My Church's Oktoberfest 2026

Hey everyone, it's that time of the year again, where my church has their weekend long Oktoberfest celebration. Last year mskate and I basically ran the basket raffle tickets all the time, and this year wasn't that different. Mskate and I each made a basket, each based on some things we really enjoy. Mskate made a basket of Disney princess soaps from bath and bodyworks and some other accessories like tumblers and ear rings from TJ Maxx. I made a backet of Chuck E Cheese fun, with 2 reusable drink cups, a play card with 3000 points pre-loaded onto it (that I won myself), some chuck e cheese brand prizes, and a $60 gift card which is enough to buy a 2 month bronze pass. Mskate's mom also had a brand new loungefly bag that she didn't want, so she made a basket with it. For the past month or so mskate has been selling tickets before and after mass, and then my  job was to enter the names in a spreadsheet to make it easier to look up the winner when it came time to draw the winner. In total there were 136 baskets, and some highlights of ones we were interested in was this new American Girl Doll basket, lottery tickets, a cedar chest bench, some sports memorabilia (gift for IRA), an ice cream Sunday kit thing (a gift for my mom), squishy things that are super popular right now, and a bird feeder thing (gift for dad-in-law).

I took Friday off to help with some set-up, and that helped with a thing I wanted to do at the new house; just wanted to drop some food and drink at the house while we're getting it set-up before getting the certificate of occupancy. It's about mid-afternoon and I went over to the church where I helped move baskets from the social hall to the tent. Basically go to the catechism room where the baskets were being stored, carry them out to the tent where the tables were being set-up, occasionally loading them onto the flat bed golf cart we had. The big challenge was how do we get 136 baskets of various size onto 7-9 tables. I did some good organizing utilizing my tetris packing skills. One of the guys who was helping said something like "I know how to organize for maximum space because my dad was military and that was a skill he drilled into me," and I said "I just played a lot of tetris" and he got a laugh.

Some hours later and it was getting close to event time. All of the volunteers were there and ready, and they wanted to buy raffle tickets before the official start time because that would be their only time to do it. Unfortunately for them, our register hadn't been set-up yet, which meant I couldn't sell yet. I told them to ask person responsible for setting up the cash registers. We got ours set-up like 10 minutes before the official start of the event, so I was able to sell some tickets to volunteers before it started. Friday night is family night, where they have costume characters taking pictures and putting on shows, a minigolf course, pumpkin painting, pony rides, face painting, balloon animals, and a videogame truck. Last year I was a bouncer for the videogame truck, making sure people were taking turns and playing nicely. This year though I just sold tickets, occasionally getting food from the food vendors. I had a pretzel and Italian sausage, and nutrl drinks. I brought my laptop to fill in some tickets the night of. A fun thing about this night was the DJ who does or music bingo was DJing the night, and the guy is really good and was able to keep the energy going well. The walk around characters were really good, it was Glinda and the wicked witch of the west (I asked if they were original or wicked, and they said original, so that wasn't Elbatha) from the Wizard of Oz, Jack Skellington and Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas, and the 3 witches from Hocus Pocus. They're not like "professional theme park" costumes, but they were pretty good and they were really playing into it well, which is what really made it work. I think they're like a local theater troop or party actors, which is why they're so good at it. Later in the night the Hocus Pocus witches did the song they did in the movie, which was pretty cool. Then at the real end of the night there was a "Taylor Swift and K-pop Demon Hunters concert," basically actors like before dressed as the singers and lip synching to some songs. Last year we did the Taylor Swift concert and it went really well, but it did get a little weird when they started playing Katty Perry songs. I don't know K-pop Demon Hunters at all (I don't have Netflix), but I do know their one song since the kids bop version was played at chuck e cheese all the time, so that was kind of fun. At the end of the night we got security to watch the baskets all night so we didn't need to move them all into the social hall again, which was really great since that's really annoying. At the end of the night our register made $3K or something crazy like that. During the night one of our old lady friends helped us sell tickets, and she and mskate shared a chicken dinner, and gave me the bread. The air bubbles in the slice looked like a mask, I'm breadman.

It's now Saturday, the BIG Oktoberfest day. Saturday morning was pretty low key, basically just entering the tickets in the spreadsheet while watching Ranma 1/2. Around 4PM we went to the church and set-up. Again, people were asking for us to sell them tickets, but again they didn't set-up our register until about 15 minutes before the event started. This is when a lot of people wear their leiderhozen and durndles, and there's live polka music, and some competitions. I noticed the beer stein holding contest, which I was a part of last year but not this year because I was busy with the tickets, but I'm assuming there were others. When they did the zikki zakki I chanted along since I love doing that. Once again I had some pretzels and brats, and mskate had the Vietnamize meat skewers, and we had a couple Nutrls. Since we were going to be up pretty late we brought a couple caffeinated cokes, and those helped, but we needed to buy some more in the night. We kind of rotated between entering tickets and selling tickets, and it went well. While we were selling someone wanted 50/50 tickets and our register could take credit card. We also had to tell kids to stop squeezing the squishies in the basket, so I did get to be a bouncer again. There was also a girl that wanted to put all her tickets in the squishy basket, but she accidentally put them all in the WWE bucket, so I told her mom about it and she was like "oh man, you didn't pay attention." All just a bunch of fun. Near the end of the night we had to get some people to buy the golden backet raffles, one for the video game grand prize of a switch 2, large screen TV, and I think some games, and another was a trip to Cancoon with a $1200 gift card to help with travel and resort fees, and there are only 100 entries and we need to sell all 100. I bought at least 1 for the videogame (maybe 2), but had no real interest in the vacation. Mskate, one of her friends, and I were going around with the big board trying to sell people on the trip, and I had lots of fun being the salesman. We ended up selling the last 6 tickets, and one person was quite happy. We also had our grand raffle for big money, and the wrist band raffle (which had a prize of a vacation to our little Bavaria, which mskate and I won last year). At the end of the night we had to bring the baskets in since we were drawing the winner Sunday morning, and because there was something going on in the catechism room we had to put the baskets in one of the other rooms. Thankfully we had a lot of people ready to help us, so it didn't take too long to move it all, and we had some young men who were able to move the cedar chest and the back relief machine.

It's Sunday, faith day where everything is faith based like all the contemporary music that was played and the praying of the rosary in 5 languages, it's just a little family day again. Mskate and I watched mass at home so we could enter the tickets didn't get entered the night before; wake up, watch TV mass, then spend the next 2.5 hours entering names and numbers into the spreadsheet. Not the most traditional way to do Sunday mass for a Catholic couple, but since it's in service to the church we decided it would be the best way to do it. After entering the tickets and organizing them by number so it would be easier to find if there was a problem, we went to the church and set-up our laptops in the social hall for us to do the raffle lookup. I also set-up my laptop on the TV they put by our station for presenting. Well, we would do that, but my 15 foot HDMI cable from college called it quits, but thankfully had an extra one we could use. Mskate's mom and IRA also came for the fun, which was kind of cool. As we were drawing the tickets and looking up the numbers, some people kept asking us when we were going to get the baskets drawn. I told them "tell them 'the more they ask, the longer it takes,'" and we got some privacy after that. 136 tickets, only 1 problem where the person didn't turn in their stub and we had to redraw. Mskate and I won the sports stuff (that we then put in IRA's name so he could see his name on the winning board and not make it look like we won everything), and the bird feeders. Unfortunately we didn't get the doll or cedar chest, or the legos that I entered, or ice cream thing, or other things, but at least we won something. Mskate's family took it all home with them, with holding the bird feeder stuff for dad-in-law while hiding in IRA's room. We put all the winners in a slide show that I put on a loop on the TV, and I just sat by it to let people know where to go. One lady said "my name is on there, but it's spelled wrong." I told her "yeah there were a lot of misspelled names in the list, it was all what I was able to read, just go in there and see if they can tell you how to verify it's you." We were able to get 30-40 baskets picked up, so that makes things a little easier. I packed up our laptops and power chords right at the end and went home. Well, actually I went to the grocery store first since it's kind of close to church and I wanted to get some ingredients to make chili this week (needed a can of pork and beans, an onion, and tomato sauce, and in the clearance section I found canned hot peppers so I picked those up for a little extra heat), and then I found some tortilla chips in clearance as well so I got those and a jar of salsa, and mskate wanted eggs so I got a dozen as well.

That was my weekend. It was pretty fun albeit kind of exhausting. Now I'm just sitting here writing this blog watching Animation Domination on FOX. Well this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Laboring on a Funeral Day

Hey everyone, not exactly a "big adventure" here, but it is kind of a crazy set of sequences that happened over labor day weekend. First on Thursday there was a major storm where I live, super rain and tornado warnings, all while I was at the doctor. Right after I finished my appointment and checked out, everyone's cell phones went off with emergency alerts, so I hung out at the doctors and pulled up my local news channels on my phone. It was kind of crazy. I didn't suffer any damage, but a lot of people did, which will lead into big things of the weekend.

The main thing for the weekend was mskate's great aunt's funeral. She had dementia and was failing. One of my favorite memories of her is Easter 2024 where she and my grandma, who also had dementia, just talked the entire time and had a lot of fun together, enjoying each other's confused company. She passed earlier this week and her funeral was held on Friday. After my doctor's appointment I went up to mskate's parent's area and went to the church where we were having the funeral. Everyone was setting up the social area for the luncheon and my job was to scope out and test out the live streaming set-up (because live streaming funerals for the family has kind of become my thing). Well, they had a lot of storms and it took out the power at the church, which meant everyone was setting up the decorations in the dark by flash light. The funny thing is her daughter took her to the dollar store before she went to assisted living to pick out the decorations she wanted for her funeral, and everyone was putting those up. For my thing I took my laptop up to the balcony of the church to see if it would work, and it was a good place to do a set-up, but the lack of power meant I wasn't able to get on the church wifi, or see what I was REALLY doing. I did some tests using different hot spots and they worked, but we were hoping that the power would come back in time for the funeral. After the test things were pretty low key, just watching movies with IRA.

OK, it's funeral day Friday, and the power is still out. I get to the church and there's no power, so I said "OK, I guess we can do this off battery," but my batteries were kind of low for some reason, so I went back to mskate's parents house and charged my laptop and video camera. Here's where things got weird, my video camera had 40 minutes of charge when I checked while it was charging and then let it charge another 20 minutes or so, but then when I got to the church it said 17 minutes of battery, which was really weird. I ask vikingpolak to see if he can get a battery backup, and our dad has one for his cpap, so both of them go to my parents house and get the battery backup like 10 minutes before the service starts. So because my video camera is basically dead I'm running the live stream off of my built in web cam, which being in the back row balcony seat is not great for the start of the funeral, but thankfully they get back quickly so I'm able to set up my camera and do a good feed. The funeral itself was pretty basic, but then right at the end my laptop battery decides to give out, so I have to plug my laptop into the power inverter on the battery backup and because the power draw was so great the power inverter was kind of whaling. In general though, it went off pretty well, just was a rather frustrating process of live streaming due to the lack of power.

The luncheon was pretty good, we had chicken, ribs, sausage and kraut, macaroni and cheese, potato wedges, bumpy cake, cookies, and some other thing. The funny thing is I had 2 plates of food because I kept hearing my grandma saying "you need to eat more." I guess one of the great aunt's things was punch bowls, so they had that. Can't say I've had "authentic punch" before, so that was kind of neat. Everyone else had a good time as well, and everyone was thanking me for the live stream. I didn't know a lot of people there, but there was one guy I went to high school with who kind of knew me and knew vikingpolak better (because they were the same age).

The afternoon was pretty low key, but around 3PM we went to see the Cars rerelease. For the 20th anniversary Disney gave it a wide rerelease, and IRA really wanted to see it because they had special popcorn buckets and drink cups; the popcorn bucket was Lightning McQueen and the drink cup was the Piston Cup. I'm pretty sure I saw this movie back when it was first released, but it's been so long and wasn't like a "core memory" so I don't remember seeing it in theaters. Since there was a local festival going on by our normal theater we went to one that used to be a cheap last run movie theater by my grandparents. We got to the theater and they only had the popcorn bucket. We still saw the movie, and got the jumbo bucket of popcorn that came with the novelty bucket, and I ended up eating most of the popcorn since IRA and mskate didn't want much. It was pretty fun watching the movie on the big screen. After the movie we went to another theater (one my grandparents took us to frequently and mom-in-law would take after school care kids too on field trips) to see if they had the cup, but they didn't. In a last ditch effort we went to the normal theater but with a twist. Because of the festival the parking lot was closed to normal parking (but you could park for $25), so I dropped IRA and mskate off close to the theater by pulling into a blocked off area so they could go in while I could get moving without causing , and then I drove around the square mile of where it's located so they could have enough time to wait in line. Thankfully they had the cup, so I drove around and got back to the same place I dropped them off, and got them to jump back in the van and got home. I had a single taco for dinner since I had so much popcorn earlier.

Saturday would have been a simple "go home" day, but I don't know if I would be writing this for pokematic's blog and not your 3 minutes if this didn't also happen. With all the storming, something must have hit the windshield of the company lease car, which caused a chip on the top of the windshield, that became quite the crack as it grew down the windshield that I first noticed after the funeral and just grew throughout the day. Since it's a company lease with full insurance, including windshield replacement with Safelite, I called and set up an appointment at my in-laws, so we're hanging out until the tech comes and replaces the windshield and calibrates the safe driving features.

After getting home mskate went to sell raffle tickets for our church's Oktoberfest, and I went to chuck e cheese to use our fun pass. Recently they removed some games and put up signs saying "new games coming soon." Well, they added the new games, and they're really fun. There's a minions land the token game, a "knock the balls in the holes" game, an elephant ball drop game, the fidget spinner game, a "bounce the balls in the dog's mouth" game, a paw patrol "stop the spinner on a location" game, and my grandma's favorite "spin the pirate wheel and land on the jackpot like wheel of fortune" game (she loved wheel of fortune, and when we took her to chuck e cheese for an outing she loved that one). I played all the new games and some older ones, and got 2 cards from the minions game.

Sunday was really low key, pretty normal Sunday for us. Mskate sold raffle tickets since it's Oktoberfest at our church and we have basket raffles. Mskate and I each made one; I made a chuck e cheese basket, she made a disney bath and bodyworks basket, and mskate's mom donated a loungefly backpack that she didn't want. Our baskets aren't going super well, but her mom's is doing well, and hopefully we win a couple of things we could use for our new house. I bought some things we need for the new house from Lowes. We went to CEC and mskate really liked the new games. I watched a fair amount of cartoon network and adult swim, didn't really plan to but good to use my sling subscription. I especially "needed" to do that because there weren't cartoons on FOX tonight, so I watched Bob's Burgers on Adult Swim.

Now for Monday Labor Day. Mskate and I spent the day doing some furniture shopping, since Labor Day is when furniture stores do their sales and we have a new house that needs some furniture, and we just like going to IKEA and the chuck e cheese that's close by. We got a Billy media shelf, Trofast cabinet thing, an as-is Kallax (came from the display sections or something, fully built), and some containers for the Kallax and Trofast. We were going to get a couple of other things, but they didn't have them. We also got lunch at the cafe, and I really liked their pasta and marinara, and the sparkling raspberry drink. IKEA is fun because the display sections are so well crafted, and some of the things are so fake. Like, they had a gaming set-up, and it was an empty XBOX 360 shell.

Chuck e cheese was fun. They have some games that we don't have at our local CEC, and those are fun to play. I got a couple jackpots, and our pass had 500 free tickets for labor day. We used some of our tickets to buy unique prizes for the easter egg fundraiser we do every year. On our way back we stopped at BJ's Wholesale and got gas and frozen broccoli. It was a fun time. Once we got home I unloaded the stuff to our garage to move later.

Labor day is normally a day for grilling. However, I grill very often so it's not too special of a thing; plus, I want clear out my freezer which means my tenderloin, and when I grilled that last time it didn't turn out great. I "slow" cooked it over a period of about 1.5 hours in the oven, and it turned out really good. I made some of the broccoli while I waited for the tenderloin to cook. I also made mskate an omelet. It was a good dinner. Now I'm just enjoying some TV and calm night stuff. Overall a pretty good weekend. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

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.

Pokematic's 2025 Christmas Extravaganza

Hey everyone, it's that time of year again, the time when I talk about my Christmas fun. Things kind of started on the 15th when my department had a little Christmas party; nothing super big, just some people from various other locations coming to our place. I did get a poinsettia flower for our friend since they had extras after the party and I knew someone would want it. Nothing too spectacular though, but it was technically the start.

Things really started on the 20th when I went to my parent's house to do chocolate dipping with my mom, and help our accordion friend set up her life alert and give her her gifts. We got her a bag of hot hands hand warmers since those are good for her arthritis and a PF Chang's gift card since she likes to take us there. She got mskate socks and me a Pokemon Time magazine. I had 2 of them and now I have 3; Pikachu, Charmander, and now Arcanine. In addition to helping her get the life alert watch set-up I also installed a lock box in her door frame. She was really happy to have us all over.

After that we went to my parent's house. I started the chocolate in the double boiler, and as I'm melting it down it was getting kind of clumpy. That was not great since you can't really dip pretzels and potato chips and cookies in clumped chocolate. Mom pulled about half of it out and we tried adding water according to multiple sources. Well, that only made it worse, so we made what we call "Christmas crap;" when chocolate gets ruined, it still tastes good, so we clump it and stick pretzels and m&ms in it to make something fun that looks like poop (hence the name). We put it between parchment paper and flattened it out to add the stuff. We were able to melt down the other parts by putting it in the microwave. With that done we cleaned the pot and dried it REALLY good before melting more. That went along much better. It was a fun time and we made a lot of treats for the upcoming festivities.

After our dipping fun we went back to our accordion friend and finished setting up the life alert. We didn't know her son already got everything and we just had to activate. We showed her how it works and tested it. It worked in the house, so that was great. After that she took mskate and I out for pizza. We got a salad to split and it was quite good. Instead of pizza I got the barbecue cheese burger, and our friend was surprised I was able to eat it all. Mskate had some left overs so that was good for her. That was the end of that little fun.

It's now the 23rd, and I used my final vacation day. I had the day off, but not mskate, because she works for Santa at the mall, and I was going to see her, but only at the end of her shift. This meant I had some time to myself before I had to go up to the family. Well I filmed a "food review" of building a snap together model that I got last year and has been sitting on my dining room table waiting to be built. There was also a 2 hour window where bio and I could record a podcast, and so we did.

Going to the mall to see mskate was fun. She does stuff for the mall when there's a seasonal thing, and apparently I was wearing the same thing I did when I saw her last time. Kind of funny. After that we went to her parents house and got set-up for the half week. In the evening we went to the bar vikingpolak works at some time. It's a little local microbrewery where they make their own beer; and I really like their sour blueberry beer. They also have some pinball machines and a couple arcade machines. I got $5 in quarters and played the pinball machines. I also kind of accidentally ended up paying for everyone's drinks; I originally opened a tab just for mskate and I, but then she put her mom's drink on the tab (no problem there, I am staying at her house this half week), and then IRA got added (again, unexpected but his parents are putting us up), and then my parents showed up and they ended up on the tab as well (which is fine, they're my parents so I'll buy their drinks), so I guess I ended up starting the giving lol. There was actually something kind of funny with the pinball; I was playing the x-men table and the ball got stuck in the ramp. I told vikingpolak about it and he said he'll let the guy they rent their machines from about it. I could have fixed it myself, but that could have voided their warranty or something. That was it for the 23rd.

It's now December 24th, Christmas Eve. The morning at my in-laws was pretty calm, nothing super exciting. Noon is when things really started. Just a reminder, on Christmas Eve we go to McDonald's for lunch because when I was little that was when Santa would come to my grandparents, and we keep the tradition alive, even though my grandma is no longer with us and that was her thing. Mskate wanted to get a Grinch Meal but they were all sold out. We still got a happy meal with my points, and then got deals with everything else; a $2 large fry, a $6 10 piece mcnugget meal, and 20% off $10 or more (which we used with a quarter pounder meal and value cheeseburger meal). In total we saved $17. The food was good, fast food, nothing special but filling.

We now did the gift exchange with my parents on Christmas Eve since we didn't have my grandma this year. We set-up the living room moving the coffee table and positioning the presents with everyone getting in their positions. We got my mom a helium tank at the Party City going out of business sale since she likes balloons, and since it was big and would require a lot of wrapping paper we put it in a bicycle bag, along with all her other presents that were wrapped. Since it was a bike bag and was called a bike bag the joke we said was "we got you a bike since that's what comes in bike bags, some assembly required." We also got her some mylar balloons to inflate with her tank, and that was fun. We also got her a box of variety coffee pods since they recently got a kcup coffee maker and like the options now and princess plates and napkins, and a Disneyland sweat shirt. For my brother we got him some things that were of his interests; a power bank thing for camping, emergency blankets, a VHS copy of Strange Brew (he loves Bob and Doug McKenzy), and a Hot Wheels Barbie McDonald's cup based on a story from when we were kids. For my dad we got him some Peanuts comic things (socks and a magnet), decaf coffee pods, and speed racer. Now for my presents; I got peanut m&ms, peanut butter m&ms, spongebob socks and Patrick socks, Napoleon Dynamite socks, nerds clusters, a drone, a puzzle vase, some switch games (epic micky, hello kitty, and pacman world), a tigger jersey, some different PS2 gmaes that I bought on black friday, sunflower seeds, bullets, and star bills.

Christmas mass was Christmas mass. We went to my parent's church since we were in the area. Apparently at our home parish the priest gave the children snow wands, nothing like that at my parent's church. Mskate and I got there first so we found space for everyone. After mass we went back to mskate's parents for diner and some early Christmas. We had the spring rolls we got from a church acquaintance and meat balls. The spring rolls went over very well. Early presents went well. I got a voice modulator microphone, a gameboy lego, and a spongebob mug that IRA bought me when we went to Universal Studios. Funny thing, he bought it when we went to the Spongebob store and I was busy playing in the musical pineapple. The big winner present of the night ended up being the Go On DVD set we got IRA. I watched it back when it was airing and thought it was entertaining, and I knew he would enjoy it. Little did I know he would REALLY like it as does my father-in-law; we watched 3 episodes before bed time and the laughter was heavy. I also made my vase puzzle and it looks quite good. Before going to bed I started my "watch A Christmas Story on TBS" tradition. I came in with about 30 minutes left, and watched the first hour of the next airing, so all I had to do was watch the 3rd quarter to have seen it all.

Now it's Christmas Day, we slowly wake up as IRA is super excited to open presents. I watched the remaining quarter of A Christmas Story after waking up, so now I had completely watched all of A Christmas Story on TBS. We all gather in the living room and start passing out the tree. We got a letter from Santa about how the dogs were gone now. A lot of the things we gave were from Disneyland, and everyone was happy. I got gift cards to McDonalds, Chuck E Cheese, and Visa, a capsule machine lego, a table vice, a Gaston shirt, Rocket Power the complete series on DVD, warhead candy, chocolate marshmallows, some other candy, a Disney pressed penny book, a stitch rubber duck, a rabbit Ralphy stuffed animal thing (that I initially thought was a labubu), and many socks (popeye, kirby, snorlax, and yoda). One of mskate's highlights was a stuffed animal tower since our stuffed animal hammocks are getting kind of full. Afterwards we had breakfast, eggs and bacon with some cut fruit.

After playing around with some stuff and just relaxing, we went over to my parents for Christmas. Mskate and I went to CVS to get a present for our friend's Aunt Bird; she specifically asked for coloring books but all the coloring books were really expensive, so we got her a little lego creator stocking stuffer for $5. Mskate looked up the set online and it's going for a lot more online, and then because it was CVS I had a coupon on the receipt I was able to get another for 72 cents. We went to my parents and it was kind of different. My dad came down with something on Christmas Eve so he spent the entire evening upstairs in his rooms. It was still a good time. Our accordion friend came and our other friend with their Aunt Bird. PepperBC's family was going to join us, but they decided against it since my dad was sick and they have some health problems. It was really fun, we put on A Christmas Story to just let it run in the background, and we facetimed TanMan since accordion friend is his grandma and they're expecting. Dinner was pretty good, we had ham and chicken, green beans and green bean casserole, corn, and rolls. After dinner we did our sing-along with the accordion. The fun thing is we have these bell sticks that we made back in cub scouts with the other friend as our pack leader, so that was fun to say "look, the bells are still working." Whenever there was a song that mentioned bells we all shook the jingle bells. Then there was one song where I pulled out my new voice modulator microphone, which got a good laugh from everyone. IRA and mom-in-law came over for this as well. After the sing-along we gave the gifts to IRA and Aunt Bird, and they really enjoyed them. IRA got a special disneyworld football that was signed by the characters that was found while cleaning out another aunt's house, and a Courage the Cowardly Dog DVD set. It was a really fun time. Afterwards we just went to my in-laws and hung out until the end of the night.

The day after Christmas was pretty calm. Mskate, IRA, and I went to different stores for after Christmas sales. We went to CVS, Meijer, Target, and Walmart. We found some things, but nothing too spectacular. Later in the day IRA and I went to see Spongebob Squarepants the Search for Square Pants, and mskate and mom-in-law went to see Wicked for Good. It was a pretty funny movie. We had dinner at the movies, I had a Freddy Fasbear spicy pizza (pepperoni, jalapenos, and a "sweet drizzle" whatever that was). It was pretty good, and they delivered it to our seat. IRA had loaded French fries (fries, nacho cheese, and bacon). The next day we loaded up the van with all our presents and I'm loving having a minivan, and now it's just finding places for all our new stuff. I've found a place for about half of it, yay. Well, this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Pokematic's Oktoberfest 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Attempting a World Record at Chuck E Cheese

Hey everyone, so I'm a fan of Guinness World Records. I have been since...3rd grade; maybe it was 2nd grade. I think it was 2nd grade when my friend and I tried to break "longest paper airplane flight" on a windy day throwing paper airplanes off the play structure in the after school program, and 3rd grade when I got my first Guinness Book of World Records. I also remember going to the Guinness World Record museum at Niagara Falls and spending 2 hours in it reading every record back in 8th grade, and trying to break "longest paper clip chain" after learning about it. I think I collected about 50 feet of paper clips, and the record was like half a mile. For my birthday I asked for paper clips, and I remember my aunt saying "I am NOT buying my nephew paper clips for a birthday present," so she got me a box of paper clips and a $20 gift card to Office Depot. Then I tried for "longest time wearing a plastic admission band" after I found I could wear one for a year. I contacted Guinness, and they said I would need to start over, but they sent me a sticker as well as some official rules for my next attempt. So yeah, I like World Records.

So, when I saw Chuck E Cheese was doing an attempt at "most people blowing party blowers at the same time for 10 seconds" as part of their 40th birthday celebration May 19th at 8:40 PM EST, I said "I need to do this." I made sure I would be able to participate if I didn't have a kid with me (adults need kids to be at Chuck E Cheese on normal days, but this wasn't a normal day), and if the answer was "you need a kid," I was making a list of everyone I knew that had kids. But for a world record attempt involving "most people doing...," you need as many people as possible so they allowed it.

After days of getting hyped, it was time for the big day. I got there at about 8 PM, because I wasn't going to miss this. I showed up, and saw it, a waver saying "by entering the premise you are agreeing to being filmed for the purpose of the official Guinness World Record attempt." I of course filmed it (I'm not going to NOT record my legitimate attempt at a world record), but just to be extra safe, I was careful to only film myself, adult staff, and world record objects. I'll get that edited and posted soon (hopefully); but for now I'll just post my story.

When I went in I went to the check-in stamp station and said "I'm here for the world record." He said "alright, you can have some cake (free as part of the event), we'll be getting ready at 8:25." I took a walk down memory lane for the 25 minutes leading up to the event. It's been like 8 years since I actually went there for fun (and 5 years since I stepped foot there when I applied for a summer job back in college), just looking at what's changed. The largest thing that changed was they now have "point cards" instead of tokens. I could exchange my tokens for points (I know I still have probably $5 worth somewhere), but I want to keep them for collecting/nostalgia purposes. There were different games, but I think I saw some original token roller games. That was cool. They also got rid of the play place. I guess it was because there's no money to be made from a free indoor play place. Oh well. I also talked to the front desk clerk some about all that's changed, and how I used to come here all the time and had an unlimited free refill cup I used for 7 years. He said I could bring it in and they'll still honor it (like 16 years later), but my cup disintegrated. After 7 years, it just kind of fell apart. I do remember a kid once asked me many years ago when I was refilling it "where'd I get my cool cup," and I said "4 years ago." When my mom bought my brother and I those cups, I don't think they were expecting someone to use it for 7 years.

So I had cake. I originally was planning to be a "responsible adult" and let the kids have it. However, there weren't any kids having it, and I wanted to join in the fun. It was plain sponge cake with sugar frosting. I considered buying an individual pizza, or bread sticks, just to see if the formula changed in the past decade; but I ate beforehand because I was expecting it to be very busy (world record geeks like me and parents with kids on a Friday night) and didn't want to risk waiting forever just for some nostalgic pizza, and 8 PM is late for me to eat. However, I probably could have ordered bread sticks without a problem as it was not very crowded (or at least not as crowded as I expected), but I wasn't hungry so whatever.

And then over the announcer, I hear it. "Attention Chuck E Cheese guests, come to the stage area to participate in the world record attempt" with Chuck E walking around to lead the kids to the area. I had to hold myself back from strait up joining "the peid mouse" as he lead the children to the world record attempt (because it's weird enough to have a 23 year old man at a children's arcade). So after 30 seconds, I head over to the area and see the official instructions for the world record attempt (for CEC team members). I read the instructions, and then went to get my numbered wrist band for the attempt. I was number 12. There was also a sheet to sign up to get notified if they break the record so I can buy a plaque (oh yeah, I signed up for it). It was kind of funny since they asked for your age, and among the 7-12 year olds, then there's me at 23. There was a group of pre-teens that looked like they were into this, and were there only for the attempt. They probably weren't as into it as I was, but give them 10 years and they would be as exited as I was. One of the older boys (probably 11) saw I was recording and asked if I was going to put it on youtube. I told him "probably." It won't be "youtube.com/catholiccontriverys," but it will be on the other platforms I use. There was also another loop of "peid Chuck E" and all the kids were chanting "Chuck E Cheese, Chuck E Cheese." I started chanting "World Record, World Record" softly. After everyone got their wrist bands, they handed out the party blowers and said "don't blow them until I say so."

And here it is, the main event. The CEC team member got everyone focused, get ready, and then told everyone to blow their party blowers for 10 seconds. I originally planned to blow for 10 strait seconds, but that didn't work out because I don't have that kind of lung capacity and control. So instead, I just kept rapidly inhaling and blowing. By the end I started feeling light headed from hyperventilating. It was fun. I was taking video, and the team members were also taking video. Afterwards they did a ticket give away, but that's for the kids. My party blower was a little defective (didn't buzz properly), so I asked the team member if I could have another one. She let me have one because everyone could tell I was really into the world record thing. I also saw 2 moms that didn't participate filling out the world record paper work, because for it to be official you need to have an impartial 3rd party sign that it happened. I knew this because that was the rules from when I tried to do "longest time wearing admission wrist band." I rested to "normal-ventilate" by sitting off in a corner away from the kids. After catching my head and realizing what just happened, I left the restaurant/arcade.

Oh man, that was fun. I estimate that there were probably 40 people participating. If I assume that to be average across all 590 locations, I think we're going to break the record. The current record at the time of writing 5/19/2017 11 PM, is 6,961 people back in 2009. If my assumptions are correct, that's 23,600 people. Even if it's just half, that's still about twice as many people as the current record. I sure hope we broke it. If we do break it, I'm definitely buying that plaque, as I will have actually accomplished a childhood and teen goal. When I tell some of my co-workers, they are going to say "of course you would do that, sounds fun." Even though I'm a professional, I'm going to wear my wrist band until I return Monday and use it as a conversation piece (and everyone knows I'm a little eccentric, and I'm such a good employee I can afford to be a tad unprofessional for a day). Oh this was fun. If it ends up in a book, I'm buying the book. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.