Wednesday, December 31, 2014

A Pokematic 2014 Christmas

Hey everyone, it's that time of the year again, the time when I talk about the fun times I had during Christmas. At the time of writing, the festivities are still going on. We have little Christmas gatherings with friends and family up until new years. So I'll talk about what's happened while it's still fresh, and then fill you in about the end at the end of the blog, but you'll only read the end of it. Time is funny.

So lets start out with the 23rd of December. Nothing major happened, except all my European friends wishing me a Merry Christmas because they celebrate on the 23rd. Now for the real start, the 24th Christmas Eve. With my grandparents on my mom's side, we exchange gifts either Christmas Eve or the day after because it probably worked best when we were little. Anyways, it was fun. We met them at their local McDonalds, because that's what we've been doing since we were little. When we were little, typically one of my parents and either my aunt or uncle would take my brother, cousin, and I to the McDonalds while Santa delivered the presents. Now we all just meet there beforehand and eat lunch because tradition. After lunch, we went over to their house and opened presents. I got Justice League-Flashpoint Paradox, The Fast and the Furious/2 Fast 2 Furious, The Dark Knight Rises, The Three Stooges: The Movie,Looney Tunes Academy Awards Animation Collection, a Weather key chain, and some lottery tickets. I lost, but my brother won. In fact all the lottery tickets I got I lost, and my brother won about half of them. That's my luck. The best thing though is my grandpa's gift. A while back he lost his wedding ring. This year my grandma saved up and bought him one. So instead of just wrapping it and giving it to him, we did "nesting doll" boxes, where open one box, there's another box, and in that is another box, etc. Since it was his 80th birthday (he was born on Christmas so he shares a birthday with Jesus), we did 8 boxes with a little story from each decade of his life. Fist box was a penny with a slip that told him about going to buy penny candy when he was little. The second box was a story he told us from when he was in college. When it got to him having kids we gave him a little bag of coffee, because "you'll need this." When it was the part about getting grand kids, there was a slip that said "I hope you still have some of that coffee." And little things like that. Just fun. Once he opened the ring though, oh he was speechless. He really liked it. After their house we went to Christmas Eve mass.

Here's a little story, after mass we went to buy sweet potatoes. At the Christmas party on Christmas (you'll read about it in a moment), our family was responsible for bringing a sweet potato casserole or something. Well we didn't have sweet potatoes. We went to Kroger to see if they were open. They closed at 5:30 and it was 5:50. We go home and eat our Chinese food, because that's what people order out when it's Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. They're the only places open. After dinner I call Meijer and see what their hours are. They're open till 7 on Christmas Eve, and it was 6:40. Meijer is about 15 minutes away. Mom and I get in the car and book it to Meijer. We get to Meijer at 6:50. I jump out and rush to produce. This place is packed. We weren't the only people that needed last minute stuff. We needed 4 sweet potatoes. I get 4 and get in line. Mom finds me and looks at what I got. She said I should get another just in case. I weave in and out of people to get back to produce. I come back with a potato in hand. She says "maybe just one more." I weave in and out again to the produce grab another sweet potato, and football carry it back to the line. That was it. We check out and we were done. A while later, at like 10PM, I watched A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas, a review of which you can read here.

Well it's now Christmas Day. I walk down to the living room and see my parents on the couch waiting. We wait for my brother. When he gets up, we open gifts. Here's what I got.
I got The Legend of Korra - Book Two: Spirits, The Heat, Godzilla, some wine, beef jerky, peanut M&M's, peanuts, and peanut butter pretzels. And some money.

After that, we enjoy our gifts, watch 24 hours of A Christmas Story, and call family that we won't see that year. After a while, we went to a family friend's house for Christmas dinner. It was nice seeing them. PepperBC and her family also came, so that was fun to see them again and catch up. We had turkey and ham for dinner, along with some fixings. After dinner we had cake, and it was a big cake with a lot of frosting. So much that anyone that handled the cake, even if they were careful, got frosting fingers. This was a birthday cake for my grandpa. After birthday celebrations, we did the sing along because this is the friend with the accordion and my grandma read this story about a clockmaker. It's another tradition. During the sing along, my brother brought out his clarinet as part of a birthday surprise because my grandpa loves listening to him play. Mom asked where he was. Using air quotes that my grandpa couldn't see but she could, I said "he's in the bathroom." She didn't get it so I did it again. She didn't catch on until after he came out. It was fun.

So after Christmas, we went to see my other grandparents. We visited, had giant sandwiches, and enjoyed each other. We exchanged a couple of gifts. I got a new safety vest. On my way up and back, I watched The Legend of Korra - Book Two: Spirits. The following day we went to see my aunt. She needed us to put cable in her sewing room. We also visited. After the visit, we went to a Christmas party with my mom's old college friends. We ended up playing Halo: The Master Chief Collection. Well, that was until the Halo 5 beta downloaded. Then we played Halo 5 Beta. We had pizza for dinner. This is kind of funny. We had a coupon for 4 pizzas for like $30, so we were going to use that and get like 2 other more specialty pizzas, one gluten free and another I don't remember. Well we did the ordering online, and the coupon ended up saying we had to order 2 pizzas and get like 4 free, or something. We ended up getting 8 pizzas. When we went to get pizzas, and after getting them, we had the idea that we should go to the strip club and make it rain with pizza. We didn't but it was a fun joke.

So we're reaching the end of the fun. The last party was on the 30th. We got together with mom's oldest friend and her family. Her kids and their girlfriends came. We were kind of wondering what we should do. I went to the nerd cave and brought up my N64 along with OG Mario Party and OG Super Smash Bros. We played Mario Party first, and then Super Smash Bros. That was fun. We didn't do a whole lot else. Well that was my Christmas 2014 experience. Lots of fun. Well this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Sunday, November 30, 2014

Black Friday, 2014

Ahh it’s that time again, Black Friday. So how was this year? Well, it wasn’t quite as fun as last year. Before I go into Black Friday, I’ll talk about Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was fun. I saw my family on my mom’s side for the big day and my family on my dad’s side the following Friday. It was fun. I saw PepperBC. I had ham because I don’t like turkey. It was all around fun.

Now for Black Friday. Things weren’t as interesting this year. I looked at all the ads and only found a couple of things I wanted. From Meijer I was looking at DeadPool the game. From Target I was looking at Sixteen Candles for $1. At Walmart I was looking at Mario Kart 8, Scarface, the New Godzilla, and The Amazing Spider-Man 2. At Best Buy I was looking at The Big Bang Theory Season 7, That '70s Show: The Complete Series, The Princess Bride, and Spaceballs. Interestingly enough, I didn’t really find anything I was looking for, but I found other stuff.

To start out, my brother and I went to Walmart around 8PM. Unfortunately for us they had all their door busters already so we missed out on practically everything. I did however find a Fast and Furious Double Feature; The Fast and the Furious and 2 Fast 2 Furious for like $4, which is kind of funny since they were being sold separately for the same price. We looked around some more. My brother found some headphones and we picked up a dirt devil that my mom wanted.

Next came Target. Unfortunately I was unable to find 16 candles. However, I did find The Heat and Godzilla. Here’s a little story with Godzilla. The sign said $10, but the system thought it was $27. I see the register and it said $41 total (my brother was getting a DVD and we just put it all together). I ask the cashier what it was and he said Godzilla. I told him that it said $10, so he went and talked to some manager person. I got it for $10. It said $10. After checking out, we picked up Z-man. Remember him from last year? If you don’t, he’s a friend. We picked him up and then went to Best Buy.

At Best Buy, more of the same. However, I did manage to find Spaceballs. I already have it on VHS, but since our only VCR is currently connected to the capture card for my video converting thing, and since I want more out of my viewing experience, I want the blu-ray. Unfortunately, didn’t find 70’s show, big bang theory, or princess bride. Looks like I’ll just have to live with the VHS of princess bride for a while. However, we did end up finding Firefly: The Complete Series and something else that escapes me at the moment. Oh well. Z-man ended up finding an iHome speaker set. He needs it since his current set of speakers is completely messed up.

Now there are some stories that go along with this best buy experience. We’re waiting in line, and there’s a register that can only take cash. The lady asks if there’s anyone paying with cash, and I raise my hand because I am. We’re next because of the cash but we aren’t at the front of the line. This guy in front of us says he’s with us and goes to the cash only register. He then tries to pay with credit and then gets sent back into line. Buddy, it’s not our fault you didn’t bring cash. Then after we exit, Z-man drops his respite. Like a Black Friday lunatic, I chase after it, through the parking lot, and catch it right as it’s about to blow into the street. Yeah.

After that we were done. I didn’t bother Meijer because I could live without Deadpool the game for a while. This year wasn’t quite as fun. There wasn’t the mad rush to open the door busters, there wasn’t the line outside of best buy, there wasn’t that much cool stuff I wanted this year. I’m sure the door buster rush and line outside best buy happened, it just happened to early. Stores, please, STOP STARTING BLACK FRIDAY EARLY IN THANKSGIVING!!!!! I like it when it’s “doors open at midnight” and “door busters at 2AM” and all that good stuff. None of this “door busters at 6PM” crap. Sigh. Oh well. Another bummer was mbinski wasn’t able to join us this year. That was a bummer. Oh well. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

A Week Long Moving Trip

Hey everyone, well it's time for a story about one of my adventures. This time, I went on an adventure with my brother and dad to move my brother back into college. He goes to college on the farthest side of the state, 12 hours 1-way. For this reason, when he is moved in or moved out, whoever goes takes a bit of a vacation and see the sites on the way there. Last year all of us went to move him in, and then it was just my parents that went to move him out. This year, it was the guys that went.

First we started with leaving at 8AM Saturday morning. We packed the rental car the night before and all that was left was a couple of last minute things, like my travel bag.

We drove for 4 and a half hours and took about an hour lunch break. We had Burger King. After eating, we went to a local outdoor and sporting goods store that was right there, because Dad needed more of a break than the 20 minutes it took for us to eat and we just wanted to check it out. It was a pretty nice outdoor and sporting goods store. They had a lot of camping and hunting stuff. I'm not a big fan of camping and outdoor sports, but I appreciate a nice boom stick and accessories. We enjoyed looking around and just gazing at the fire arms.

One point of mention is the convenience store/gas station we stopped at out in nowhere. We just had to use the bathroom, get gas, and maybe some snacks. My brother and I both got a party bag of chips for snacking on the way there. Well the place was selling live bait, and not some little tubs of worms that are stored in a refrigerator, I mean minnows. They had this big tank in the back with nets to scoop out your minnows. As a city boy, this was a little different for me. Here's a picture.

After 3 more hours of driving, we got to our motel. As a small motel out in the middle of nowhere, it had a lot of character. Check out the pictures.

The room was quite small, like 12 foot by 12 foot. The bathroom was also really small.
Like there was only 3 inches of clearance between the ceiling and my head. Check it out

For dinner, we went out to this restaurant called "The Dog Patch." Apparently it's based off an old comic strip that I've never heard of. It was recommend to us by my uncle. Unlike the motel, this place had theme. Everything was hillbilly themed, because that's what it was like in the comic apparently. The menu was quite hard to read. I had to go over it like 4 times just to figure out what the hell it was trying to say. It was quite confusing. I eventually decided to get a burger I think. It was called something really crazy, like "Ma Strader's famous budiddle." I get that it's theme and what not, but when your customer has to read the menu 4 times to figure out what is being said and you have to send the waitress away not "because you need more time to figure out what you want," but "because you are still trying to figure out what the menu is saying," that's a little much. It was still pretty good.

The place we were staying was once an iron mining town, with a lot of water falls. We went to a small iron mining museum that is run by the DNR. It was pretty cool. Unfortunately we didn't take any pictures. Since my family has a little back yard forge and do some occasional blacksmithing stuff, I enjoyed it. After the museum, we went to some water falls and a cove. After seeing Niagara Falls, all other falls are a little lack luster, but it was still cool to see them. The cove as also really cool. The look out point was like 200 feet above the water. We looked at the water and saw a little cave at the base. We made jokes about going caving. It was low tide, and if it was high tide you couldn't see it because it would be under water. If you went caving without scuba gear, you'd likely die. Here are some pictures.

I threw a rock off the look out point, I lost track of it because it was such a drop.

After doing some exploring, we went to a small grocery store and bought bread, pop tarts, mountain dew, beer, and wine. We called it "the breakfast of champions." When we got back to the motel, we just hung out and watched 60s Batman with Adam West, and then some every Simpsons ever on FXX. That was fun to find.

After that night, we packed up and left around 8 again. We traveled for about 2 hours before we met up with my aunt, uncle, and PepperBC while they were moving PepperBC in at her college. My brother and PepperBC don't go to the same college, but they are about 20 minutes apart from each other. We helped get my aunt and uncle out of their motel room. Their motel had some good character as well. They had a nice lake view and a deck that over looked the lake. After helping them check out, we went out to late breakfast (lunch basically) with them. It was a nice little diner restaurant. I had pancakes. After late breakfast, we said our goodbyes and continued our journey up to my brother's college.

After a couple more hours of driving, we got to the hotel and began to check in. After taking a breather at the hotel (watching Simpsons and surfing the web), we went out to some sites that my dad used to go to as a kid and an old copper mine. The copper mine was really cool. We go into the gift shop and ticket purchase and what I notice first is that the lady running the register is holding a skunk and petting it like a cat. She had another one running around behind the register. My brother said "that's a cool ferret," and she said "oh he's not a ferret, he's a skunk. They're like cats but more social." According to her they make good pets. We had to watch a safety video and a video about a dive exploration that looked into the tunnels of the mine that are under water.

This mine was really cool. We had to walk down 100 steps into the mine and looked at all the cool things. We had to wear hard hats because parts of the mine ceiling would erode and fall onto the people. Nothing big, just the small rocks you would find on the path. At least that's my assumption, because if there was anything significant like a cave in, you'd be dead. They had signs that pointed out some things that were used in the mine. One thing they pointed out was a vein of copper. At one point in the mine, they had it lit with the same amount of light that the miners had. It wasn't easy to see a lot of things with the low light, but a cool experience. Then my brother had his flash light so we would use that to see things better if we wanted to. Really cool place. I didn't get a ton of pictures because it was bad picture conditions and all we had was a point and shoot, but I did get some



After the mine, we saw some ruins of the old mining establishment. It's quite amazing to see all that nature took back. It's only like 100 years old. I got some really good pictures of that.






That was the end of the mine trip.

After the mine, we went to check out the places my dad went as a kid. We went to the top of a mountain, or like the highest place in that part of the state. It was so windy. They had a big hanging sign that I'm guessing weighed like 100 or more pounds, and it was blowing in the wind. Dad and I made sure we took off our hats because they would surely blow off. My vest almost blew off. I was ready to fly off with my cape like in Super Mario World. After the mountain, we went to the end of a major high way that goes from one end of the United States to the other. That was pretty cool. We got a picture with it. After that, we drove around some more to see nature and stuff.


After seeing nature, we hit up a gas station. We were almost out of gas. Dad saw the tank before we left and thought it would be enough for us to get up the mountain and back down. Well it was barely enough. I have a feeling he was just riding gravity at some points of the way down. I bet he was also expecting to hit a gas station while we were heading back, but we just hit a whole lot of nothing. We were like 1/16th full when we found a gas station. Crazy. After getting some gas we went to dinner at Applebees's. When the waitress asked if we wanted anything to drink, Dad said "oh yeah, get me a beer." Not much else happened that night. We just hung out and watched more Simpsons.

Well it's day 3. This day is when we moved my brother into his dorm. We woke up at 8AM and had free hotel breakfast. We went over to his dorm and started moving his things in. Well, actually we pull into the parking lot and all his friends come out to help him move in. They start saying "hey [VikingPollock], how have you been, give us stuff to steal..I mean help move in." Yeah fun stuff. It took us like 2 hours to move in. Everything got up in 2 trips, and then unloading was really easy without "mom help."

After moving in, we made a trip to Wal-Mart because my brother forgot some things. One of his friends decided to tag along. I looked for my cargo jeans, but they didn't have them. I did find a couple of PS2 games, and you can read the full story at Bitlanders, because if I went into detail on that, this blog would be significantly longer. After Wal-Mart, we went to lunch with all my brother's friends. His friends have many similar traits to my friends. I know people just like his friends.

After lunch we kind of went our separate ways, brother with his friends and Dad and I out to explore. We looked around some places to see if we could find a place for my brother and his friends to go camping, because they like to do that. We found a lot of private property no trespassing. We also found a whole lot of nothing. We went down this one road and there were literally no buildings off the road for 16 miles. And I mean real "literally," not teen white girl "literally." We saw a couple of unmarked streets which we assume to be drive ways to some far back house, but nothing. We eventually found this city called "Gay." That's right, the city was called "Gay." There was a bar called "Gay Bar in Gay." We have a picture of it.
That bar was kind of the only thing there. They didn't even have a general store from what we saw.

After leaving Gay, we decided to see if we could get some lake views, but we just kept getting trees. We went down this one road to see if we could reach a lake view. Dad said "this is either going to dead end or we're gonna get some lake." Well we stumbled upon a coast guard station. There was a big fence with razor wire and a sign that said "Coast Guard. Keep Out. Trespassers will be federally prosecuted." OK we're turning around. We then found some garage/antique sales. I was hoping to maybe find some inventory for ebay or maybe just something for me. Unfortunately not. It was all basement antiques, really old but really common and not worth much. After that we headed back to the hotel.

Close to the hotel, there's this videogame store. They have everything from NES to modern. I looked at the PS2 selection, but everything was retail price. The PS2 is still relatively new enough that people don't consider it retro and I can get them really cheap. Also I'm not at the point where I'm looking at select games, just a bunch of games. It'll be a little while till I have to buy separately. I got 3 N64 games; Army Men Sarge's Heroes, South Park, and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six. If it wasn't for the buy 2 get 1 free promotion, I would have overpaid according to price charting, but price charting doesn't consider shipping so it's about accurate. We went out to dinner with my brother. We had pizza and garlic toast. After dinner we dropped my brother off and said our good buys. We were going to see him the day after, but we knew he was going to be up all night with his friends and we wouldn't see him the next day. It was a nice goodbye. We then went back to the hotel and just hung out.

Well it's day 4, and we found a bag of my brother's dirty clothes in the van before we left, even though we ask him if this was everything before we said our goodbyes. We packed up everything in our hotel room and checked out. We went over to his dorm and I ran the bag up to him and just left it on his door, because it's 8AM and he's not up. After that we left and went on our way back home. We passed a lot of things we saw on our way there. We were going to see some museums that my uncle suggested we see since they were so close to the motel we would be staying in that night.

After many hours of driving, we get to the motel. Like the one from before, this one also had a lot of character. It had 2 rooms, a bathroom, and a kitchennet. What I really enjoyed was that the owners of the hotel had to go out and just left our room open and said "went out, you're in room 1." I have a picture.

Dad took the room that was closest to the bathroom and I took the one that had the TV.

After unloading, we went to the museums. We went to a boat museum. It was pretty cool. Lots of old boats and other nautical things. Just check out the pictures.





The other museum was basically the city historical museum, which is fancy talk for "here's some cool old things from back when the city was founded till now." It was cool to see all the old stuff, but nothing super impressive.






After the museums, we explored the town. They didn't have much of anything. We did find an endangered species. I got my picture with it.

Yeah I found a pay phone and phone booth. That was cool. We found a little general store close to the phone booth. We picked up more pop tarts. Other than this phone booth, there wasn't anything to really write a blog about, so that's when we went back to the motel.

Once we were back at the motel, we officially checked in. The people that ran the motel lived above the main office and were in the back in their garage. The dog ran over and greeted us. We just hung out for a couple hours, watching storage wars for a couple hours (they didn't have FXX so no Simpsons) and me checking the internet. Unfortunately for me, there was only 1 outlet that was 3 prong. There were plenty of other outlets, but they were all 2 prong and my laptop charger is 3 prong. Surprisingly the air conditioner used a 2 prong, and all the air conditioners I know use 3 prong.

We went to dinner after a couple hours of storage wars. We went to this little family owned restaurant. Apparently it was a "please seat yourself" place, but we didn't see any sign that said "please seat yourself," so we assumed it was a "please wait to be seated" place. We're standing by the front door and waiting to be seated. Then one of the local customers tells us that it's a "please seat yourself" place. We sat ourselves and ordered our food. We both had the french dip, roast beef and mozzarella cheese on a sub bun with au jus dipping sauce. We shared a side of french fries just for some more food. After eating we headed back to the motel.

But before we went to the motel, we went to a gas station so dad could get a caffeinated coke for the morning. We went in and they had coffee, so we didn't need the coke. I looked around a little bit, because as with every gas station I go to in the middle of nowhere, there's always more to the gas station than just gas and a slightly smaller 7-Eleven convenience store. This one was a pretty big convenience store, gift shop, and video and game rental. I checked to see if there were some sales on videogames or movies. Unfortunately not, but they had VHS tapes for sale, which I thought was funny.

After the gas station, we headed back to the motel. We watched some Big Bang Theory and Storage Wars. We wanted to get back home at a reasonable hour so we decided to leave as soon as we woke up. Dad went to sleep around 9PM, and I was thinking about going to bed around that time as well, but then I decided to stay up a little later and watch some youtube videos. I fell asleep watching youtube videos around 10. When I saw all the lights were still on, I thought it was morning. Then I looked at the clock and saw it was 1AM. I passed out on my bed.

I woke up around 7AM and we left soon after that. I told Dad about passing out watching youtube. We drove home and made great time. That pretty much sums up the trip. 5 days, 1500 miles. If you'd like to see the pictures I wasn't able to include in this blog, check out the myspace album. Well this has been Pokematic signing off and bu-bye.