Men's Gymnastics, UofM vs Iowa University, and the Super Bowl

Hey everyone, more University of Michigan Men's Gymnastics adventures coming in. For those who don't know, mskate enjoys gymnastics and we can get to Ann Arbor without too much difficulty, so we go to the gymnastics meets regularly. Normally we go to Crazy Jim's Blimpy Burger before the meet, but this time we wanted to try someplace different that we saw driving to the arena, Cat Pizza Max. It had a cool exterior, lots of neon and pastels, looked like it would be fun and maybe have some arcade machines. Well we got there and the atmosphere left a lot to be desired, it was kind of small and didn't have any arcade stuff, more like a bar than a pizzeria. In the basement they had a dance floor and some boardgames and a NES classic on a TV, but not to appealing, and the bathrooms weren't exactly cleaned after last night (mskate said the lady's room was covered in trash from the previous night, and the men's room wasn't terrible but the garbage can wasn't in the garbage can location so I had to put my paper towel in the garbage in the can outside). The pizza on the other hand was pretty good. Their thing is "unique pizzas," like "bad breath" pizza which was heavy on onions and garlic and some other things, and "no THC" pizza which was a hemp crust with other hemp based foods. We got Carolina Brisket (brisket, Carolina barbecue sauce, and a cheddar cheese blend) on a gluten free crust, and it was a very good and unique flavor, something I might want to try to make myself. There was another variant with sweet sauce instead of tangy sauce, in case Carolina mustard based BBQ isn't your thing. The menu was also in a trapper keeper, and a real Trapper Keeper brand trapper keeper. They also had a nice cocktail menu that looked good, but it was a bit too early for alcohol. We ended up using just about the exact time purchased for our parking meter (1-2 minutes left), which felt great.

We got to the arena about an hour before the meet started, which ended up being the right choice because it was super busy today for some reason. We were able to get our usual seats front row right in front of the floor routine mat. This time the give away was light up bracelets which were really cool. They were all pre-set to turn on at blue, but they could be cycled to different colors and 3 different strobing effects. I set mine to soft transition. This became really cool at the opening when they turned the lights off. We watched the warm-up and it was good, saw a lot of people fall and tumble, but that's what you do during warm-up. There ended up being a problem with the floor routine floor, because the coaches had to keep straightening the seams. I don't have a ton of things to comment on for the competition, but I do have a bunch of photos I took of different events, and some of the team celebrating their teammate. When Paul and Fred finished an event the team would chant "he's an Olympian."

[insert photos]

Here's a photo of the coaches fixing the floor.

Now for some fun stuff. First off, the national anthem was sung by a little girl, maybe 8 or 9 years old, and she was wearing an American Flag dress. She was sitting behind us and mskate said "I bet she's going to sing," and she did and was pretty good even if she didn't sing loudly into the microphone (if she had a microphone). Between events the team throws out shirts to the audience, and last year we each won a yellow shirt. We weren't going to try but then noticed they were giving out blue shirts which inspired us to try. We didn't win, but I came up with a plan to get attention that I'll say in a moment. After the pommel horse there was a "stand on 1 leg doing the pose" contest for audience members, and I unfortunately wasn't asked to compete. Mskate thinks it was just for students. Too bad because I would have dominated, I once stood on 1 foot for over 30 minutes in a competition between MMT and I (and we probably would have gone longer if my aunt didn't knock MMT over because she was complaining about her foot starting to hurt). This gave me an idea, I'll get the attention of the teammates by doing the pose. Before the final event I went to where the coach was standing and did the pose yelling "t-shirt." They ran out though so I didn't get one, but I did get the attention of the coach and he did a pose with me. 

After the meet we went home, nothing super special afterwards, but I did have my ribs that I had been brining for 24 hours. Now it's Superbowl Sunday. Mskate and I did coffee and donuts at church, something we do every 2nd Sunday of the month. The industrial coffee maker we use is a little broken, and I ended up overflowing the coffee pots. That made quite a mess. I let our maintenance guy know and he's going to look into getting it fixed. After mass mskate and I went to meijer to get special take and bake cookies for her allergies for superbowl snacks, but they didn't have them and we were disappointed. As for the game, it was football, a pretty crazy blow out with the teal team. The half time show was not that good; not a fan of mumble rap. As for the commercials, they were hit and miss. I liked the Lays commercial, Michelobe ultra commercial, sketchers commercial, and the Jeep commercial with Harrison Ford was very entertaining ("I like Jeep, even though my name is Ford"). Then there were the crappy AI commercials, the weird dunkin dohnuts commercial, and the hellman's orgasm commercial that's a parody of when Harry Met Sally (makes sense, but tasteless). There were also 2 commercials that went to very different places than expected, there was one where it was "boobs, look at the boobs, we all like boobs, boobs boobs," and then it was Wanda Sykes saying "if you like them get screened for breast cancer," and the other that was all "big pharma bad, it's over priced, designed to make companies richer, this is some kind of commentary on our healthcare system" and then it was for hims/hers mail order pharmacy. There also seemed to be a lot of ads for FOX shows and properties, which more power to them with the largest audience of the year but not a great showing for commercial creativity. Oh well, this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.