a sprout next time we see her. It was originally going to be a present for my dad but then we had enough things for him and nothing for her, and afterwards mom told us that dad would like a kit as well (we ordered him one and had it shipped to his house).
Lets fast forward some days to the main Christmas festivities. Since mskate and I were in the same school district and met in highschool our parents are pretty close to each other, and since my in-laws have a "real guest room" while my parents have "a twin bed in the spare room," we stay with my in-laws for the Christmas festivities. We went to my in-law on December 23rd in the evening and unloaded all our gifts for everyone. Nothing super exciting this day, just packing up the car and organizing our gifts for who they go to and the different parties.
It is now Christmas Eve, the day we celebrate with my grandparents. This was a different than normal, since my grandma is no longer in her town house and is in memory care. Little backstory, this year my grandma moved out of her townhouse condo and moved into memory care since she can't live on her own anymore. We still did McDonald's lunch, and Mskate and I picked up the orders for everyone since I have the app and get points on orders. Little backstory on the tradition for the new readers, my grandparents lived 1 block away from McDonalds and on Christmas Eve we would go to McDonalds for lunch and then Santa would deliver presents to their house when we were out to lunch, and we continued the tradition up to when she moved out (and still do as I said). It was really good that we brought food because grandma wasn't eating her lunch at memory care since she didn't like it. We got her a happy meal and that was enough for her (she only ate about half of it actually). I got a mcrib since they have that again, and everyone else had different meals. It was a good time. After eating we did our gift exchange. We got grandma some noomio stuffed animals from our Disney adventures since she likes "her babies," one of her valentines day stuffed animals that somehow ended up in our gift stash, and some snack foods. She got me a crystal growing kit (because I want to see what happens if I let it sit for like a year), pokemon sun and moon DVD set, pretzel trail mix, a pin board for my pin collection, a lows gift card, krabby patty candy, and star bills. After all our gift exchanges we went to church at my grandma's home parish. She hasn't been there in a long time, and it was great for her to see everyone and everyone to see her. It was a little hectic getting her in the church (because she struggles with walking and sitting), but still good. After all this we went back to the in-laws and did a night before gift exchange. I got some lego sets and socks, and maybe some other things I'll explain in the tomorrow bit. I finished off the night by watching some of A Christmas Story on TBS (because I always watch A Christmas Story on TBS as part of their 24 hour marathon).
OK, it's Christmas day. We wake up and go out to the presents all spread out, everyone finding their presents spread around. IRA's favorite presents from this was the Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends DVD set we got him. Mskate really liked all the lulu lemon clothes and Disney animated movie DVD set she got (though it's region 2 since dad-in-law doesn't pay much attention to regions and he has a region free player). Delilah really liked the dog sweaters we got her, one a dragon costume and another a Christmas tree sweater. I got Pokemon megablocks both mini pokemon in balls (that I like to use to decorate my work desk), a dragonite, and pokedex, a magicarp nanoblock kit (a brick toy imported from Japan), a Tangled TV show DVD set, animal crossing lego sets, a Disney lego set, sonic shirt (specifically for the day after Christmas, you'll see why), a water ring game, and some candy. IRA also got a nanoblock kit (him blastoise), but he was having trouble building it so then I spent about an hour building it for him. Some time we had breakfast, and it was nice and relaxing because we didn't have to pick up mskate's aunt (the one in assisted living). It was a fun calm morning.
After the in-laws it was time for my parent's Christmas party. Mskate and I were like the last to arrive, meaning we didn't have to help get my grandma in the house. We started off just catching up with everyone. PepperBC and her mom where there which was great. I told them all about our Hawaii trip and they filled us in with how the cousins are doing. MMT may be getting proposed to before the end of the year, which means that my wedding streak is maybe still going. Our accordion friends also came, and we had a fun sing along with everyone. We sang all the Christmas songs, sleigh bells, let it snow, santa clause is coming to town, and so forth, and some Disney songs since mskate likes them and they're fun to sing. The accordion friends thanked us a lot for the call blocker since it blocks almost all of the annoying spam calls now. Cousin M joined us for dinner which was great, and dinner was pork tenderloin. It was a fun party with everyone. Getting grandma to and from the dinner table was something since she has trouble with the ups and downs. After the party was really difficult getting her out. We had to instruct her on how to get out of the chair and get into the wheel chair, and then when we got her out to the car how to turn around and sit down in the car. It was like a 30 minute ordeal. According to mom, when they got back to the assisted living facility the workers were able to get my grandma out of the car, in her room, and ready for bed before mom was even able to get the car parked and say goodnight. Professionals at work.
Now it's the day after Christmas, where we did a gift exchange with my parents and brother. My brother got a lot of different beers (because he likes beer), and a Coors Lite sign that I found. We game my mom a fancy silicon like pool noodle on season close out (normally like a $20 pool toy for only like $5), and lots of cotton candy (because she loves cotton candy). We got my dad some Peanuts Snoopy things since he loves that, a folding emergency shovel, gloves with flashlights in the fingers, a stripped screw removal kit, and some other things I'm forgetting. Mskate got lots of Disney gift cards. I got a Rokr globe lamp, rokr owl clock, a microwavable ramen bowl (because I like to have ramen when traveling), spongebob socks, elf goldfish, multi-connection charging cables (I call them "multi-taps"), a santa chocolate guy with a smashed penny, Fall Guy on 4K (great movie), a Power Puff Girls ornament, a chuck e cheese gift card, star bills, and silly putty. Later we had some left overs for lunch, great little time with the family. Later in the evening IRA and I went to Sonic 3. The movie was sold out (we got the last seats that were together) and someone was sitting in our seats, and that's because someone else was sitting in their seats, and so on like all the way down. Right before the movie the row basically did the wave of shifting down. Great movie, you can hear my thoughts here. Pretty calm night after that.
Following day we went home. I packed up all our gifts and travel things and we went back home. Once we got home I unpacked everything and began sorting where to put things. Some time during these days we went to different stores looking for after Christmas sales. We got some candy and chips, and some gift wrap and dog presents for next year. I also got my dogecoin migrated to my coinbase wallet. So fun story, back in college I liked to tinker with bitcoin and dogecoin because it was all new and I could get it from faucets and obvious ponzi schemes ("double your crypto in 100 hours," I'd deposit the minimum and 80% of the time would get in before it collapsed, making a decent amount). I used dogechain as my dogecoin wallet because it was an official cloud wallet and was easy to manage my crypto. I got an email from dogechain mid-November that they were going to fully shut-down and if your wallet wasn't migrated by December 31st your crypto would be lost for good. I missed my window to send the dogecoin through the wallet application but not to get the private key and back it up on a local wallet. I tried just putting it right into coinbase (since they now support dogecoin), but it wouldn't work so I installed dogecoin core on my old college laptop (because I wanted to use a computer that I wouldn't be worried about breaking), and it was running for like a month because it had to update the entire 14 year blockchain. Yeah... Whatever though, after a month of updating I was able to move my 220 doge to coinbase. If it wasn't a "substantial amount" (when I started it was worth about $140 and when I finished it was like $80) I would have just cut my losses, but I didn't want to lose out on that. Whatever.
Now for a little fun thing between Christmas and New Years. One of mskate's good childhood friends was in town and was having a 1 year old birthday party for her son. The funny thing is a lot of the friend's family lives out by us, but the party was at the friend's parents house an hour away from us. We went basically right after church. It was quite the drive, and rainy, and they live in the country nowhere with some dirt roads, meaning that our just cleaned car got dirty. Thankfully the rain washed off a lot of the wet dirt (it's the drying on that makes it stick). The party was pretty good. The baby really liked my hat, every time I was close he just stared at me. I asked his parents if it was my hat or beard and they said "probably the hat." I played galiga with some of the other party guests, and we visited with the people mskate knows. One of the party games was "guess the baby's month age in 12 different pictures." I only got one picture right, but I did better than my wife who got zero and follows the mom's instagram. Funny thing when it came time to sing the baby happy birthday and give him his muffin (no "baby crushes cake and makes a mess" scene here, he has allergies that prevents him from enjoying normal cake), he was more interested in the balloons than he was in the muffin. His parents kept trying to get him to eat the muffin but he just wanted to play with the balloons, and when the parents tried to take the balloons away from him he got sad and would cry. Pictures had to be taken between balloons. All went well, except for the lack of red meat sandwiches (it was all turkey and I don't like turkey), and the dog being territorial and not liking people (not violent, but very yappy and there's something about a dog's bark within like 6 feet of me that makes my right ear hurt). Otherwise it was a good little day.
2 days later it was now New Years Eve. Normally we have someone hosting a new years party but none this year. I got a promotional text from zapzone (a regional laser tag, arcade, and entertainment complex) that they were having a new years promotion, and we considered going to it, but on closer inspection it was a little too expensive for our preference decided just spent the night in. We did go driving around to Party City to get some things on sale since they're going out of business (got a helium tank for my mom since she loves balloons and some of those study plastic party cups that my in-laws like to use among some other things) and an upscale grocery store where we got some personal party supplies (spinach dip and chocolate moose). We watched The Emperor's New Groove together and I watched an IP Man movie and John Tucker Must Die on hulu before they expired. We also went to New Years Vagile mass since New Years is a holy day of obligation. I built one of my lego (mega block) sets from Christmas, the Pokedex. Mskate doesn't like to stay up late (and for that reason she kept asking "what are we even celebrating" and didn't really want to accept "it's just a reason to party"), so 10 minutes before midnight I called her into the living room and pulled up Dick Clark's Rock'n New Years Eve on ABC. Since I run our local channels through a networked over the air DVR that makes it's own server or something (along with digital not being "100% live" like analog was), the feed was like 30 seconds to 1 minute behind live so mskate was looking at her phone and saying "my phone is ahead." We counted down the minute countdown and kissed at midnight along with some sips of wine (I didn't have a small thing of bubbly wine and I didn't want to open a full bottle). Happy New Year. The Time Square ball is getting replaced after 17 years of use, and if my math is right that means that I saw the ball right when it was first used back when I went to New York back in highschool with the band.
New Years Day is just calm. One of the main things was we watched the Rose Bowl Parade. This was the first time I've watched it, and it was really neat, everything was made of roses. We also went to Meijer for a little more after Christmas shopping (we've been doing a lot of that recently). The main thing we needed to get was on sale sweatshirts that mskate and her dad could throw off to donate at the marathon they're doing next week, and an ornament box that was on sale. We got it and started taking some ornaments off, and it's going to work out well for us since it's all divided to individual holders. We also made one of mskate's lego, brick heads of inside out characters. I stuck them in the Lego Mario display, so now it's kaiju pixar characters in the mushroom kingdom. I also watched a lot of masked magician on youtube. It's also the return of Family Guy on Adult Swim. I tried watching some but then I remembered why I don't like Family Guy.
Now I need to go back to work. It was a really great vacation. Well this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.
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.
Hey everyone, my how time flies, it's already Thanksgiving. I got an email from dogechain saying they were going to shut down completely and I had to back up my wallet or else I'll lose about $100 worth of doge I got back in college. I set-up my old college laptop, installed dogecoin core, and loaded my wallet information into it to import there. This required updating the blockchain, and it's been going for about a week now and isn't even 70% done. Whatever, time for the holiday. This year was kind of different due to my grandpa passing and aunt going to her brother's out of state instead of staying home, and my grandma no longer living independent and having even more mobility problems than normal, but even then a lot of things stayed the same. Wednesday was a normal work day, and then we went to the in-laws for the evening so we would be ready for the fun of the weekend. Pretty basic day, just spent a lot of the evening going through online black friday ads and watching some tv. Got a pretty good list ready. Something that caught my attention was Target selling an XBOX 360 for $75. I called IRA to see it since it was so weird, and he got excited since his 360 red ringed and he wanted a new one. OK add Xbox 360 to the list.
Thursday Thanksgiving day. I bought a news paper to get the black friday ads because I like to have the physical paper, but I think this will be the last time I do this because it didn't have any of the big players like walmart, target, meijer (I'm mid-west), BJs, gamestop, or others and that was kind of the same as last year. Oh well. About 1PM we went to my parents house for the party. Because of nursing home preferences and rules, we had dinner and celebrating a little early. Normally dinner is around 4PM and accordion sing along is around 6PM, but this year we shifted everything forward by about 1.5 hours. The moving is where things got kind of complicated. My grandma had broken her hip earlier this year and it just made it harder to move, and the dementia makes it all the harder to have her move herself properly (don't grab the walker handle, grab the arm rest, I said don't grab the walker handle, OK I guess we're using the walker but don't fight too much when we have to lift your arms). God bless her but it does complicate things by a lot. Dinner was great, ham and green beans for me, everyone else enjoyed that and turkey and stuffing and such. Great meal. Getting grandma back to her chair for the sing along was hard too, but this time we remembered that we had a wheel chair from my grandpa after he passed.
The sing along was fun like always, over the river, apple peaches pumpkin pie, and some other fun songs. After the sing along it was time for desert. Time for some comical problems. The accordion friend likes to bake and always makes a cake and a pie, and she forgot the pie at home; there was some confusion or something and the pie was left on the table in the garage. Whoops, oh well. There was some more visiting and after a while it was time for everyone to leave. Getting my grandma back in the car was a major production. We got her into the wheel chair and just walked her to the back door where it's easier to move, and then we just picked her up in the chair and carried her down the steps, just like what we'd do with my uncle who was always in a wheel chair. Brought back a lot of memories for us. Once we got her in the car we brought up my parent's Christmas decorations and assembled the tree. After that it was a calm early night at the in-laws because IRA and I had black friday shopping to do early in the morning.
OK, now it's the heavy time, early morning shopping. IRA woke me up at 4:30 so we could get to stores when they opened. Basically everything opened at 6AM except for gamestop opening at 5AM, so first stop on our loop was gamestop. We went to one that was somewhat close that had a target really close (same shopping district) at about 5:15, but when we got there they didn't have any of the games I was looking for, and directed us to go to a store that was further away on the rout but not exactly close. Change of plans, went to that store and found 2/3 of the games I was looking for (Hogwarts Legacy and Tomb Raider Anniversary). Score. Afterwards we went to the target that was fairly close and only had to wait in the cold for about 15 minutes. Because there was some big Taylor Swift promotion they had to have an employee come out and give us directions on what the limits are. Wild thing is the employee was someone I went to highschool with, He was one of vikingpolak's friends and I didn't really recognize him (and he didn't remember my first name, just my last), but it was pretty funny. I had no need for the Taylor Swift stuff, but the CD was under $20 and she's really popular right now, so I picked up a copy to try to resell later. I also picked up Kirby Forgotten Land, a pop socket for mom in law, and a bullseye squishmellow for mskate. We couldn't find the squishmellow and so we asked the highschool friend where it was, so that was pretty cool. As for the XBOX, when I asked the employee in electronics he said "we haven't sold xbox 360 in years, we're stopping XBOX ONE even, you'll have to go to a retro store for that." I then said "the ad lied to me, it said you had XBOX 360s for $75." It wasn't a console, it was a megablocks building set. Why the confusion? It shipped in a box that was a replica of the xbox 360 box, looks extremely close to an xbox 360 in a low resolution scan, and comes with a replica copy of halo 3. The employee said "yeah if we had them I'd get one just for nostalgia." Oh well. After Target we went to Walmart, I was looking for the basically half off gaming laptop since I need a new laptop (my current laptop is about 8 years old and is starting to fail, and I want a computer that can actually play all the games I get for free with prime), a cheap dresser unit, and a wire rack. All of them were online deals, dang, that was a waste.
We decided to give one more gamestop a try since I still was looking for roller coaster tycoon adventures delux, and so IRA looked up where the next closest gamestop was. He gave me the directions and when I got close I'm like "wait a minute, I know which gamestop we're going to, it's the gamestop right by where my grandma used to live, we'd go here back when it was funcoland." They had Roller Coaster Tycoon for PS4. I was hoping for switch, but PS4 works for me since I have a PS4. Since we were in a neighborhood I knew, we went to the dollar general that used to be the family video we'd rent movies from on Friday nights. I got us dawn soap, command hooks, pedialyte (mskate needs it for her electrolyte deficiency), and garbage bags. Since it was now like 9AM and were close to where the accordion friend lives, we called to see if they were up and able to give us the pie (they wanted us to have it to share with everyone). They were and we got the pie. After that we went to my grandma's condo just to look around since my mom had the house completely redone (new paint, no carpet, no furniture), and go to the bathroom. It was pretty surreal; it was familiar but completely foreign. Walked the house probably 1 last time. There was one more place, we went to the shopping center about a mile down the road from my grandma's house to go to 5 below to see if we could do the squishmellow $20 bag. They were completely out, it was just something for the first 100 people, but that's OK because we still have a big bag of stuffed animals from other big sales. That was OK though because there was a new retro store in the shopping center and they had some black friday deals. For me it was the buy 2 get 1 free on games, so I picked up 6 PS2 games and IRA got some movies on buy 2 get 2 free. On the way back we stopped at BJs where I got a new TV for the bedroom (our TV was the TV I bought for my dorm room years ago, and it's not very good) and some gift cards on discount (I think it was subway, disney, and uber). Once we got back I unloaded the car and took a nap.
Later in the day mskate wanted to do some shopping with us, and so we went out again in the afternoon. We went to bath and bodyworks, CVS, bjs, and the retro store again (because IRA decided he wanted to get an $80 used xbox 360 from them). At CVS we got a peanuts cookie tin for my dad since he likes Charlie Brown and Snoopy. BJs was just a couple more gift cards and filling gas. When we went to the mall with bath and bodyworks we found a store that was just gochapon. I looked for a machine with figures I would be interested in, but didn't find anything too interesting. IRA decided to though and got a digimon figure. At bath and bodyworks we got soaps and lotions for the moms on buy 3 get 3, and then got hand sanitizers for the workers at grandma's assisted living center. This is when we discovered that IRA didn't have his debit card, meaning he lost it. That was pretty bad, but we retraced our steps and went to the retro store where he last used it. That's where it was, and apparently he wasn't the first to do it. He got his xbox and some more movies, so crisis averted. Rest of the day was pretty low key.
Saturday was a simple day. We went to my grandma's assisted living to get her apartment all decorated and just visit. We already had a little tree set up, but it didn't have a lot of ornaments and we bought some garland to hang on the wall and put some ornaments on it. I'm glad I bought the command hooks because we needed them for the garland. We got it all set up while she was still at lunch, and once it was decorated we brought her to her apartment and just visited. We didn't have a lot to do with her, so I put on the wedding video I made for my cousin (the one we saw in Hawaii earlier this year). She doesn't know him, he's on my dad's side and she's my mom's mom, but she really likes little kids and half the video is just my 2 year old niece-cousin being cute, so it was a great little thing and she especially liked watching the part where we went to Disney Aulani for the character breakfast. After that we just walked her around her floor until it was time for their activity. It was a good little visit. The rest of the day was pretty calm, just unpacking the stuff and trying to find places for it. Later in the evening we went to a drive in theater to watch The Polar Express and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. We saw Red One and Elf the week prior, and figured out how to keep warm without turning the car on better than we did that time. It was a good fun time.
Well that was Thanksgiving weekend. Glad I can finally get this out at a reasonable time this year. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.
Hey everyone, time for my annual Christmas blog, and this year I'm throwing in New Years and Thanksgiving for a little extra fun. First I'll start with Thanksgiving, which was pretty basic. Mskate and I went to my parents and we had thanksgiving with the family, then we had desert and accordion playing. The next day IRA and I went black friday shopping, but the most interesting part of that was IRA woke mskate and I up at 4:30 saying "it's time for shopping it's time for shopping." Why, because everyone was empty, didn't have the same craziness as last year. When I went back to work there were people talking about how the news was all ready to interview people like they did last year but there wasn't anyone out. It was fun enough, we still bought a fair amount of things, but nothing to write home about. This is why I didn't do one this year; I'm sure I could have woven an entertaining story, but I just didn't feel inspired this year. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas Mskate and decorated for Christmas, wrapped gifts, and I did a 12 days of Christmas puzzle advent calendar. It was quite fun and I framed it quite nicely where it'll make a good decoration in the years to come. Given how busy we were and how short Advent was this year Christmas came pretty fast. Because it went so fast we almost didn't do the county lights this year, but we did after work on like the 21st, and we did it with my grandma and mom. Since it's a drive through exhibit thing we wanted to take her to it for a year or 2 now, but kept forgetting. She really enjoyed it.
OK time for Christmas Eve. First I'll start with it being REALLY foggy around where everyone lives. This made things rater interesting. Mskate and I packed up our car with all the gifts we were giving away and overnight stuff for the 2 days we'll be staying at the in-law's house. The fog was kind of cool on the drive up, kind of like a Halloween atmosphere. We dropped off all the overnight stuff and divided the gifts between who we were giving them to (my grandma, her family, and my family). I did the dividing while she settled in with the overnight stuff. We also visited some with her family, and then went off to the McDonald's by my grandma's.
For those who might be new to the blog, when I was little and we do the gift exchange with my grandparents, we'd all go to the McDonald's that's a block away and then Santa would come while we're eating lunch. To this day we still go there because it's part of the tradition. Now for the silly fun time story of this. I have the McDonald's app which means I can get free food and discounts while also getting points for future free food and discounts so long as I log in. However, I don't know if it's my phone, how I use my phone (normally I have location and mobile data turned off, so connecting can take some extra time), or just the android app, but it regularly crashes or becomes unresponsive whenever I try to use it. IRA also wanted the Kerwin Frost adult happy meal toys, so we got 2 of those for the family members that wanted chicken. We also got my grandma a happy meal; mom said "is it just so you have the ebay inventory toy," and I said "no, it's that but it's also just enough food for her and it gets apple slices for mskate." I'm going through the app trying to maximize the savings while the family is saying "I'm hungry." I eventually get us saving quite a fair amount of money with the discounts. It ended up going really well, and VikingPolak was able to get a free McChicken with the points since he still needed some food after everyone was done. We also got some very interesting chicken nugget toys with the Kerwin Frost box.
With McDonald's eaten we went to her house and exchanged gifts. It was primarily everyone giving grandma gifts and her giving everyone else gifts. We got grandma a bunch of snack foods, a build a bear outfit, a cinderella doll to go with her micky and minnie doll, and some other things. She gave me Krabby Patty Fruit Snacks, Duckman the complete series, a pokemon puzzle, lemon cookies, Dragon Ball season 3, Perfect Blue on steel book, hazelnut wafer rolls, goldfish, highlander on 4K, young justice season 3, a yo-yo, burger king gift cards, a reindeer ornament, a spongebob magic towel, hot chocolate, a meat stick and cheese pack, and a wooden puzzle marble run. This is a high level model that is fragile with a lot of pieces, definitely not for kids. Mskate got hair clips, popcorn, 2 hairbrushes, a disney mystery box stuffed animal (it was pumba in the shape of a pretzel), socks, a Lizzie Maguire mug, fruit snacks, gluten free cookies, jelly beans, milk chocolate truffles, smoked guda spread, a glitter star tree topper, bath bombs, crayola hat, hair ties, harry potter fruit snacks, an Anna from frozen magic towel, hot chocolate, and peppermint peeps. All the while we had the Arendale Yule Log playing on the TV, it made for a nice festive. After all the gifts we made it to church. While on the way I got some great video of the flog.
Video is uploaded with creative commons attribution, click here for details (youtuberumble)
After mass we had dinner, pizza I think. We then said our goodbyes and went to mskate's parent's house. When we got back we did some additional gift exchanges, I got some pokemon mega blocks and a mcdondald's gift card I think. Mskate got a peanuts christmas display thing, some ornaments, and a starbucks gift card. We also gave Delilah some gifts, peanut butter filled cow hooves and jerky treats. We gave her one of the peanut butter cow hooves when they had to put Duke to sleep earlier this year, and she was happy to have more of them since she really likes peanut butter. The rest of the night was pretty calm, I watched A Christmas Story on TBS as part of my tradition, and made some jokes on twitter about how it was my tradition. Having watched the first airing in full I didn't have to drive my families crazy with "I have to watch A Christmas Story on TBS." What was great was I was able to shower during the commercial break and miss nothing. Yay.
OK it's now Christmas morning. IRA is super excited (bragging about how he only slept for 2 hours). Before I get to the fun stuff, I need to explain/remind a thing about my father-in-law. He's notoriously hard to shop for, either thinking that what you got him is too low of quality or thinking that you spent way to much on something. I have cracked him though, what he needs are household items he doesn't yet have and doesn't realize he wants. We ended up getting him washing machine cleaner, gaffers tape, 3 different bird feeder feeds, pet stain cleaner, and a novelty sign that says "forget about the past you can't change it, forget about the future you can't know it, forget about the present because I didn't get you one" (we had him open that last). He liked all of them. For Delilah her final present from us were pawstruck dog bone treats. She REALLY liked those. They were a little big for her but she loved jumping on it and biting it and breaking off crumbs she later licked up. I think I won Christmas for the dog (at least for now, more on that later). From them I got more pokemon mega blocks (specifically the pokeballs that make for great desk decorations, IRA had them stacked together since they link together on the top), a pikachu children's model (I think I'll do a "model review" where I give Crash a friend), pokemon puzzles, a tin of breakfast blend tea, a buckees shirt, a Naruto mug with Naruto socks, a new polo work shirt, a Naruto shirt, more McDonald's gift cards, a lego parrot, gum, life savers candy, a stuffed snorlax, and a stuffed dragonite. IRA picked out the Naruto stuff because when we went to Disney I had ramen twice, and he associates ramen with Naruto and not "I can make my own food/broke college student." Oh well, I like Naruto even though I haven't watched it in a long while. Mskate also gave me some things here. She gave me a gourmet cookie that she bought from someone at church and a hot sauce variety pack. I gave her her presents from me the day after with my parents. She got peeps, Harry Potter legos, a calendar, stationary, a saint a day book, a harry potter shirt, a harry potter mini backpack purse thing (similar to loungefly but not that brand), cheese knives, American Girl Doll accessories, a starbucks gift card, jelly beans, a phone protector, high quality markers for art things, candy canes, a stuffed Harry Potter and Hermione, a stuffed Winnie the Pooh and Piglet, and stuffed santas. We gave IRA various nightmare before christmas things and volume 1 of invincible. It was a great day. I don't remember what we got mom-in-law, but they were things she liked. There's also this funny chocolates we got. It's a company that makes Easter chocolates and they did Santa and his reindeer, but I swear the reindeer were just the bunny mold with antlers on the ears in the foil.
Now with gifts over we went to get mskate's aunt from 2 blocks away. When we got her in we gave her her little gifts from us (rice krispy treats). She really liked them. We had breakfast and all went well. Now for some of the Delilah story, she was going absolutely crazy with the bone thing, running around everywhere, digging in her dog bed, and general hyperactivity. After breakfast aunt's daughter picked her up and went to their next activity. She also brought over her dog Edison, a big dog that they gave some big rawhide treats to that were too big for Delilah. The dogs ran around together and had a lot of fun. I don't know if they knew each other before this, but they enjoyed each other it seems like. We rested for a few hours before going to my parents. I watched A Christmas Story on TNT during this time (because TNT aired it on the odd hours and was a different channel). It was fun.
It's now about 2PM, time for my parents party. We got there before everyone else, and then mom and grandma got there. We helped grandma into the house and got her seated. After Mrs. G joined us we did coloring cookies; one Easter we got my grandma these coloring book cookies with edible markers and we found it's a food and activity my grandma really likes (it's the only thing she eats really quickly). We got her the cookies on Christmas Eve and we did them on Christmas day, with some extras for her to do at a later time. We were going to use the different markers from other times but we lost them. Oh well, we'll get them another time since this is going to be a thing we do with her for a while. After the cookies we did oplatke, a Polish tradition. Mskate and I got the oplatke from our church since ours does it, and it was fun. We did it at our little gathering and dad and vikingpolak did it with our grandpa and aunt. It was a fun little time.
Now for the other part of the party, where my dad and brother came back from aunt and grantpa's. Normally grandma's long time friends with the accordion come over but they had to stay healthy due to an upcoming surgery. Oh well, we still managed to enjoy ourselves, just a lot of talking. We had dinner ham, rolls, corn, green beans, and sweet potatoes. Mom didn't serve the ham on a very good plate, it was pretty shallow resulting in me spilling the juice on myself. It was a good dinner. After dinner we had desert with IRA and mom-in-law joining us. Grandma gave IRA a minions magic towel, and he made his when he got it. Since he's a bit of a doof he activated his towel by soaking it in water, and then bringing it out sopping wet to show everyone. I cleaned up the water he was dripping everywhere. Mom-in-law also brought over a dancing snoopy toy that she got for Christmas to entertain grandma, and I showed her a dance she could do to dance along (hold her arms up in front of herself and do windshield wipers). It was a fun time. When we were done we got grandma all packed up to go home, and went back to the in-laws. Delilah was still very excited, and dad-in-law figured there was something in the new bone that was making her all crazy. Apparently she didn't sleep much that night.
Now it's the day after Christmas, Boxing Day if you're Canadian (which I'm not). Mskate's dad got fed up with the paw struck treats so he threw them out. Delilah was looking around sad that she lost her treat toy. I later dug them out to give to Edison since his dog-mom causes a lot of trouble, so causing her some trouble wouldn't be that bad (he got pretty excited as well, but he just liked the new toy thing). We went to my parent's house and set-up the gifts. We gave my dad a lot of peanuts stuff (peanuts hot chocolate, the Charlie Brown and Snoopy show complete series, 4 TV movie set, and a pop-up card with the Christmas special scene where Linus says what Christmas is all about), and some cooking things I think. We got my mom brownie mix (she really likes to make brownies), bath and bodyworks soaps and lotions, gift cards, and some other things. We got my brother a flash light, shirts, an amo box, beard wash and conditioner (that we got from bed bath and beyond in the bankruptcy sale), and some other things. I got this peanut butter cup and chocolate trailmix insert mix (really good), a game called "nice buns," a squishy stress ball thing, a spongebob puzzle, spiderman across the spiderverse, a slinky, Crash 4 it's about time, pickles, sunflower seed kernels, katamari, spongebob socks, a ruby tuesdays gift card, a taco bell gift card, uber gift card, slide wistle, and a rubix cube key chain. Mskate got dominos, gluten free cookies, an american girl doll play set (a truly me doll she's naming Noel), bath bombs, lotion, and a warming unicorn. Mskate and I got matching Disney shirts, so we know what we'll wear next trip. We also got Disney 100 happy meal toys, a collection process we worked on when it was in restaurants and we are only missing 3. This is also when I gave her my gifts, The Aristocats on Bluray with the Disney 100 slip case with Marie on it (she loves Marie), and Miracle on 34th street. After all the gift giving and breakfast cinnamon rolls and bagels we watched an episode of the Charlie Brown and Snoopy show. It was REALLY funny, I picked a winner. After that we gathered up our stuff from both houses, and went home. For the next many days I was just working on finding places to keep all our new gifts. One thing I need to do is find a place in the curio cabinet for the happy meal toys that are basically just figures.
The days between Christmas and New Years were pretty chill. For the most part I organized our new presents and rested. 2 days before New Years Eve we went up to mskate's parent's house so she and dad-in-law could see The Polar Express in IMAX for his birthday, and IRA and I went to see The Boy and the Herron, the movie the Hayao Miyazaki came out of retirement for, reopening Studio Ghibli just to make (though basically that just meant that the people that made Studio Ponok went back to the old offices since they made their own studio after Ghibli closed). It was a really good movie, even though it had a lot of "Ghibli old lady face" and "Ghibli fluids," along with some "Ghibli frog face" if I'm not mistaken (3 elements of Ghibli movies I don't care for). I'll be making a review at some point. Since the theater we went to was close to where Cousin M lives IRA and I stopped by after the movie for an impromptu visit. We talked for maybe an hour just catching up, which was great since we didn't see him at Christmas. Then the day before New Years Eve we had a funeral for one of the scout moms from my old Boy Scout troop. It was sad but it was great seeing so many people I haven't seen in over a decade. Since she was so involved in the troop (regularly being an adult leader on camp outs and driving us up in her 15 passenger van (the memory I shared in facebook that made the sons smile, and I shared in the "write down a memory"). So many people from my old troop came, so many people I remembered but didn't recognize (I said "who am I not recognizing" but when he said his name I would remember instantly). After the funeral the luncheon was held at the VFW post that we would regularly partner with for blood drives with or hold banquets at. One of the VFW men recognized me from 12+ years ago, which was so cool. It was just a regular troop reunion, and the good thing is since mskate and I grew up in the same area she knew a number of people and wasn't "I don't know anyone, stick with me and don't socialize to the full extent with your old friends" like I imagine many spouses would be in situations like this. About halfway through before one of the sons had to leave we took a picture with all the old scouts that were there including the old scout masters. Just a great little thing.
Now it's New Years Eve, I had some ebay packages to mail so I went to Meijer for the authorized USPS shipping location. While there I did some shopping and used some coupons while also buying on sale Christmas stuff (primarily chocolates, but also a dog sweater for Delilah next Christmas). I basically got everything for 50% off, yay. Then after my shopping I went to Wendy's and got one more free Jr. Frosty (got mskate a small vanilla diet coke and I had the frosty). Then it was time to go to our camping friend's New Years Eve party. Our contribution to the party was a meat and cheese tray, plate of cookies, champagne, fireworks, and board games. The food went over very well, and the champagne was great for the New Years toast. The game we brought was the Nice Buns game my mom got me for Christmas, and it was a really fun game. The goal is to get 3 sets of 3 cards of the same color (9 total) before your opponents, while also avoiding the "fishy buns" which prevent you from making a set, while rolling dice that determine how many new cards you can get and if you can get rid of your fishy bun if you have it, and while there's a lot of chance with the drawing of cards and rolling of dice there's also a lot of skill with how the players play the dice and cards. We had one game that went on for about an hour because we got really into strategy of how to play the dice and cards, and played it 2 or so other times. It's a really fun game and will be bringing it camping. Since my godfather and his family weren't going to be there for the ball drop I lit off some of my fireworks for my godbrother around 10PM (the others would be done at midnight). He's still young and doesn't have the "backyard shows," so he was yelling "you need to call the fire department, I've never seen up close fireworks." My godfather was a little nervous about this since he's been to some irresponsible backyard shows, but he also knew I was responsible and safe. I lit off 3 in the drive way while he and my mom stood at a far distance, and he thought they were really cool. I'm sure there's going to be some "can we do fireworks like [Pokematic] did" and there's going to be things like "no, that's a thing only specially trained people like Mr. [Pokematic] are able to do on New Years and the 4th of July." Mom also took a photo of me with the firework and said "you're just like [you're uncle who would light off the fireworks when we did 4th of July parties 20 years ago]." We all just hung out until about 10 minutes to midnight, and then we started getting ready for the ball drop. I popped the cork on the champagne into the back yard and poured as many glasses as the hosts had, and everyone that wanted some got it. I also jokingly told the hosts "send one of your kids to find the cork in the morning." We counted down the ball and toasted the drinks. I lit off the remaining 6 or so fireworks for an audience of about 5 people. The fun thing is I bought this kit and box of tanks about 7 years ago and have been gradually lighting them off 1-4 at a time over new years and 4th of July at my house, and with this it's now about done (still have some small ones and tanks left, but "the show pieces" are all done now). Now it's time for me to get a new kit since everyone really liked them (and hopefully I can get some on sale now that new years is over). Shortly after the fireworks it was time to go home.
So there you have it, my Christmas and New Years 2023 extravaganza (with a hint of Thanksgiving and Advent). It was quite a great time. It was also quite an eventful 2023 (which I'll recap in another blog). New Years day is the last day of my break (which went very quickly), and will be populated with various "get ready for the work week" stuff (and maybe some sales to get more fireworks). This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.
Oh and here's Steamboat Willie, hosted by me on this blog (not linked). I can do so because it is now 2024 and Steamboat Willie is now public domain.
Hey everyone, it's that jingle jangle time again. Before I get to real Christmas, I need to tell a little story about the last day of work for the year. My one co-worker retired at the end of the year and the 23rd was his last day. I wore my Pikachu shirt for him like I do whenever a coworker leaves the company, and it was a pretty slow day. I basically worked on paperwork all day while I watched Christmas specials (Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, Shortsmas with Big City Greens, Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire, Click Clack Moo Christmas at the Farm, A Garfield Christmas, Santa and the Three Bears, Ernest Saves Christmas, and The Night Before Christmas). Mskate and I also had to get the car ready for the big trip to our parents house. So the midwest was expected to have a giant winter storm over Christmas, and we had to make sure we made the 40 mile trip all OK. We packed up a case of water, a bunch of snack foods, some blankets, candles, the power brick, and hand warmers. We ended up not needing them, but better to have and not need than need and not have. Mskate packed up the car (or as I say at this time, sleigh) while I was at work and we were ready for our trip. It was pretty packed. She had to work 5-9PM at her retail job and with the bad weather I dropped her off and picked her up. The snow wasn't all that bad (primarily super cold and windy), but I still decided to take a trial run on the free way to pick-up a game at Best Buy (in-store pick-up) to make sure it was going to be OK tomorrow (and it was safe, and the game was Oddworld Soulstorm on XBOX by the way).
The 24th was the big start of the festivities, gift exchange with my grandma. Before we went there we unloaded our overnight stuff at Mskate's parents house since we wouldn't need it at grandma's house. We had to make sure IRA didn't see the bag we got him since that was his big surprise (I'll get to that later). We met the family at grandma's house to unload her presents and start setting up the piles. Mskate and I were there first so we did the bulk of the setting-up, and then everyone else showed up soon after. We got everyone packed-up so we could go to McDonalds like we've done for nearly 30 years, and I forgot my phone at her house, which meant I wasn't going to get my rewards points on the order. Mskate told me "well I guess you're out of luck on this one," but it was going to be like a $30-40 order and that isn't insignificant, plus she forgot some stuff as well so I walked the 1 block distance back to grandma's house and got my phone and her hat and gloves. Once I got back everyone had their order figured out so we went to the self serve kiosk, put in my reward number, made our order, and I got enough points for a free large fry off the order. It was a fun little thing remembering the fun times.
Now it's time for the gift exchanges. Let's see if I remember everything. The funny thing is grandma got 4 bags of Lindor chocolate balls, all the same flavor. She likes them, but it was just kind of funny. Mskate and I also got her a 50th anniversary Micky Mouse wishimal since she liked the Minnie Mouse we got her last year so much, and puzzles she can do (large piece children's puzzles) since that's something she enjoys doing. I got Morbius, Spiderman No Way Home, Death Stranding, Doki Doki Literature Club Plus, Used Cars, Pokemon Johto League Champions, and candy. Mskate got me Disney nutcracker socks, and the funny thing is it was 6 different socks (not pairs), so I have to mix and match when I wear them. Mskate got a Welly Wisher doll, Courtney slumber party accessories, Micky and Minnie plushies, candy, film for her instaflix camera, and candy. It was a fun time. After the gift exchange it was about time for church, so we got everyone together and we went to grandma's church (we normally go to my parent's church, but it's gotten too hard to do that now). After mass we had dinner at her house (ham), and watched Pluto's Christmas Tree and Santa's Workshop Silly Symphony on Disney plus.
After all that fun we went back to mskate's parents house and did some Christmas Eve presents (because that's a thing her family does). I got a Buckees mug and tumbler, and I think mskate got some ornaments. We gave IRA his "only presents from us," a Nightmare Before Christmas puzzle and a Micky plushy. I also started watching 24 hours of A Christmas Story on TBS, my Christmas tradition for at least the last 10 years. I watched most of the movie on the first airing, but I missed triple dog dare you and Chinese restaurant, so I had to catch that on later airings. After that I fell asleep and was ready for bed.
OK it's Christmas Morning. Mskate and I woke up a little earlier than everyone else, so I ate a bagel before all the festivities. I like to put peanut butter on my bagels, and apparently only the dogs at the in-laws eat peanut butter, so little Delilah was like "hey, that's my peanut butter, let me have my peanut butter." Unlike my in-laws I don't feed the dogs off my plate (because I know that's bad for dogs), but since I was eating their food I let her lick the butter knife, and mskate got some off my bagel to feed to Duke. It was a good little bagel.
OK, now that IRA is awake it's time for Christmas morning. The in-laws got me a Dreamworks 42 movie collection (which is crazy because I remember the first Dreamworks movie when it released, and have seen 29 of the 42), a Bowser plushie, Super Mario Legos, pokemon megablocks, cells at work issue one, 2 cars toys, a set of ankle weights from mskate, and candy. Mskate got some clothes, Harry Potter Legos, candy, and some other things. IRA was really surprised to find the giant bag of presents mskate and I got him. Here's a really funny thing, we bought him a Santa baby Yoda but couldn't find it (I tore apart the room we kept the gifts in and it wasn't there), so we gave him the Nightmare Before Christmas puzzle instead. Well it turns out that I put it in the Nightmare Before Christmas lunch box we got him, and when he opened it he was super happy. One thing I got my father in law was media remote for his xbox series x that he primarily uses as a streaming box. Well unfortunately Amazon sent me a replacement roku remote instead so I had to make a return. That's annoying, but oh well.
After gift time mskate and I picked up her aunt from 2 blocks away for Christmas breakfast. It was pretty easy getting her to the house, and it was a good breakfast. I had eggs and bacon, and everyone else had an egg and bacon casserole thing. After breakfast mskate and I booked our hotel and flight to see her aunt over New Years. Her aunt isn't doing too well so we're going to see her over New Years for an emergency trip (and she lives in New Mexico, so look out for a blog on that at some point).
In the afternoon mskate and I went over to my parents for Christmas day fun. We didn't do gift exchange with them yet (that's for the day after), this was the Christmas party with all the family where my parents make dinner and we sing accordion songs. PepperBC and her family came to visit as did TanMan's grandparents and uncle. He called us shortly after they arrived just by coincidence so they were able to have a nice conversation. Cousin M and my in-laws showed up about an hour after Mskate and I arrived. IRA gave grandma and mom a gift of hand soap and lotion from Bath and Bodyworks (we got it from our black friday trip).
Next it was time for dinner. My parents made a pot roast and ham, and my dad borrowed my cast iron Dutch oven to make more food for everyone. There was a kids table and adults table since my parent's dining room table isn't large enough for everyone. We all did Oplatki (a Polish Christmas tradition) with our tables, though I think the kid's table might have been the only one to do it since I was into it. It was really good. After dinner we sang accordion songs. It was a lot of Christmas songs, and was fun. I'm glad my in-laws enjoy Christmas with my family. After that we had desert, lemon meringue pie, chocolate cake, and ice cream. I had both, and it was yummy. My mom gave IRA a little present, and it was a Tamagotchi. I got it set-up for him, and he wasn't really into it but I was so it kind of became mine.
After the Christmas party mskate and I went back to her parent's house. I watched some more A Christmas Story since I love watching that movie at Christmas (and at some point throughout the day I watched the parts I missed and this was just some fun), and after finishing the final airing IRA and I watched Used Cars. He thought it was hilarious and I have a feeling he's going to want a copy as well. Time for bed.
Now it's the 26th, and it's time for after Christmas sales and gift exchanges with my parents. I had another bagel with peanut butter for breakfast (and gave the dogs some thank-you licks for sharing their food with me). Mskate, her family, and I went to the mall to have a look for things. We got some Sees (Ceese, Seeces, I don't know how it's spelled) gourmet candy from the pop-up store. After that we went to the other side of the mall to go to the basic candy store to get a spongebob surprise egg for me (if they had one that wasn't squidward according to the product number on the bottom), and some harry potter candy for IRA. I was able to get a chocolate egg and it ended up being Patrick, yay. After the candy store we went to the lego store and IRA and Mskate made a custom mini-figure. Mskate made one that looked like me and gave it a safety vest with a beard head, legs with pockets in the pants, a cowboy hat (because that was the closest to a fedora), and a pizza box. IRA made one that kind of looked like him. After the lego store we went back to the other side of the mall for Lulu Lemon for Mskate and an outdoor store for me to look for a new winter jacket. Now, I think both of my winter coats are perfectly fine, as does mskate, but all season my mom has been making a big deal about how old my coats are, so we found one that would work for me we would get it just to make her stop bringing it up every time we saw her. Unfortunately they didn't have one I liked, so I said "I'll just have to continue wearing my perfectly good coats that are just as old as can be" (that's a thing my grandma would say about old stuff). Lulu lemon was too crowded so mskate didn't get anything.
After our mall trip we packed up my parent's stuff and went to do gift exchange with them. When we got there I told mom "mom, I wasn't able to find a new jacket, so I'm just going to have to continue wearing my perfectly good jackets that are just as old as can be." She got defensive and denial about how she doesn't care that my coats are old and mskate and I countered with "you are literally the only person that says anything about my coats, and it's every single time we see you." Hopefully this gets through to her about how no one has any desire to replace my coats. We set-up all the presents and now it's time to exchange. I got candy, star bills, a set of family games my mom thought were more mature but they're really children's matching games, Sonic frontier, a mini inflatable dancing man (because my parents have the full size one at their house for now), a movie trivia game, lottery scratch offs (which won $57 on), and some other things I'm forgetting. My brother got socks, beer, Letterkenny DVDs, and money. We gave my parents gift cards, soaps, touch screen winter gloves with a matching hat and scarf, and gaffer's tape. Mskate got a popcorn popper (she really likes popcorn, so single serving popcorn popper is great for her), Friends the complete series blu-ray, a Minnie Mouse necklace (also a black Friday find), and heavy socks. The big thing mskate and I got were German headwear for when we have Octoberfest at church since we didn't have much this year's event, and my Grandma being German she had a hat with real German pins on it, we got that as a present. I also got a men's version of my grandma's hat to put the pins on, and mskate got an artificial flower crown with a ribbon. We'll be very German next year. We also got picture ornaments from our major accomplishments this year. Mine was going to Sault Saint Marie to find an analog Canadian TV channel (of which I have a blog about, that hopefully will get up soon), and mskate with getting her book out. I also have a framed picture of me with the TV with channel 2 on it; I'm going to put it on my desk at work as a conversation starter ("Pokematic, why do you have a framed picture of you with an old TV?" and then I can explain how Canada has 12 channels still broadcasting in analog at the time of this picture, and this was when I found it in November of 2022).
Shortly after that mskate and I packed up all our stuff from both of our parent's houses and went home. It wasn't any problem getting home, and then I unloaded the car to the house. It wasn't any trouble, just a lot of stuff. One funny thing is I tried opening the bed gate on my truck to put some junk in it before we left but it was so cold that it wouldn't open, but then when we got back the bed was open because it got warm enough to melt the gate so we were greeted to an open lift gate on the truck. Now I'm in the process of trying to pack for the New Mexico trip while sorting through all our new stuff. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.
Oh wow, I never hit publish. Guess I should do that now a year later.
