Pokematic's Oktoberfest 2025

Hey everyone, so my church does an Oktoberfest every year as a fund raiser and social event around the end of September/beginning of October. It's quite a fun time, there's beer, polka music, dancing, games, and raffles. The raffles are the big thing for my wife and I, mainly because this year we were kind of in charge of the basket raffles. About a month prior to Oktoberfest parishioners donate baskets of things and everyone is given the option to enter raffle tickets to win the baskets. These cover all kinds of things; bird feeders, alcohol, american girl dolls, lego sets, luggage, lottery tickets, coolers, gift cards, action figures, activity zones, and others. There was also the premium raffles of a 65 inch TV with PS5 and game, and a trip to Mexico, each with individual premium tickets. We sold tickets before and after mass many weeks, and bought about $200 worth of tickets over the month. In total there were 103 baskets, which I think was a record. The cool thing about the tickets is that they are "buy a sheet of the same number, write your name once," which saves a lot of time. Leading up to the weekend mskate was doing lots of things to get ready, organizing baskets and setting up decorations.

Friday was family night, a night of activities more geared towards kids and families. We had a petting zoo, pony rides, Disney music bingo (from the same guy who does music bingo for us at other times of the year), a "Taylor Swift concert" with a look alike lip syncing to songs, a videogame trailer, a kid spa trailer, minigolf, and pumpkin painting. It also had some normal Oktoberfest things like the beer garden and sausages, and the basket raffle (which we were kind of in charge of). My volunteer shift started at 7PM, so I had time to come a little early and enjoy the festivities. Well, it was also VIP day at Chuck E Cheese, where pass holders got free dipin dots, 500 tickets, and 30 points (on top of the daily points they already get with their pass). I decided to go to chuck e cheese and get my VIP stuff, and "speed run" my points so I could get to family night. Normally 40 points lasts me about an hour, but I also play "longer games" and take my time, but I had to go through 70 points and so I played the "token eater" games, basically jumping from one game to the other before it fully registered. I made a couple hundred tickets on this, and kind of fulfilled a childhood thought of "how fast could I blow through my tokens." Lots of fun regardless.

I got to family night around 5 PM. I had a sausage for dinner, and played some minigolf. There wasn't a whole lot for me, but was kind of fun looking around. It ended up being a good thing I was there since the volunteer that was working the videogame trailer didn't show up and they needed someone to be "the rule enforcer." The videogame trailer was either 4 or 5 TVs set up with multi-player games (minecraft, mario kart, lego marvel, and something else I didn't see), and a long couch for everyone to sit on. Players were only to have 15 minutes if there was a line, but could have more time if there wasn't a line. I had to make sure the line was managed, kids weren't overfilling the trailer, don't let kids with food or drink in, and to pay attention to if kids have had their turn. A couple of times I helped set-up Mario Kart since I know Mario Kart. I didn't have to end the turns very often since it wasn't very in demand. Once I helped a grandpa get in the trailer to look for his grandson. It was a pretty cool thing. Some people asked me for business cards and I'm like "I'm with the church, I don't know the business, talk to the guy with the blue shirt." A little after 7 someone came to relieve me, it was his shift. Young guy, showed him what to do, and all went well. Hopefully he was able to be "authoritative" considering he seemed to be around the same age as some of the teens that would go in.

After that I went to help mskate with the raffle. I was going to help enter tickets, but there was some confusion over the numbers which meant we didn't enter the tickets that night. The POS system was square, which is what we use for when we do art fairs. This came in handy when I rang up some items wrong, which made canceling them easy. The Taylor Swift "concert" was pretty good. The impersonator looked pretty close to Taylor, and she had the sparkly jacket, and did all her mannerisms that I know. At first I wondered if she was actually singing, but then I heard the "studio production" in the songs and knew it was lip sync. Oh well, still a good concert. Eventually she joined the audience to dance with the kids, and this is when things got a little weird. The DJ "ran out of Swift songs" and started playing Katy Perry songs (firework and roar are the ones I remember). I'm like, "ok, now you're just breaking character." Oh well, I don't think the kids were paying that close of attention. At the end of the night we moved all the raffle baskets into the social hall, which was kind of involved since we wanted to keep the same layout as the tables while keeping all the ticket buckets with the baskets. Also at the end of the night the left over food was free, so I picked up some sausages to have for breakfast and lunch tomorrow.

Saturday was the big night, full Oktoberfest. During the day we figured out what was going on with the ticket numbers, and got all the tickets entered. We also were running out of tickets the night before, so we ordered more on amazon prime to be delivered to our house. We got to the church around 4PM and did the set-up. I set-up the computers for entering the ticket numbers in the look-up table, and as we were selling tickets I was entering them. There was a slight problem, I needed the wifi password and I couldn't find anyone to give it to me; well at least not immediately, I found someone who had it pretty quickly. Mskate also brought here laptop, and it was kind of funny how I had my gaming laptop next to her basic business laptop. Oh well.

About an hour into the night I got dragged into an event. They needed people for the mug holding contest, where you hold a beer mug out perpendicular to your body, and as the game went on they'd add beer to make it heavier. I wasn't really planning on participating, but one of the old ladies who knows us was like "come on I'm sponsoring you in the contest." I'm all "uhhhh, OK I guess." I get up there and I get this 5 pound glass mug. I was saving my arm for the competition, as was everyone else. Once it started I held up my arm, and my arm started cramping. Not quite sure why, I was shaking my arm out and warming it up, but I basically immediately started feeling the burn. I was one of the first people eliminated, and only had a little bit of beer poured into my mug. I was going to hang around and see what ended up happening, but there was a bit of a problem with my laptop and I had to run back to the table and fix it. I was able to fix it no problem, basically someone minimized the web browser or clicked off the tab and lost it among my sea of tabs, and all I had to do was pull my browser back up.

I think sometime around this time is when mskate went to our house to pick up the raffle tickets we had to amazon next day delivery order. The night before we were running low on raffle tickets and mskate said "I'm going to order more tickets because we're going to run out." That was good because we would have run out had she not ordered more. Well they were supposed to arrive before the night began at like 3:30, but they kept getting delayed and arrived at 5:45. Mskate ran home to get them when she got the notification that they were delivered, and that was really good because we ran out like soon after she got back. Later in the night I had a sausage for dinner, and then got a soft pretzel as a long snack while entering the tickets.

It's now nearing the end of the night, which means we were now doing the raffle drawing. After the ticket was drawn one of the other volunteers doing the drawing would give me the ticket and prize, I would look up the number, and mskate would write the name. One of the tickets was entered wrong and we had to have a completely different volunteer go through all the tickets looking for it. It was generally well organized, but not perfect. We figured it out though. As I was going through the numbers we ended up winning 3 baskets; one of the alcohol baskets, the crock pot basket, and the hands on science center basket. Also, with the admission bands there was a raffle for a trip to the Bavarian Inn, and mskate won, so in total we won 4 things. Unfortunately I didn't win the big screen TV and PS5, but here's the funny thing, it was our music director's 7 year old son. His dad was both happy and not happy, because while it was a great prize now they had to find a place for it. Some people picked up their baskets that night, but a lot didn't and we had to put the baskets in the social hall. We loaded our baskets into our car, and in the morning I unloaded them.

I'm going to go over all the stuff by basket.

• The Crockpot Basket
• A crockpot
• A box of 3 crockpot liners
• A set of salt and pepper shakers
• A $25 Meijer gift card
• 3 cooking utensels (a slotted serving spoon, a non-slotted serving spoon, and a meat masher)
• 2 packets of crock pot seasonings
• garlic salt
• a cookbook or recipies
• Alcohol basket
• A bottle of strawberry wine
• A bottle of tequila
• A bottle of fireball whisky
• A bottle of rum
• A bottle of spiced rum
• A bottle of of dry gin
• A bottle of of vodka
• A reusable wine bottle
• A case of Local's Light American Lager
• A case of smirnoff ice zero
• A pack of solo cups
• A pack of solo shot glasses
• A novelty giant solo cup that was the basket
• A sign that says "bar open proudly serving whatever you bring."
• The hands on science center gift certificate
• A $400 gift card to Bavarian Inn Frankenmuth

Sunday was a great end of the weekend. I went through the baskets and got some of the stuff put away, all the liquor and wine (and sign and cups) fit in my liquor cabinet, and the smirnoff ice fit in the fridge door (and the beer is just sitting in the hallway waiting for the next family party). The utensils went in the utensil drawer, the seasoning went in the seasoning and cooking cabinet, and the gift cards went in the gift card drawer. I still had to find a place for the crock pot and novelty solo cup, but those would go into the storage locker. Still haven't found a place for the cook book yet, but that'll come.

Sunday night was pretty cool, it was the big 50th anniversary dinner after the mass celebrated by the arch bishop. Since the arch bishop was there and there was an attack on a Mormon church earlier that day, there was quite a police presence and they secured the perimeter. It wasn't just the arch bishop, there were also all the past priests who came to celebrate, including the first priest from 50 years ago (he was in his 80s). It was a pretty cool mass, it's been a while since I saw a mass celebrated by the bishop. Dinner was pretty good. I had a rum and ginger ale, and for dinner I had green beans and beef tenderloin. It was a good way to end a good weekend. Mskate still had some work to do with the baskets, calling people to tell them "you need to pick up your basket," and one lady thought it was a scam since our area code is from our hometown and not where we live, but that's just kind of her story. Well this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Christmas and New Years 2017 Craziness

Hey everyone. Here's a blog I meant to get out earlier, but I've been so busy I just didn't have the time. First and foremost, I moved. Yeah, moved out of my parents house to my own place. I'm now much closer to work, and I'm kind of wondering what I might do with the extra 2 hours I have every day. Basically every moment I wasn't doing a Christmas activity, I was packing my stuff and making runs to my new place. I'm still unpacking, but every day I get closer to "fully moved in." Now on to the fun stuff. And for future reference, whenever I say "kid(s)," I'm referring to someone that is not in my parent's generation; (s)he is not necessarily under 18.

First, the Christmas party with my mom's college friends. Oh it was fun seeing them again. One thing you need to know, one of the "kids" is an army vet. I made a couple of tasteful army jokes, such as asking him if they ever sing the Mickey Mouse theme song on patrol. To play along, he shushed me and said "that's a secret." Then there's the thing that my local hospital does. Every night in December, members of the community go outside the children's ward and shine flashlights up to their window and they shine them back. It's a nice little thing we do to show the hospitalized kids that have to be away from family and friends during the time of year. We were running a little late to get over there, so we jogged over. While we were jogging I chanted "one-two-three-four" in my best drill sergeant impression to my vet friend. He just turned to me and snarked "shuuuud-up." We made some kids happy, even though it was really cold. At the end of the night we always get all the "kids" on the couch and take a picture. We've gotten big over the years, and every year it gets more fun cramming onto the couch.

Now it's Christmas Eve. Every year we exchange gifts with my mom's side of the family on Christmas Eve. It started as a way for our grandparents to give my brother, cousin, and I our gifts from them and with my mom's side of the family. Us kids used to go to the McDonalds that's right by their house so Santa could set-up, and it's still tradition to do it. Though, with it being so cold this year and my grandparents not getting any younger, we just brought the McDonalds in. It was a fun little time. After spending the day with them, we went to church and had Christmas Eve mass. My brother and I drove my grandparents to church and the roads were REALLY bad. I was almost in an accident. After mass we took my grandparents to the Irish restaurant they like to go to on Christmas Eve. While they went to dinner, I went to a little Christmas party held by some old church friends. I haven't seen them in like 8 years. While I was never really close with the kids, it was fun seeing how much everyone has changed since then. While I was just getting comfortable to visit, my grandparents called and said they needed my brother and I to pick them up. While the roads were bad, I gotta say, I love driving at night in the snow with my car all warm. There's just something about "man concurring nature" that makes me feel so alive. That was Christmas Eve.

Now it's Christmas Day. My family exchanged gifts. Get a kick out of the thoughtful gifts I got my family. I got Dad a string of exterior solar power LED lights, Mom a box of dry erase expo markers, and my brother an LED pocket flashlight. Now you might be thinking "those aren't thoughtful, those sound lazy," but no; Dad loves exterior accent lights, Mom loves writing things on her white board, and my brother loves pocket flashlights. Now, because I was in the process of moving, I got a bunch of home appliances, like a George Foreman grill, fry baby, and the piece de resistance, a crockpot. That's a running gag in my family, because when I was in 2nd grade I swear my little brother got a crockpot for Christmas. Of course I'm the only one that believes it and I'm probably remembering events wrong, but it's a fun story. In highschool my parents got themselves a new crockpot, so they wrapped it up and put my name on it one year. Now as a 24 year old, I really did get a crockpot for Christmas. After some hanging out and watching A Christmas Story on TBS (because I needed to atone for A Christmas Story Live), we got ready for hosting Christmas at our house. We had my grandparents, aunt and uncle and cousin, and my grandparents close friends. We visited, had dinner, and did our sing-along, because grandparent's friend plays the accordion and we always have a sing along with polkas and Christmas music. After some family visiting, some close friends from middle school came over for fun. It was great catching up with them. Good fun.

Now for the first day of Kwanza we had Christmas with my dad's side of the family, my grandpa and aunt. There isn't much to talk about, other than we visited. Here's a question, what do you get a 90 year old man? Kind of difficult, but he likes meat, coffee, and is great grandkids (oldest cousin's kids). So, we got him steaks, 5 pound bags of Dunkin Donuts coffee, and a photo mug with pictures of his 2 great grandsons. He really liked them. We gave my aunt the same photo mug, and she really liked it.

Now I'm not quite sure what day this happened on, but we had the get together with my mom's best friend since elementary school and her kids. We grew up together, and it was really fun seeing them. I don't have a lot to really talk about with this one, but I remember it being fun. There was also another day where I got together with Mskate. We hung out at my new condo and watched Treasure Planet. I suggested we watch Muppets Treasure Island but she wasn't too interested, but didn't know what Treasure Island was. I said "well, you know Disney's Treasure Planet, it's like that." She said she never saw Treasure Planet, but she loves the soundtrack. I said "OK, we're watching Treasure Planet." She enjoyed it, and she really did and wasn't just trying to be polite (because she does that every now and then). It was fun.

Now for New Years. It was hosted by one of our camping friends with most of the camping friends. We've been doing it for years, on and off. It was quite fun ringing in the new year with them. What was quite fun is one of the "kids" works for the same company I work for, so we had fun exchanging some war stories. All the "adults" enjoyed hearing about how I bought a condo. A fun thing was the hosts were sitting a hedgehog, named Quilium. It's been a while since I saw a hedgehog in person, and it was seeing another friendly small mammal. The hosts have some younger kids that were the primary caretakers, but like kids do they let the hedgehog go under the couch, so getting him out was fun. We also ended up playing XBOX after a while, and I said "man if I knew you had an XBOX I'd have brought my controller," (they only had 2 controllers). A funny thing was 2 of the host kids were arguing and another host kid said "you 2 need to behave better infront of guests," to which one replied "they aren't guests," and I added "at this point we're all family," and then one of the other "kids" said "for years I thought we were all cousins." We also played ping-pong, and they didn't have a ball for a good 10 minutes. Lucky for them, I carry around official bear pong balls with me wherever I go, for situations like this (I don't play beer pong, but I got them free at college). Around 11 PM, one of the "kids" (who was 26, just not in the parent's generation) wanted to make an alcohol run. We almost did, but through a combination of tired, rural area without a close liquor store, and really cold temperatures made us decide "we'll just wait until we go camping in the summer and can walk to the liquor store that's right off the campground." We watched the ball drop and everyone hugged each other "Happy New Year." About 30 minutes afterwards we left. I drove home because Dad was tired and Mom doesn't do directions. The roads were pretty clear. I guess all the "12:01 partiers were home" and the "up till 3 are still partying."

Overall fun time. New Years Day was pretty slow. I spent the night at my new place and went to work the next day. Overall, it was a fun time. But I'm quite glad it's over since my days were constantly getting ready for new parties. Well, this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.