Pokematic's 30th Birthday Fun

 Hey everyone, well I turned 30 over the weekend, and my family went pretty far out. Before I get to the fun I want to cover my third life crisis. I grew up in the 90s/00s, and extreme sports were a very big deal and had some interest in skate boarding, but never actually set foot on a skate board. In May I bought a skateboard at a garage sale and bought safety equipment online, and have been practicing it on the paved riding trails by my house. I've been getting decent at it and I'd say I'm at Squid/Sam level (that's a Rocket Power reference).

OK, time for birthday. Since mskate and I were going to see grandpa on my actual birthday on Sunday, all the festivities were going to happen on Saturday. We started by going to a semi-big local restaurant. They are most known for their burgers, but the Cubano sandwich looked really good (pulled pork and ham on Rye). I didn't want the sauces or cheese, so I tried ordering it modified, but unfortunately it was the single sandwich I couldn't modify. I ended up getting a burger with banana peppers and picked jalapenos. It was good, but nothing super special. While we were waiting for our food I opened my presents. My parents gave me some socks, a $50 star bill, nice pennies and quarters for smashed pennies, and Nickelodeon wrapping paper. My grandma gave me a card with money. IRA gave me a grilled cheese maker that puts pokemon shapes on the bread. It'll be fun to try at some point.

After lunch we went to Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum. When it says "museum," it really is. In addition to basic coin op arcade games, there are penny arcade show machines and foreign import games, and loads of interesting things hanging up on the wall and on the ceiling. One thing I don't remember is how macabre so many of the historical machines were. There were like 3 or 4 machines that were just "figures getting executed," and others were it was like "crazy body harm illusion" machines. It wasn't all that though, there were also ones where it's puppets and little shows, which were fun. My favorite were these nickelodeon machines, one that was the Hindenburg Disaster and another about a husband cheating with his French baker. One of my favorite machines was a drum game, very similar to Donkey Konga. There was also this Disney Tetris that wasn't quite like normal Tetris (there were pieces with 5 and 6 squares, while standard Tetris rules are only 4 squares per piece). I'm decent at Tetris, but the 5 pieces really threw me off, and I kept losing. Oh well, just for fun. The only other machine of note was when my brother and I played Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (not Turtles in Time, original arcade game). This is important because when we were little and went to Wheels Inn we played TMNT Turtles in Time all the time because my brother was a major Turtles fan.

After the games we had birthday cookie. It was just sharing the big cookie and sang happy birthday. Around this time mom won a free t-shirt at a coin drop game. IRA wanted to win one but it just wasn't working for him (and winning is very difficult which is why they give away a $15 t-shirt for winning). For the tickets we won I got a key chain for the museum, which was cool. After that we went home. All in all great celebration.

Now it's Sunday, my actual birthday. Since Grandpa had a bad fall mskate and I just stayed around home. Church was pretty neat, because we were asked to take the gifts up at communion. No one had planned that, it just happened that way. God gave me a little birthday fun so that's great. After mass we went out to brunch at a local restaurant. I got a Ruben sandwich and it was quite tasty (mainly because of the sour kraut). When we got home I opened my cards and gifts from mskate. I got a crumble cookie, lemon drop cocktail mixer, a lemon candle, chocolate koala snacks, a lemon ornament, and lemon pickles (notice a theme?). It was very thoughtful and appreciated.

In the afternoon we decided to go minigolfing since we weren't seeing Grandpa and we enjoy minigolf. On our way to the minigolf place we drove by a zap zone entertainment center, and since it looked like rain we decided to go there instead (they had minigolf and it was indoors). We were going to play the minigolf, but it was going to be $9 for 9 holes per person, which was a rip off, so instead we just played arcade games. This one was more modern (the tokens and tickets were all handled on a game card, and all the games were from this century), but it was still a lot of fun. What we enjoyed doing was stretching our credits as far as possible, and we found one game that was really easy to farm tickets on. It was a "press the dog bone plunger to try to toss balls in the dogs mouth," it only cost 40 cents (2 credits), and paid out like 40-60 tickets a game if you were good enough (and we were). There was also this "knock the clown over carnival game" thing that had unlimited throws in a set time, which was great for us because we were able to double team it and always won 40 tickets. We also played Deal or No Deal, and we almost won 200 tickets (that was our case), but the case came down to 15 tickets or 200 tickets, so I took the payout of 105 tickets. Oh well, better than other times. I also utilized my coin pusher skills to win a Grandpa George card on the Willy Wonka coin pusher. I'm just holding onto the card to maybe get a full set and get the big ticket wins, and then if nothing else I have a decoration for my coin pusher. After about an hour and a half I got fried pickles for a snack, and then we spent another half hour to an hour using the rest of our card. Ultimately with all the tickets I ended up getting a Nintendo Surprise Controller Key Chain, and I ended up getting a rare golden gameboy keychain, which was cool.

Overall it was a really great birthday weekend. The only thing I missed out on was tinkering with my Intelivision and recording some lines for Bio, but oh well. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Friends For Life Indianapolis 2022 Adventure

Hey everyone, I went on a trip. This time it was to the Friends For Life regional conference in Indianapolis Indiana. Since mskate is working at the big Orlando conference and they had spare rooms, we were able to go for free, and that's why my mom and aunt were able to join us. Friends For Life is a type 1 diabetes organization through Children with Diabetes and every year they hold 3 different conferences, 2 small regional ones and a big one in Orlando at Disney World. At the conferences they have panels and lectures about navigating type 1 diabetes, and food and fellowship. Mskate goes to them every year and has friends through it and looks forward to seeing them in person every year in Orlando. The regional conferences are much smaller, but 4 of her friends were going to this and it was in this cool train themed hotel that used to be a train station, and it was within driving distance, and was free.

Friday was our driving day. I took the day off work so we could have a good 3 day weekend. Mom met us at our condo around 8AM and after packing her into our van we started on our adventure. Driving to Indiana is nothing new to us (mom's side is from Indiana so we have a lot of stories about driving there), and we filled mskate in on so many of them. Mskate drove first and the first big fun memory was Exit 0 and Play N Trade. Here's the story, one year on our family trip we stopped somewhere outside Indianapolis for the night, and close to the hotel was this videogame store called Play N Trade, and they had old school video games (which was my big thing when I was a teen). The next year I said "we have to go back, I really want to go there," and my mom said "OK, it's on the way so we can do that." This is when mapquest was first a thing and car GPS was a luxury, so I printed out directions on how to get there from my parents house and everything seemed reasonable, except for the direction that said "get off at Exit 0" (as in, "1-1" zero). My mom thought there was a problem and we would get lost, but believed it when I showed her the directions. My grandpa was adamant that there wasn't an exit zero, and would not trust the directions. Then when we followed the directions, there it was, exit zero. He was like "I'll be damned, there really is an exit zero." I went to play n trade, got some games, and had a great time.

Then there's another play n trade story. Now that we know exit zero is a real thing and how to get there, we went there every year for the next few years. One time when we went there the store was closed. On the door was a hand written sign on the door that said "closed for a family emergency, sorry for the inconvenience." That was our "National Lampoon's Vacation Wally World" story (the store wasn't "exactly" on the way, it was a little out of the way, and I build it up every time). Good memories. I got video telling the story, that was fun.

The other stories aren't THAT entertaining outside the family, basically just "remember when we went to Holiday World" type things. If you want family vacation stories, you can read them here, and here, and here, and here. We stopped at a rest stop at about the halfway point where we went to the bathroom and switched drivers. We also got an allergen friendly cookie for mskate off the clearance bin, and mom was surprised with how quick the stop was. It was 8 minutes in and out, and mom said "if I was with grandma we would still be getting out of the car right now." We also filled up on gas. I had to drive because mskate didn't want to drive in the city. But before we went to our hotel, we were picking up one of mskate's friends from the airport, peels. Because it was a Friday of lent I had a can of vegetarian beans to eat, and I was a bit of a sight. At the airport we get into the arrivals line and we switch seats (mskate in driver, me in passenger). I pull out my pocket knife and open up the can leaving the lid a little on and sticking up. I pull the plastic fork I taped to the side off and start eating my beans right out of the can. Just sitting there with a can of baked beans, nom nom. Peels calls mskate and asks where we are. We flag her down and load her in the car. I had to stop eating my beans and get back in the drivers seat.

We drive to the hotel and unload our car. We fill the luggage cart and the women go to check in while I drive to the underground parking structure next to the hotel. Because this was "big city hotel" the parking wasn't free, but everything was within walking distance so we park for the whole weekend. They were waiting for me to return before going up to the room. There were 2 types of rooms, 1 that was in a train car and 1 that was basic. We got the basic rooms, but mskate's other friend J and his parents were in a train car so we got to see it. The room was really cool, we had a great view of the pool and the TVs had lodgenet pay per view (or whatever the current equivalent of lodgenet is, but the remotes are basically the same and that's what it was when I was younger, so I'll just call it "lodgenet"). We didn't order any movies (because they are WAY over priced), and they didn't have videogames so that's no fun, but it's been forever since I've seen lodgenet so I was really happy just to see this relic of hotel entertainment. It's also new movies, not like "the service just wasn't updated and lodgenet forgot it was there," so that's neat.

After unpacking mskate, peels, and I went to Old Spaghetti Factory that was about a block from the hotel. This place had something all of us could eat (me with no meat on Fridays of lent, peels with food allergies, and mskate with both). The fun thing is they have 3 courses and bread. Since mskate and peels can't eat bread because of allergies, I ended up having the entire appetizer loaf to myself, yum. We each had a salad and our plate of pasta dishes. I had a plate of spaghetti and marinara sauce, mskate had a plate of allergy noodles, and peels had salmon. After the meal we all got a little cup of ice cream. However, once again because of allergies, I got all the ice cream. I was REALLY full after that. I also did some exercise because it was nothing but carbs.

Our room was on the 2nd floor and it was close to the Indianapolis sky walk (I'll get to that later), and we were also sort-of close to where the conference was being held, but we didn't know it. Funny story with that, the hotel has 2 conference areas, and there was another conference happening in the other area (I think it had something to do with counseling). We had to go to "Indiana station," and the conference rooms we were finding on the first floor were "New York, Pennsylvania, Chicago," and other landmarks, but no Indiana. We asked around and searched everywhere but couldn't find it. Eventually mskate saw a conference person she knew and asked where it was. Apparently the way to get to it was on the 2nd floor and there wasn't access via the first floor. Go figure. We checked in and got our name tags. This is when mskate introduced me to J and his parents.

We had some time before conference activities started, and since I had so much fun last time exploring the sky walk I did it again this time.

Here's a selfie I took in an attempt to match what I did last time

Mom joined me and we started at our hotel entrance and followed it to the Indianapolis convention center. We walked around the convention center trying to find the rest of the skywalk, and I gotta say, it was eerie. Like, there were employees setting up conferences in various ballrooms, but it wasn't very full and it just kind of felt like we weren't supposed to be there. We were allowed to be there, no one kicked us out and it's part of the skywalk, but it just felt like we were trespassing.

I guess we did do a little "shouldn't have been there," because we found an empty ballroom and went inside and did some dancing. Since my wedding was a covid wedding we didn't REALLY get to have our "spotlight mother son dance," so we danced to imaginary music in an empty ballroom. We eventually found the skywalk and it eventually lead us to the mall. Now this mall was cool. It had 6 stories and was connected to the skywalk from multiple locations. We walked around some and there was this "family fun center" thing that was inflatable bumper car things and those electric riding animals. Not anything spectacular, but kind of cool. We walked to the food court to see where the skywalk continued, and found this atrium ampetheater thing, and after looking at our watch we realized it would probably be smart to turn back. While we were in the food court, I saw something that I thought was impossible, a Chick Fil A without a line.

As we were walking back, I saw something on the floor above us at the top of the escalator. It looked like an arcade, and I had to check it out. It was an arcade, TNT Amusement. I was in heaven. I LOVE arcades, and this had so much cool stuff. There were all sorts of coin pushers, this arcade bowling game where you control the ball through all sorts of crazy alleys, a Luigi's Mansion light gun game (technically not light gun, but that kind of thing), air hockey, crane games, and best of all, Dance Dance Revolution. When I was a teen and young adult the arcade at the mall sort of close to my parents had a DDR machine and I set high scores on probably half the songs on that machine (and was REALLY sad when they shut down). We didn't have time to play because the conference was starting soon, but after the conference events for the day we knew we had to come back.

Here's a picture of me with the mascot of the arcade.

The first event was an introductory talk by the founder. I watched maybe 10 minutes but then my allergies started acting up and I had to leave. I went to the room to get some air and let the allergy pill kick in. I was able to make it back for the last 10 or so minutes, so that was ok. It was time for dinner now. I had some cheese and crackers, and J pointed out how bad the tongs were. As a bit of a buffet expert I had no problem with them, but they were hard to use. I had the rest of my beans for dinner afterwards. There wasn't much for mskate and peels to eat, so after mom and Aunt G ate some food, we went to the mall to get some food for peels and mskate. Oh yeah, Aunt G drove up to join us in the festivities, so that was fun having her along. When mom and I said "the mall was a 30 minute walk," she said "what do you mean, the mall is 2 blocks away." Apparently the skywalk way is really far, but it's just a 2 block walk outside. We all went to the mall and entered from the outside (but we had a hard time finding the entrance). Turns out the mall closes early on Saturday, or every day because of the labor shortage, but the doors stay open because it's part of the skywalk. Mskate and peels weren't able to get food, and I wasn't able to go to the arcade. Mskate, peels, Mom, and Aunt G went to steak and shake to find some food, but I was full and wanted to do more skywalking so I took the skywalk back without them.

The rest of the night was low key. At some point around one of the meals we looked at the exhibit hall booths (but it was more like "exhibit corner" since there were 5 people). There was dexcom, tandem, a health insurance company, omnipod, and this special pajama company with pockets specifically designed for insulin pumps and their tubing. Everyone had swag, and it was really cool. The pjs people were giving away a pair of airpods to one lucky contestant. We got a tin of jelly beans from the tandem people and the tin looked like an insulin pump. Dexcom gave away pens and folding flying discs. I saw one boy having trouble folding it back into the little pouch it came in, so I told him how to fold it and he appreciated it.

OK, Saturday fun time now. Breakfast was good; bacon, potatoes, and bagels for me, and there was fruit, yogurt, and scrambled eggs for those who wanted it. This time the tongs were better, lol. I piled up and was ready for the day. The first talk we went to was one about continuous glucose monitors, and with how it was titled it sounded like it would be "how to feel comfortable sharing your numbers with your loved ones," but it ended up being "this is what a CGM is, it's a device you wear on your body for consecutive days and it reports your numbers to a device." It didn't tell us anything we didn't already know, so we ducked out after 20 minutes. Oh well.

We had a big gap in the schedule, so Mom, Aunt G, and I went to the mall to enjoy the arcade. We got there right when they opened and the guy was like "not everything is warmed up yet, so it might be a little bit before you can play everything," but that was OK because DDR was ready. I bought a $30 game card we had loads of fun. I played probably 3 games of DDR, some coin dozers, the video bowling game, this curved air hockey game with my mom, and tried to play this spongebob game. I say "tried to" because it said "how to play," but I don't think I ever really played the game. Oh well. The DDR was really fun, the first time I accidentally paid for 2 player which meant I was playing double pad (the extra hard one), that wore me out pretty hard, but still fun. After that I played normal single pad. We had fun for maybe 2 hours, and then it was time to go back for lunch.

Lunch was good; lunch meat sandwiches. I had a ham, pickles, lettuce, onion, and potato chips on my sandwich. After lunch it was time for another talk. We tried this one financials of diabetes class (because I'm interested in financials stuff), but it ended up being more of a political activism talk, and a rather liberal one ("insurance companies are gouging you, we need legislation to force cheap insulin"), and mskate realized if I stayed I was going to start a big debate and start a scene. We ducked out and went to the other talk about coping mechanisms with diabetes burnout. Not exactly something super relevant to us either (we both deal with the craziness well I'd say), but it's better than me saying "how much does it cost to make a vial of insulin? How much did it cost to get that new brand of insulin on the market? Are you sure you want to take away all incentive to make new types of insulin by legislating away all profits and then being stuck with what we have now if anyone is still willing to make it?" Oh well.

Now another break, so back to the arcade to finish up the card. I played some more dance dance revolution, and after 5 total games I said "OK that's enough." Mom and I had a little skeeball contest where we each played a round and saw who got the higher score. I can't remember who won though, because the final score didn't last very long on the board. I played the Luigi's Mansion arcade game after that, and that was REALLY fun. I love the Luigi's Mansion games, they're really fun Nintendo horror games. Art style, level layout, and ghost types, I think this was based on Dark Moon. It's a really fun on rails shooter, and if you ever come across one I highly recommend it. I also played the Star Wars Arcade game, but the screen brightness was really turned down so I wasn't able to see the enemies really well in the space fight and didn't get to the 3rd stage. We played 2 rounds of Deal or No Deal, but it ended up selecting deal when we said no deal so we gave up on that. That emptied the card pretty much all the way and without much time left before dinner starts we went to the ticket counter to redeem the tickets. I had enough to get a TNT Arcade shot glass, TNT Arcade lanyard, and a rubber duck turtle (with 1 ticket left over). I gave the turtle toy to J and he really appreciated it.

Dinner time. They had ribs, roast beef, red-skin potatoes, and salad. That was REALLY good. I ate a lot after my big exercise day (plus it was REALLY good). I also had some of a super rich brownie, and then Mom and Aunt G had the rest (because I could only eat about 1/3 of it). After dinner we went swimming. J's parents are old and not able to swim with him, so mskate and I went swimming with him. He's at the age and energy level where it's really fun to have someone throw you in the pool, and so mskate and I tossed him while in the pool. That was fun. On a similar note, mskate, peels, J, and I all took a photo at one of the backdrops and J was like "I'm too heavy, you 3 can't lift me," and I said "oh yeah," and picked him up and the 3 adults were holding him sideways. He's fun.

Sunday was low key. The only mass around us was at like 7AM and I think was in Spanish, so I watched our local mass online. Breakfast was the same as Saturday, breakfast meats, potatoes, scrambled eggs, and toast. Aunt G checked out either right after breakfast or before breakfast, so she missed the closing key note. It was a good key note from what I remember, and it was really fun to meet everyone that I hear about all the time. Peels was supposed to bring her switch and we could visit each other's islands, but she forgot it and so I missed out on that. After the key note we checked out. We returned our 4th set of room keys (because the keys kept losing their code), loaded up the luggage cart, and packed up the van. Because we were still city I drove the first leg, and after 100 or so miles we stopped to get gas and switch drivers. Aside from the boring speeches it was a great trip, fun to get away. Well this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

The Pokematic Bachelor Party

 Hey everyone, so as I mentioned in the camping blog, I'm getting married. Like all good bachelors, I had myself a bachelor party; one last big party of being a single man with my boys. VikingPolak, my brother and best man was in charge of setting it up and let me say, he did a pretty good job.

Since I'm a giant geek that has spent thousands of dollars on all my cool stuff, and partially because of the damn virus, the party was at my condo. Honestly though, I wouldn't want it anywhere else. At my condo, I have 2 different arcade machines, a large sectional sofa, a 4K TV, and an impressive VHS and amiibo display. Then in the nerd cave I have 3 CRTs each hooked up to different video game consoles, and in my bedroom I go to to sleep next to my PS2 collection, which I estimate is around 15-20% complete. It's a really awesome place, but that did mean I had to spend the week prior cleaning up my condo. On the day of the party my brother came over early to help clean-up the final bits and set things up. He brought some games and a craps table. After getting set-up we just went shopping because my AC is out and it's hot.

At about 4:30 my dad and future brother in law showed up. They brought this Disney trivia game where players have to list as many things as they can (like "animated movies with a bat in it") and the one that can list the most wins. Of course, because I'm a major Disney fan, I pretty much always win, and I did, again. A little while later ZeldaMaster93 showed up, and he joined in and still didn't win. VikingPolak wanted to start grilling the brats so I went out to help him. Little did I know that while I was getting that set-up, my dad was setting up a big surprise, something I've been wanting to get for a while now.

(Note, I didn't wear a shirt the entire party, just be warned with pictures and videos). That's right, my family bought me a dancing inflatable tube man. Some years ago I said "I want to get one of those" after seeing it at car lots and such, and I found places online that sell them, but I never got one. Well, for my engagement, my mom had the idea of getting me one and now I have one. This will be great, whenever we host parties I can put it out in our lawn to help people find it, and I can rent it out to people for parties and such. I love being eccentric.

A and Z showed up not too much after we pulled the brats off. We all had brats and then we started the thing that ended up being the main activity, deep frying. I set-up my deep fryer and cut some potatoes for french fries. Z brought Oreo's and bro-law brought chicken wings. I made a beer batter and we fried them up. We all went outside and I started frying the french fries. They went over well, but people were looking forward to the Oreo's and chicken. VikingPolak coated an Oreo in the batter and then let it sit, allowing a lot of the batter to fall off. We tried frying it, but then it basically dissolved. I then did another but took it directly from the batter to the fryer. It was a little better, but it still was very watery and didn't fry very well. I told VikingPolak to get the flour to thicken the batter. The flour thickened the batter well, and then this happened when we fried some more oreos

The Oreo got stuck to the bottom of the fry cage, so I stabbed it out like a cave man that discovered a tool. The batter was very good, and the Oreo's were really good. Everyone liked them. After some more Oreo's and fries, I tried my hand at fried chicken. This was the first time I ever tried cooking chicken, but I ended up doing well according to guests. I did it in pairs since that was how much I could fit in the little fryer comfortably. On one of the pairs of wings, this happened.

Yeah, I kind of overfilled the fryer and it boiled over, and that's one of the reasons why I did this outside. The other reason was it was hot in my house. It was a really fun time, and we used about all the fry batter. While I was cooking we all just sat around drinking and talking. It was a fun time. After it got dark we cleaned up and I set-up the fryer to cool down.

Now for a new fun thing, gifts. My dad and brother got me something to symbolize my marriage, a play on a classic joke.

Yep, the old ball and chain joke. My dad's an artistic carpenter, so he made this in his shop, and those links are all solid, no seem links. My brother has the idea of having each of my groomsmen and each of mskate's bridesmaids sign a link, and then maybe put a design on the ball. I like the idea of signing the links. It's a fun thing. Then I gave my groomsmen their gifts. I got vikingpolak a Letter Kenny coffee mug (because he really likes Letter Kenny), A-man a deer wallet (because he's a hunter), zeldamaster93 a Legend of Zelda wallet (because he loves Legend of Zelda), and bro-law a Bad Mother F***er wallet like in Pulp Fiction (because he loves movies). They all absolutely loved their gifts. After gifts we played my Ms. Pac-man and Galaga arcade machine, taking turns at 2-player games and seeing how far we could each get. It was a fun way to end the night. After an hour or so of that everyone started to leave. It was getting late, and I was getting tired.

It was a great night and a great party. I can't think of another way I would want to celebrate my bachelor life style and have my "last single hurrah." Everyone really enjoyed themselves and seeing the cool place that I set-up. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

My Smoky Mountains Tennessee Trip

Hey everyone. I went on an adventure with my family last week. My aunt arranged for a little family reunion in the Smoky Mountains. This blog is going to be in tandem with a series of vlogs that I will be embedding (which will be indicated with a [vlog coming soon]), so be sure to check back regularly. Anyways, my aunt organized for all of us to spend a week in a 3 story 20 person cabin in the smoky mountains. You may recall MMT, TanMan, PepperBC, and TurtleGirl from previous blogs, well TurtleGirl wasn't there this year, but MMT's brother Cheeto and TanMan's girlfriend MF was there. All my aunts and uncles on my mom's side were there, along with my great aunt. The cabin was really cool, but time for stories.

On day zero my brother came over to my place after work and crashed with me so we could leave in the morning. He lives about 40 miles from me but only works 20 miles from me, and my place is 40 miles closer to our destination than his, so it was better for him to spend the night on my futon than to drive back and forth. I went to Toys R Us to get some scraps, which was a strategy guide, an emoji movie coloring book (a gag gift for a friend that HATES the emoji movie), and a sealed shipping box of skylanders figures. I apparently just missed him because he was at my house for about an hour and I was gone for about an hour. Oh well. We went out to dinner and hung out until he wanted to go to bed (he works really early, like from 5AM to 2PM). He crashed at like 8PM. He said I could stay in the living room (where my futon is), but I didn't want to disturb him, so I hung out in my bedroom. I have a TV in there, and I brought my laptop to play my computer games. This was a bit of a blessing in disguise, because while I have a lot of computer games I got through twitch, I don't play them much because I don't want to close out all my programs just to play my games at a steady frame rate. Since I didn't have my PS4 or XBOX ONE, or other consoles, I played my computer games. I had a nice little night.

OK, so day 1. I eat my muffin, we pack-up our stuff, and get on the road. About 5 minutes out, I realize I forgot my HDMI cable for if we were going to play my Super Nintendo classic. I run in and grab it. Then as we're about to leave my sub-division, I realize I forgot my phone. We turn around again, I run in, and grab my phone. We went to a coffee chain so he could get a coffee. Now we were REALLY on the road. I set-up my laptop to watch Cowboy Beebop (which you can watch my review of here). I started watching it on his graduation trip and got about halfway through. My goal was to finish it with this trip, and I did. That went on and off for a couple hours, because I also wanted to spend some time with my brother. We talked, had some fun, and eventually I fell asleep. He said my hands were "very twitchy," and I do recall having the dream where I'm dropping something and I throw my hand out to catch it, only to throw my hand in real life and hit it against something waking me up momentarily. Along our journey we stopped for lunch at a Waffle House, and it was GOOD. We both had steak and eggs, and I really liked it. Because he bought the gas I bought lunch. After more hours of driving we make it close to the cabin. We pass by a moonshine distillery and agree we need to stop there at some point in the trip. We almost make it to the cabin, but then we made a wrong turn and ended up in Dollywood. It was a 1-way "no exit" situation. The parking booth lady understood that we made a wrong turn had to get out, so she pointed us in the write direction. She had a very thick accent, and that marked the start of our Tennessee fun (well, I guess the real start was when this one guy was waving at us to let him in and then gave a thumbs up when we did, but this was the first time hearing the accent). Apparently the cabin was very far out off in the woods, at the end of a backwoods road, behind the Dollywood park. Anyways, we get to the cabin and say hello to everyone. It's a regular reunion. Unpack our stuff and visit with the family some.

Now since we were going to be there for a week, we needed food. We needed to get a weeks worth of groceries. That was fun, trying to get 20 rowdy adults to focus and give what we want for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. That took about an hour. My one aunt wanted us to use Walmart pick-up because that's what she has, but that ended up not happening because we took to long. I wanted to go to Walmart to do the shopping (because while Walmarts are generally the same everywhere, the stock is sometimes a little different and I can find PS2 games or download codes that I can't find at my local Walmart). Basically it was 2 of my aunts, my mom, and I, all gathered in my Dodge Journey (or as my one uncle calls it, my "grocery getter"). We plug "Walmart" into my GPS and start that mini-journey. We split up the list and my job was breads (buns, sandwich bread, bagels, etc.). Bro wanted me to pick-up Yingling beer (since we don't have it in our state, but Tennessee does). I got all my stuff, and then went to check out the electronic section. While there was a PS2 game or 2, I already had them, and they didn't have Unravel 2 download codes or whatever, so I just got the groceries. I go up front and wait for my relatives to arrive. While I waited, I decided to get some exercise, by doing lifts and lunges while holding the cases of Yingling. One guy that was passing by said something like "yeah man, get that exercise." Also while pushing my cart I started thinking about this commercial and started pushing the cart like this guy while poorly singing Rubberband Man.


One guy saw me and was friendly. People were so friendly in Tennessee. Anyways, my relatives show up and someone realized we didn't have any paper plates. So it was up to me to go get them. I activated my "dodge and weave" mode, where I quickly move in and out of crowds to get to my destination without bumping into anything. Some people saw me doing my dodge and weave, and decided to have some fun acting like they were about to get in my way. Tennessee is friendly. We check out and take our stuff to the Journey. Well, we stop outside the store and wait for mom to pull the Journey up front. We fill it, full, and I get in the drivers seat because I'm the only one comfortable driving in the dark (I actually really like driving at night, it's so zen). We're pulling out of Walmart and heading back, but then we realize we didn't pick-up bottled water and charcoal for the grill out. I pull into a store to flip around, go back to Walmart, and get the stuff. This time my aunt and I just carried it out to the car. Driving back was fun. It was so dark, and my family is fun. When we got back, I had to make sure my uncle saw my grocery getter full of groceries. He chuckled. Seeing that I did the buying and driving, I didn't have to unload. Mom did the math to find out what everyone owed. Seeing that the charcoal and water cost the same as what everyone owed, I was off the hook for paying. After that I played some pool with my other uncle, Cheeto, and PepperBC (because we had a pool table). I did surprisingly well, even though I had some nerd rage at missed shots. Nothing crazy like breaking pool queues, but saying "damn." My uncle joked around with "watch it boy, your mother like that language" (nothing serious, but just a joke). I'm like "OK, kuso." To which I explained "that's damnit in Japanese." He laughed kind of hard at that. A little while after that I went to bed. I was tired.

I woke up at about 7AM. I was one of the first people up, so I pull out my travel laptop, connect to the wifi, and watch Mighty Magisords. When my uncle woke up he asked what I'm watching and I just said "cartoons." "Ahhh, Saturday morning cartoons, it is Saturday after all." I didn't realize Cheeto and MMT were sleeping downstairs on the couches, so I felt kind of bad for disturbing them. Anyways, I had my breakfast, and decided to have a glass of tea with my muffin. Before leaving for the day, we had to make our sandwiches for the picnic lunch. I had roast beef, ham, and salami, with pickles and lettuce. Mmmmhhmmmhmm so good. We had our lunch, and then went on our way to explore the park. See below.



Now in the vlog I mentioned how I got lost, but let me tell you some more details. My mom took the Journey which had my GPS in it. I did not think to grab my GPS, and that wasn't a problem for Kate's Cove, but getting back was difficult. First, I went through Gatlinberg, the major tourist place with people walking everywhere. Really stressful. Then that ultimately took me to an intersection that I didn't know which way to turn, and ended up at a supermarket. I called my relatives asking for help, and one suggested I ask someone how to get to Dollywood since it was so close to the cabin. That worked, until I made yet another wrong turn and ended up at a Dollar Tree. The lady that was working there gave me directions again, apparently I turned too early. I eventually made it back to the cabin, and everyone was so happy I made it back.

We had dinner, grill out. Oh man that was good. I had a burger and a hot dog, and a salad. Mmmmhhhmmmmhmmhmhm. 2 of my uncles and brother decided to do all the grilling. I offered to watch the food so they could come in and eat, but they said "no we got this." They were enjoying the man time away from the craziness inside, because we're a crazy fun bunch. We were supposed to go to church after the mountain, but the traffic prevented us from doing so. Plus, I did enough praying while lost to have a religious experience. Anyways, we stayed in the night, and had this fun, karaoke. My aunt pulled up the song I parodied for a work event so I sang my parody. That was fun. I also sang hooked on a feeling hoping my brother would join me like he did at my cousin's wedding (he didn't). I also sang the goldfinger cover version of 99 Red Balloons and did surprisingly well on the German part. I recall singing something else, but I can't remember. Regardless, my voice was starting to give out, getting kind of raspy. So, I ended it on the perfect song to go out on with a raspy voice, Twist and Shout by the Beetles. Why, because I was able to mimic John's raspy shouty sound without any trouble. It was fun. I went to bed soon after that.

OK day 3. This was the day my brother and I were going to go explore Gatlinberg and go to the distillery. We were originally going to start in Gatlinberg, but then there was crazy traffic and an accident, so I said "lets cut our losses and go to the distillery. That ended up being a great idea because we got there right as they were opening. The distillery was great. They had like 14 different flavors of shine and you could sample up to 8. I found 3 shine flavors I really liked, and bro found 2. We were just 1 bottle away from getting 15% off, so bro bought a bottle of wedding bells for a wedding gift.



After the Brewery we went to Gatlinburg. Our first stop was an arcade. I spent $20 at the arcade, and it lasted 2 hours, and I got some actually good prizes with the tickets I won, including the "unofficial prizes" that are my spongebob cards that I used to decorate my personal coin pusher. We explored Gatlinberg some more to see what other attractions people would enjoy. The Ripley's Aquarium looked good, and had wheel chair rentals for my grandparents. I found the Ripley's mirror maze, Guinness World Record Museum, a 5D ride, Johnny Rocket's burger diner, some different stores, an even larger arcade, and some other Ripley's attractions. I knew I could have fun in Gatlinberg given the time, especially considering I could get a Ripley's pass and enjoy all the Ripley's attractions. We went to Walmart to get more provisions, and we took the main street through Pidgeon Forge. That's when we drove by the arcades. I said "oh man, I need to go arcade hopping, Pepper BC would probably enjoy going with me." I had a plan, before the trip was over, I was going arcade hopping; like bar hopping, but only instead of going from bar to bar getting progressively more drunk, going from arcade to arcade having progressively more fun. That night I played Farkle with the family, and went to bed at around 11 PM.

OK, now for Day 4, the Ripley's Aquarium. After getting my grandparents fed, we got them into my Journey and went on our way to the aquarium. We got our grandparents out and up to the aquarium while mom parked the car. Bro and I got in line to buy the tickets while my grandparents sat down. When mom caught up to us, she took our spot in line while my brother and I went to rent the wheel chairs. We rented them roomy chairs, because I thought that would be more comfortable. Apparently that meant they were wide, or as my European meme companions would call "American." Eh, they worked though. So I was planning on buying the "$90 everything pass" (which ended up being the 1 year membership), but apparently I could just upgrade my aquarium ticket to do 2 other attractions for just $10 more. Well there was only 1 other attraction I REALLY wanted to do (Guinness) and the others I could enjoy, so that was much better for me (especially considering I spent so much time in Guinness, but that's for later). I would talk about the aquarium, but I'll just let the video speak for itself.



After the Ripley's Aquarium, we went to dinner, a dinner show at Hatfield and McCoy Dinner Feud. I saw advertisements when we drove in on day 1. I thought "oh man I want to do that." Now I'm not a big history buff (far from it), and I didn't know what the show was (or that it was even a dinner show), but a little bit about me and my family tree. While we don't know a whole lot about that side of the family, I do have "McCoy" in my family tree, McCoy's that came from Kentucky. I don't know if I really am descended from the McCoy's of the Hatfield-McCoy Feud, but I have probable suspicion. When mom booked our tickets, she made sure we sat on the McCoy side. It was fun telling all the employees "we're real McCoy's." I even got to be part of the show for the audience participation. The "mayor" came up to our table and asked "we need people for the audience participation, are any of you interested?" I said "sure, I'll do it" not knowing what it was. Turns out I had to shove a spoon down my pants. Luckily I'm a really good sport about these sorts of things, but I could see some people were really embarrassed with what was being asked. All in all, it was a really good show. A lot of music, dancing, acrobatics, story telling, comedy, and even diving and dog shows. Then the dinner was good; family style fried chicken, pulled pork, vegetable soup, corn, rolls, coleslaw, and pudding. Really great show and good meal, highly recommend.

After the show, we went back to the cabin and I made sure PepperBC was still up for arcade hopping. She was, and so we went out. We drove to the main drag, and just went down the street stopping at every arcade. Our first arcade was a bust; they didn't really have any good games, and used swipe cards with a minimum purchase of $10. After looking around, we decided to try a different one. After that bust, we went to a mini-golf place thinking it was an arcade. It wasn't, but they had mini-bowling (or "rollerball" as I came to find out). Basically it's bowling but at like 1/2 the size (the balls are about the size of softballs, the lane is 28 feet long instead of 60, and the pins are about half the size of a standard pin). It's also significantly cheaper than standard bowling, with this place charging $1 per person for 10 frames. That was a fun way to start the night. They also had a candy store as part of the location, so I picked-up some jawbreakers and sour ribbons. After that, we found a great arcade. They had an 80s videogame multi-cade with 50 classic games for 1 token a play, and skeeball (for which I found 2 free games and landed a 10,000 hole on one play, which will probably never happen again), some coin pushers, and some other fun games. Then on the next arcade, we hit the motherload. DDR, many different coin pushers, world's largest packman, classic arcade games, so much fun. We had a lot of fun on that one. After that we went to another arcade, but when we got to the door it was closed. Oh well, it was getting late anyways and the parents were beginning to worry (while we're both adults, and 2 of the more responsible "gen 3" people, they still worry), and we were getting tired. It was really fun though, especially since we like most of the same things and rarely get to see each other.

OK, time for Day 4. This was my "day on my own in Gatlinburg." I was going to use my Ripley's pass on the Guinness World Records museum and something else. I was thinking the 5D motion ride, or maybe the Believe it or Not museum. I drove to Gatlinburg and found parking. On may way to Guinness I decided to check out Cooter's, a store based on the Dukes of Hazzard's character Cooter. There was a go-cart track and mini-golf, which was cool, but I wasn't super interested. Now onto Guinness. I passed by the hall of mirrors, so I figured "that's a good back-up." Well, Guinness wasn't open yet, so I went over to some stores and browsed. I found a good donut shop. But after an hour, Guinness opened up, but was doing a TV spot so it wasn't open to the public yet. I decided to go to the mirror maze, because I haven't done one of those before. Boy was it cool. The video speaks for itself. I spent about 45 minutes just screwing around in the maze after finding my way through, going backwards throwing some other guests off. Now it's time for Guinness. I'll let the video speak for itself. Crazy thing is some people recognized I was vlogging and asked for my user name. That was cool.

[vlog coming soon]

After spending about 3 hours in Guinness, I went to Johnny Rocket for lunch. Really cool atmosphere, and good food. It was a tasty burger. After Johnny Rocket, I went to an arcade bro and I found when exploring Gatlinburg on day 2. They had SO many cool machines, especially pinball (my favorite arcade game genre). So many pinball tables I've never seen, and other arcade machine novelties like a Tomb Raider on rails shooter. I wanted to play them all. Only problem though is the games cost $1 or $1.50 each. A game of pinball cost $1.50. What!? Pinball costs 50 cents a game. Everything was WAY overpriced. I mean, even "everything's expensive at an amusement park" arcades are fairly priced at 25 cents for low payouts, 50 cents for medium payouts, and pinball and video fun games, and $1 for the potentially large payouts like deal or no deal. I still managed to spend a lot of time at it though, because I played the coin pushers (fair price, though I've seen better) and did well. I started with the Wizard of Oz, and figured out how to know when the game was ready to give you a bonus (up to 50 extra plays, which I got a couple of times). I tried playing spongebob coin pusher since I did so well at the other arcade, but it wasn't played much resulting in the tokens being REALLY stacked and not pushing far. I did pretty well with Wizard of Oz and Blackbeard though, figuring out which games were ready for a payout and getting a decent amount of the ticket chips and a couple cards. I wanted to get a Pokémon bank, but unfortunately I didn't have the kind of payout I had with the other arcade, so I got some Pokémon temporary tattoos and a roll of sweet tarts. Oh well, I still had fun and spent 2 hours there. Once I was done it started raining, and my car was on the other side of town. I hung out in the arcade for maybe 30 minutes, mooching electricity to charge my camera (I spent $40 in your arcade and got maybe $5 worth of prizes, I can have some electricity). Eventually it slowed to misting, so I figured I can duck under the awnings and get back without getting too wet. When it picked up some I stopped at this sword and "tobacco accessories" store. It was a neat little store, up a flight of stairs with all sorts of katanas and game character swords on one side and "glass tobacco accessories" on the other. It slowed down some and then I continued on my journey. I entered one side of a mall and looked around some stores before leaving on the other end, somewhat closer to my car. There was a pretty cool music and DVD store. It was just FULL TO THE GILLS with CDs, Vinyl, and DVDs, with some organization but not a lot of presentation. When I made it back to my car, it started raining hard. Dinner was just left overs. Seeing that PepperBC and I only did 1 side of the street with the arcades, I thought "maybe we might want to do this tomorrow night" (tonight). But then I was just too tired and wanted to just have a quiet night...a night in with the family (it's never quiet when all of us are together).

Day 5. Bro wakes up at like 6AM and wakes me up to get on the road. I did a lot of packing the night before, so it was really just a matter of grabbing my stuff and putting it in the car. We ate some breakfast, and said goodbye to the family members that were up at about 7AM, and got on the road. I spent most of the ride home sleeping, because I was running on adrenaline and was crashing hard. I did manage to finish Cowboy Beebop, so that was good. While driving we saw a crazy car accident happen; we saw the car flip through the air like in a movie. It was scary. We ate at a Waffle House for lunch. Bro wanted to get fast food and keep driving, but I was able to easily convince him by saying "this is the last time we'll be able to eat at a Waffle House for a while, let's not miss this chance." We made it back to my place without much hassle. He picked-up his car and headed home. Apparently I left the door between my house and garage open for the week. It wasn't a problem since I turned off my AC for the week (because why cool a house I wasn't going to be in), but surprisingly my house was still pretty cool on my return. I unpacked my stuff for the most part and settled in for going to work the next day.

Now for some miscellaneous things. The cabin had satellite TV. Cheeto turned on SpongeBob one night, and I started saying word for word the entire script of Imitation Krabs as it played out on TV. That's one of my special talents, and my aunt found it "impressive." There was also a whirlpool tub in the master bathroom. At the end of our stay, we had to throw our towels into the tub. We pretty much filled the tub with all our towels. As I said earlier, there was a pool table in the cabin, 2 actually. In addition to the pool tables, there was an air hockey table, foosball table, and a hot tub on each floor. There were also some maintenance problems with some things in the cabin, so one of the maintenance guys came to fix them, while we were there one night. When he came down the stairs one of my aunts didn't realize he was there, so she was all "who was that?" Then the joke became that he was "some guy one of my girl cousins brought back." In addition to fixing, I think it was a door and fan, he brought us more air hockey pucks, because there weren't any when we got there. Also, because we were so close to Dollywood, we were able to see the Dollywood fireworks show from our balcony. We watched it every night at 9:30 PM. Another really cool thing about the cabin was it had an elevator, because that was the only way my grandparents would be able to do this. They can still walk and can go up and down stairs, but it's really hard for them. The elevator was really cool. Wow, what a fun time. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.