Pokematic's New Years 2025 and some other things (and a small Year Review)

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.

Thanksgiving and Black Friday 2021 (and a bachelor weekend)

 Hey everyone, it's that time of year again, the time when I give thanks for all that's great and fight some people for $10 off a microwave, Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Before I get into things, I just want to say taking a month off was not intentional; it was just my first anniversary around the 1st weekend and we celebrated by going to Disney World, so there was a lot of planning and prep that went into that, and then I had to recover from that the next weekend, and then it's Thanksgiving, and then mskate went to see her aunt so there was work with that, and work is a little crazy so when I get home I'm tired, and it's just been crazy. Now that I have some time to myself I figured now would be a good time to get back to things.

OK, so it's the second Thanksgiving as a married man, and we've basically agreed that mskate's side gets Christmas and we stay with her parents for overnights, and my side gets everything else. This is because the only holiday they get really into is Christmas and mskate's parents kept her room a bedroom, whereas my parents get into every holiday and my dad turned my old room into his home office. We had 3 days of festivities planned so we packed for 2 nights. We left shortly after waking up and got to our parents around mid-morning. We unpacked and did "Thanksgiving Ornament Presents" with her parents. When I say mskate's family is into Christmas, I mean they would be "our lawn and house is covered in decorations" people "if it wasn't so gaudy," and as such her dad bought us a bunch of ornaments and wrapped them up for us. His logic for giving them to us on Thanksgiving is "if I'm going to give you Christmas decorations, I'm not going to give it to you after the decorations are no longer needed, this way you can keep them out for the season." That's actually some pretty sound logic. We got some cool Disney Hallmark ornaments, and some Christmas Lego sets and crystal decorations (like the REALLY fancy kind, but her dad got them used for a good deal). After presents mskate and I made brussels sprouts for our contribution to Thanksgiving dinner. It's not a very complicated recipie, just sprouts cut in half with olive oil and garlic salt.

Anyway, food is cooked, now it's time to head to my parents. We were the 2nd to arrive I think, and it was just visiting. Not soon after that pepperbc and her family arrived and then my grandma got there, and then grandma's friends got there. A lot of visiting, talking about the different things we're working on. It was fun time. I had a bunch of hors d'oeuvre before dinner for lunch time, and got a paper for us to look at circulars for black Friday. It was a little difficult since they didn't have a lot of ads due to the supply chain shortage, but the website was up to date and got a lot of information from them. My family went through them and found some things for everyone (details later). Around 4PM we had dinner. I had ham, green beans, brussels sprouts, and rolls. Everyone else had turkey and stuffing with all that good stuff. We had no brussels sprouts left so that's a good sign that everyone liked them, yay.

OK, dinner's over, now it's time for the accordion, because that's part of our traditions. We sang some polkas, Christmas songs, and Small World for mskate. We had a lot of fun. After the accordion we had deserts; home made chocolate cake, chocolate pudding pie, apple crisp, and some other things. Since we had 3 people celebrating birthdays around this time we sang happy birthday and had some birthday candles in the cake. Really fun time. We did some more visiting, and then it was time to go. Mskate and I returned to her parents house and got some sleep for IRA and I to go black Friday Shopping.

OK, it's 5AM. I get up, grab some pop tarts, and tell IRA "get up, time to go shopping." The first store we went to was Best Buy. We got there before the store opened and had to wait in line. We were both cold but it was managable. The main thing I wanted there was an outdoor antenna that I can use for now while we're living in the condo and then get it installed when we move to a permanent house. I got it and IRA bought some DVDs and BluRays. Our next stop was Walmart. I wanted to get sonic colors ultimate on an 8th generation console (because I hate the wii) and jedi fallen order, and I was going to get a $20 roku at ABC Warehouse for my aunt but they had a $15 roku at Walmart so I got it there. IRA got some more DVDs. Our next stop was Macy's where we got a Minnie Mouse stuffed animal for mskate and slippers for my mom. IRA enjoyed the adventure even though he didn't get anything there. Our next stop was Meijer where we were going to get a Disney welcome mat and dog toys, but the dog toys were all made in China and the dogs we were buying for only have toys made in America (or at least, not China), but we were able to find pop sockets at Meijer and wouldn't have to get them at another store. Finding the welcome mats were difficult because I was looking for them in the seasonal section since they are seasonal mats (Micky wishing Merry Christmas kind of things) and the stock person saying "it's somewhere in seasonal," but they were actually standing alone in the outdoor section. Lucky for me IRA was there because he found them. Now it's time for the big one, Target. We went to the target that was close to Meijer and had to stand outside for this one. The employee was funny, he was walking around with a baby Yoda strapped to his chest counting people and then said "OK, now we're not going to shove or fight, and we're going to have a good time, otherwise baby Yoda is going to have some problems." This is the picture I got of him.

There weren't any problems. IRA bought some Super Smash Bros Ultimate DLC packages and I bought $100 worth of apple gift cards to get a $15 target gift card. The cashier didn't understand how the DLC receipt worked and she thought it was something for the store. I stopped her and explained what it was, and how that was IRA's. Good thing I was there. After this Target we went to another Target that was close to best buy and here IRA found some DVDs and I got Skinny Pop popcorn for mskate. Technically it was for our parents and my grandma to have at their houses for mskate since her allergies make snacks a little difficult to have on hand for her, and Skinny Pop is something she can eat. I was looking for 5 feet apart since mskate loves that movie but doesn't have it yet and it was on sale, but this target didn't have it in stock. It was getting to 8AM normal morning time, so we had maybe 1 store left. I had some things to look for at Menards (well just the hope of dog toys), but it was too far away. However, on our way there we found another Target that I forget about and this one had 5 Feet Apart. IRA bought it with some other movies (because the deal was buy 2 get 1 free), and he's going to give it to mskate for Christmas. IRA and I probably could have gone longer but mskate wanted us home for breakfast and shopping show and tell. IRA and I showed off all our finds, and it was fun.

OK, now it's time for 2nd Thanksgiving, this time with my grandpa and aunt. We all drove up together (or maybe we drove separately, I don't remember) and it was good. We arrived around mid-morning and it was a good little visit. We told grandpa about our trip to Disney and gave him the souvenir smashed penny we got him. He really likes Jiminy Cricket, and with it being the 50th birthday of Disney World they had Jiminy Cricket pennies.

He didn't want anything special (he's 95 years old and doesn't want any more possessions), but it's a $1 token gift of his favorite Disney character that I also got as a souvenir so he liked it. I gave my aunt the roku but she didn't know what TV she wanted it installed on so we'll install it another time. For lunch-dinner we had left overs from the day before. It was a fun little visit.

Afterwards we went back to mskate's parents house and visited with them for the evening. We also went to see Encanto, the latest Disney animated movie. I really enjoyed it, a lot of fun music and it strayed from "the animated movie" trope of "buddy roadtrip film." IRA didn't really care for it because there wasn't a grand adventure like so many other animated films of recent years, but I really enjoyed that aspect of it, and mskate was kind of in the middle. Mskate and I had a cuddle couch and IRA sat behind us. We spent the night again, and then in the morning mskate and I went back to our house. The rest of the weekend was pretty tame, just our normal weekend stuff and finding some things on cyber Monday, and planning for mskate's trip to see her Aunt the following weekend.

OK, on Wednesday morning I took mskate to the airport and Thursday and Friday were pretty basic, only special thing was I made a lego gingerbread house for our Christmas display.. Mskate suggested I go see a movie because I don't do that very often anymore now that we're married (because our tastes in movies only really overlap with Disney films), but I realized "actually, this is my opportunity to eat at restaurants we normally can't eat at because of mskate's allergies, I'm going to eat at restaurants that have a bunch of gluten and dairy." On Friday I walked to the takeout pizza and subs place that's a block away from our house and got a side of cheesy garlic bread to go with the pork roast I made. The city did a small firework show in memory of the school shooting that happened earlier in the week, and I happened to catch it as I was walking to get my garlic bread. That was a good way to start the weekend. I also watched 2019's Joker and ate pop-secret buttered popcorn, 2 things I don't really do with mskate around (she can't eat the buttered popcorn, and doesn't like movies like Joker). On Saturday I had a personal pizza from Pizza Hut for lunch and Chinese food from the Chinese takeout restaurant that's also a block away for dinner (mskate isn't confident there wouldn't be cross contamination from there). Sunday was really fun. I went to my parents house to do Christmas chocolate dipping with my family and get pizza from our favorite pizza place (more gluten and dairy). It was just a fun half afternoon. I also did some straightening up for mskate's return this Sunday night. It was a fun weekend. I was going to film a food review, but I got busy with a bunch of things so I ended up not. It's been a crazy busy month. Hopefully December has more opportunity to do content. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.