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.

Easter 2019 Adventures and Fun

(A little backstory to help things make more sense, I have a girlfriend now, and a lot of the events involve her).

Hey everyone, Jesus Christ is risen, and here are my fun stories of the season. First we'll start out with Palm Sunday. Of all the masses in the year, Palm Sunday has to be my favorite, mainly because we're given palm branches. Actually, just because we're given palm branches. I know there are more meaningful holy days, but the "here's a palm branch, wave it for Jesus" thing really appeals to me; always has, always will. This was also when I went to my parents to make pretzels and dye eggs. I texted my mom earlier in the week asking if we were going to dye eggs and make pretzels, and she forgot (so it's a good thing I reminded her). Why pretzels? There's quite a lot of catholic symbolism behind them, so I'll give you the run down. First, they resemble one way to pray (hands across the chest touching the opposite shoulders). Next, they are simple bread of flour, water, and yeast (though we use store bought dough, for convenience), and simple bread is brought up many times in the bible. Then there's the baking soda bath to give them the color and texture, which can be analogous to baptism. There's also the salt, which sometimes is used to represent the tears shed when Jesus was crucified. There's also the Easter Eggs, which everyone is familiar with. I bought an egg dying kit last year after Easter to use this year, and it was still good (yay). There was a little trouble though, my parent's vinegar was old and took the tablets a long time to dissolve. Since I'm into pickling, I said "next time I'm bringing my own vinegar." We rolled and baked many pretzels while we let the eggs sit in the dye to get that bright color. It was a fun time and I'm glad I was able to keep the tradition alive.

Fast forward to Holy Thursday. This was a very special Holy Thursday, because I got to spend the evening with my girlfriend. She lives out of state but was coming in for Easter, and since I was on her way to her parents house, we had a date night. We said our hellos and I had things set-up to listen to some of my records (one of our things is listening to music together), but she surprised me with "lets watch 3 Identical Strangers" (the documentary about 3 triplets separated at birth that were reunited in their late teens/early 20s). She rented it on amazon and wanted to connect her laptop to my TV, but my TV is weird about connecting laptops to it, so instead we watched it through hulu plus (I have hulu, she doesn't, soooooo, plus I already wanted to watch this at some point since I already had it in my watch list). We got comfortable and enjoyed our little movie night. About 2/3 of the way through we stopped to eat. I made a roast in my crock pot that had been cooking all day, and it was good. I lit some candles in the pinch pots I made in elementary school (my mom held on to them all these years and now that I've moved out she said "take them, decide what you want to do with them," so I turned them into candle holders). We each had about 1 bowl, leaving me some left overs. I might have put in too much potato and pineapple, but whatever, good for later. After dinner we finished up the movie. It was a good movie. After the movie we went to church. We were going to get ice cream afterwards, but because mass went late and she had to get to her parents, we just said our goodbyes and called it a night.

Good Friday was a pretty good day. Since my mom worked for the Easter Bunny at our mall, my girlfriend and I decided to pay her a visit and get our picture taken (and "be the cute couple holding hands as they walk around the mall"). Since I knew I wasn't going to eat much for dinner (I was going to have the bread part of the Chick-Fill-E sandwich), I had my large meal at lunch. I had a pickle and lettuce sandwich with some shredded cheese, and mozzarella sticks. Yum. I went to Good Friday mass out by our parent's way (scheduling reasons) and made it to my parents home parish. I ran into mom at mass, so we went to mass together. Yay. After mass I did some thrifting and found some mystery VHS tapes (record TV tapes that didn't really say what was on them, perfect breading ground for lost media). I also found some other interesting tapes, some that I think I'll make videos about; stay tuned.

The Easter Bunny and mall time was an interesting experience. She was doing some shopping with her mom beforehand and met me in line. When we got kind of close we waved to Mom, who was running the cash register at the time. She saw us and waved back. Now for the funny thing, the credit card reader lost it's phone connection, so Mom called me over to try to fix it, because I am the technology boy wonder. Her manager came over and managed to fix it, by unplugging the phone line and plugging it back in. Ahhh the age old "turn it off and on again." After another 20 minutes of waiting in line, we made it to the front. We took a selfie with Mom and then got our picture with The Bunny. Mom told the photographer "this is my son." We placed the Chick-Fil-E order while we were in line with the mobile app, and that made it come faster when we went to the food court. She had the grilled chicken patty and tomato, I had the bun with lettuce and pickles. We split the waffle fries, and the lemonade with 2 straws. It was cute. After that we went to the ice cream vendor and each got a small ice cream. Once we were done with ice cream we walked around the mall, stopping at the Microsoft store (for me) and a clothes stores (for her). Neither of us bought anything, nor spent a lot of time in our respective stores, but it was fun getting to share some of our interests with each other. After fun at the mall we went to her Lutheran Good Friday mass. That was a fun experience for me since I haven't been to a Lutheran Good Friday mass. There were a lot of similarities to my Catholic mass, but also differences. The thing that made us both laugh was when their pastor said "peace be with you," and apparently the Lutherans still say "and also with you" instead of "and with your spirit" (which was a change the Catholic Church made 6 or so years ago), and both of us had a good laugh at "and with your - also with you." We didn't do anything after mass, and so I went home.

Now for Saturday. The fun thing today was I had dinner with my girlfriend's family, first time since we started dating. Now for most couples this would be intimidating; first time spending the evening with her parents and siblings, trying to make a good impression and her dad to not want to kill you. However, that wasn't my case. You see, I've known them for quite a while, because we were friends before we started dating. I remember at her highschool graduation party I really hit it off with her dad, basically spending the entire party talking with him and that was the first time we met. Then all the subsequent times I went over to her house I'd normally spend at least 10 minutes talking with him about our shared interests. I also know her brother well, having gone on a small road trip with him and spending an afternoon at my condo admiring all my cool nerd stuff. I also get along pretty well with her mom, but nothing really to talk about. I will say it was pretty interesting being there and spending time with them in a different capacity, because while everything was pretty much the same, there were some things of "now I'm seeing if this is something I may one day want to marry into" instead of before which was "ahhh different family dynamics, how fun" (and while we both agree marriage is a far off thing neither of us is ready for, we can't completely ignore it since that's the point of dating). It was nice not having any "soooo, what do you do at your day job" kind of grilling, and instead just talked about each other and the home made pickles I brought. It was a lot of fun. I made sure I left by 7 so I could make it to the Easter Vigil at my church. We said our goodbyes and "see you in 3 weeks" (because this was the last in person fun we'll have until next event). The Easter Vigil was your standard Catholic Easter Vigil; start from creation with the lights out and lighting candles, read passages leading up to Jesus's crucifixion and sing Alleluia for the first time when we get to his rising, and bless the holy water and candle for the coming year. We didn't have anyone baptized this year though. Oh well. Still a good mass, even if it was late.

Now it's time for Easter Sunday. I woke up early and went to my parents house, so then we could pile into my car and drive up to my aunt's house to see Grandpa. We brought our blessed Easter food (because we do the blessing of the Easter baskets) and said our hellos. We went to church at their church and this was some crazy planning on their part; they have a 7AM, 9:30AM, and 11AM mass, that pretty much go right up against each other. My brother and I got there early to save the seats, but that didn't make much of a difference because they went in on the side door and we went in the main door, resulting in a constant flow of people coming out and them able to get in before us. Good mass all in all. After mass we went back and had brunch. I brought bacon and home made pickles. Grandpa really liked the pickles, yay. We also had kielbasa and ham, and the pretzels and eggs from before (and some other things not really worth mentioning). Since my brother recently bought a DSLR, he showed it to Grandpa and Grandpa showed him his DSLR. They had a lot of fun talking photography. I told Grandpa about my current events at work, and he likes hearing about them. I also showed mom the pictures I took at the Mike and Mickey Show, and how they still managed to put on a good show. It was a good visit. Near the end I showed Grandpa the picture with the Easter Bunny and my girlfriend, and he had a rather calm reaction (unlike my other granparents, who got really excited and had us married next week, but then again they already knew her and "had us dating" pretty much our entire friendship). That was pretty much my Easter. I also digitized one of the mystery tapes, and it was this 6 hour basketball special without many commercial breaks. It was quite boring XP

The Monday following was a good day off. I recorded a new episode of the Peanut Butter Podcast and did some editing on a Tennessee Vlog installment (because I'm finally getting around to those after close to a year). I also got my allergy shot, because I had the time and was close enough to when I was due. I converted the remaining non-mystery tapes (one of which I have the perfect idea for a video). I watched Lars and the Real Girl, and made a podcast about it. I also realized I have about 2 months before my 10 year anniversary of opening up my youtube channel. I need to figure out what I'm doing for that. That was my Easter. It was really fun. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and if you'll excuse me, I'm going to do some after Easter sale shopping.

Family Camping 2012

Hey everyone, just came back from camping with friends that I have been camping with since, well forever. Mom and Dad were in a singles group, where they met, and they've all been camping together for over 20 years every year. We've grown and shrunk over the years, and this year seemed much smaller. I used to have trouble keeping tack of everyone's names, because we would have like 10-15 families all with kids and I only saw them a couple of times a year. This year we had 6 families, all of whom have been constant in coming to most gatherings. I know their names, except for a few who still trip me up.

Well now for the fun. We arrived Friday where we helped our friends who we were staying with set up their tent. Mom and Dad didn't want to do full camping so they stayed in a motel while we stayed with some friends in their tent. Friday tends to be a day where we all just kind of hang out and catch up. It's also the day when we go to the ice cream store that's right within walking distance, and is affordable, and as what happened a couple years ago, has onion water. I had crunchy munchy peanut butter. It's vanilla ice cream, with chocolate chunks and peanut butter. Really yummy.

Saturday is typically beach day, and this year was no different. We spent time at the beach, and since the friends we were staying with brought their dog, we spent time at the dog beach. The other time their dog came, 9 or so years ago, she was afraid of the water. This time, she went all the way in, with a little coxing, but fine, and had fun. I went toobing, and was able to stay in, until they made me turn around, then I kept falling off. The toobing was taken on the way to the sand bar with the drop off. It wasn't to too special. It was kind of on the other side of the lake with a bunch of people docked there. I swam off the drop off, and it's like a 45 degree angle. I did see drunk people partying on a pontoon boat. My friend that also went toobing didn't see much with the sand bar, so we just hung out on the boat and chatted about things. One drunk guy swam up to the boat and asked if we'd take him toobing in exchange for the rest of his beer. Friend handled it well with "this isn't my boat so not my call." He was like "OK I can respect that, but if you want to just find me." Well that was our fun on the beach and on the lake.

It was nearing dinner time, and Saturday dinner is always the big dinner with everyone. We have had different dinners over the years. This year, we had pizza and bread sticks. I had my pieces and we just had fun visiting. Our group has a Bob and a Larry, both dads, and they have young kids. As good Christian families, we all love Veggie tales, so Bob and Larry both have Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber T-shirts respectively, and their respective kids have shirts just like their dads. We got this really cute picture of Bob and Larry with their "little Junior Asparaguses." I would upload it but I don't know if they would want it up for the world to see. Just take my word for it.

Sunday, today, was go to church together, pack up, and say goodbyes. We're all Catholic, so we all go to church together. It's a nice church, and to my knowledge, we've all sat in the same spot since we can all sit in this one area. We normally go out to breakfast, like we did back when we all went to the same church and before everyone started moving away, but we had to get my brother to boy scout summer camp and had to miss it. To bad, it's normally quite fun. Well this has been Pokematic signing off and bu-bye.