Pokematic's Christmas through New Years Vacation (with a little Thanksgiving and Advent)

Hey everyone, time for my annual Christmas blog, and this year I'm throwing in New Years and Thanksgiving for a little extra fun. First I'll start with Thanksgiving, which was pretty basic. Mskate and I went to my parents and we had thanksgiving with the family, then we had desert and accordion playing. The next day IRA and I went black friday shopping, but the most interesting part of that was IRA woke mskate and I up at 4:30 saying "it's time for shopping it's time for shopping." Why, because everyone was empty, didn't have the same craziness as last year. When I went back to work there were people talking about how the news was all ready to interview people like they did last year but there wasn't anyone out. It was fun enough, we still bought a fair amount of things, but nothing to write home about. This is why I didn't do one this year; I'm sure I could have woven an entertaining story, but I just didn't feel inspired this year. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas Mskate and decorated for Christmas, wrapped gifts, and I did a 12 days of Christmas puzzle advent calendar. It was quite fun and I framed it quite nicely where it'll make a good decoration in the years to come. Given how busy we were and how short Advent was this year Christmas came pretty fast. Because it went so fast we almost didn't do the county lights this year, but we did after work on like the 21st, and we did it with my grandma and mom. Since it's a drive through exhibit thing we wanted to take her to it for a year or 2 now, but kept forgetting. She really enjoyed it.

OK time for Christmas Eve. First I'll start with it being REALLY foggy around where everyone lives. This made things rater interesting. Mskate and I packed up our car with all the gifts we were giving away and overnight stuff for the 2 days we'll be staying at the in-law's house. The fog was kind of cool on the drive up, kind of like a Halloween atmosphere. We dropped off all the overnight stuff and divided the gifts between who we were giving them to (my grandma, her family, and my family). I did the dividing while she settled in with the overnight stuff. We also visited some with her family, and then went off to the McDonald's by my grandma's.

For those who might be new to the blog, when I was little and we do the gift exchange with my grandparents, we'd all go to the McDonald's that's a block away and then Santa would come while we're eating lunch. To this day we still go there because it's part of the tradition. Now for the silly fun time story of this. I have the McDonald's app which means I can get free food and discounts while also getting points for future free food and discounts so long as I log in. However, I don't know if it's my phone, how I use my phone (normally I have location and mobile data turned off, so connecting can take some extra time), or just the android app, but it regularly crashes or becomes unresponsive whenever I try to use it. IRA also wanted the Kerwin Frost adult happy meal toys, so we got 2 of those for the family members that wanted chicken. We also got my grandma a happy meal; mom said "is it just so you have the ebay inventory toy," and I said "no, it's that but it's also just enough food for her and it gets apple slices for mskate." I'm going through the app trying to maximize the savings while the family is saying "I'm hungry." I eventually get us saving quite a fair amount of money with the discounts. It ended up going really well, and VikingPolak was able to get a free McChicken with the points since he still needed some food after everyone was done. We also got some very interesting chicken nugget toys with the Kerwin Frost box.

With McDonald's eaten we went to her house and exchanged gifts. It was primarily everyone giving grandma gifts and her giving everyone else gifts. We got grandma a bunch of snack foods, a build a bear outfit, a cinderella doll to go with her micky and minnie doll, and some other things. She gave me Krabby Patty Fruit Snacks, Duckman the complete series, a pokemon puzzle, lemon cookies, Dragon Ball season 3, Perfect Blue on steel book, hazelnut wafer rolls, goldfish, highlander on 4K, young justice season 3, a yo-yo, burger king gift cards, a reindeer ornament, a spongebob magic towel, hot chocolate, a meat stick and cheese pack, and a wooden puzzle marble run. This is a high level model that is fragile with a lot of pieces, definitely not for kids. Mskate got hair clips, popcorn, 2 hairbrushes, a disney mystery box stuffed animal (it was pumba in the shape of a pretzel), socks, a Lizzie Maguire mug, fruit snacks, gluten free cookies, jelly beans, milk chocolate truffles, smoked guda spread, a glitter star tree topper, bath bombs, crayola hat, hair ties, harry potter fruit snacks, an Anna from frozen magic towel, hot chocolate, and peppermint peeps. All the while we had the Arendale Yule Log playing on the TV, it made for a nice festive. After all the gifts we made it to church. While on the way I got some great video of the flog.

Video is uploaded with creative commons attribution, click here for details (youtube rumble)

After mass we had dinner, pizza I think. We then said our goodbyes and went to mskate's parent's house. When we got back we did some additional gift exchanges, I got some pokemon mega blocks and a mcdondald's gift card I think. Mskate got a peanuts christmas display thing, some ornaments, and a starbucks gift card. We also gave Delilah some gifts, peanut butter filled cow hooves and jerky treats. We gave her one of the peanut butter cow hooves when they had to put Duke to sleep earlier this year, and she was happy to have more of them since she really likes peanut butter. The rest of the night was pretty calm, I watched A Christmas Story on TBS as part of my tradition, and made some jokes on twitter about how it was my tradition. Having watched the first airing in full I didn't have to drive my families crazy with "I have to watch A Christmas Story on TBS." What was great was I was able to shower during the commercial break and miss nothing. Yay.

OK it's now Christmas morning. IRA is super excited (bragging about how he only slept for 2 hours). Before I get to the fun stuff, I need to explain/remind a thing about my father-in-law. He's notoriously hard to shop for, either thinking that what you got him is too low of quality or thinking that you spent way to much on something. I have cracked him though, what he needs are household items he doesn't yet have and doesn't realize he wants. We ended up getting him washing machine cleaner, gaffers tape, 3 different bird feeder feeds, pet stain cleaner, and a novelty sign that says "forget about the past you can't change it, forget about the future you can't know it, forget about the present because I didn't get you one" (we had him open that last). He liked all of them. For Delilah her final present from us were pawstruck dog bone treats. She REALLY liked those. They were a little big for her but she loved jumping on it and biting it and breaking off crumbs she later licked up. I think I won Christmas for the dog (at least for now, more on that later). From them I got more pokemon mega blocks (specifically the pokeballs that make for great desk decorations, IRA had them stacked together since they link together on the top), a pikachu children's model (I think I'll do a "model review" where I give Crash a friend), pokemon puzzles, a tin of breakfast blend tea, a buckees shirt, a Naruto mug with Naruto socks, a new polo work shirt, a Naruto shirt, more McDonald's gift cards, a lego parrot, gum, life savers candy, a stuffed snorlax, and a stuffed dragonite. IRA picked out the Naruto stuff because when we went to Disney I had ramen twice, and he associates ramen with Naruto and not "I can make my own food/broke college student." Oh well, I like Naruto even though I haven't watched it in a long while. Mskate also gave me some things here. She gave me a gourmet cookie that she bought from someone at church and a hot sauce variety pack. I gave her her presents from me the day after with my parents. She got peeps, Harry Potter legos, a calendar, stationary, a saint a day book, a harry potter shirt, a harry potter mini backpack purse thing (similar to loungefly but not that brand), cheese knives, American Girl Doll accessories, a starbucks gift card, jelly beans, a phone protector, high quality markers for art things, candy canes, a stuffed Harry Potter and Hermione, a stuffed Winnie the Pooh and Piglet, and stuffed santas. We gave IRA various nightmare before christmas things and volume 1 of invincible. It was a great day. I don't remember what we got mom-in-law, but they were things she liked. There's also this funny chocolates we got. It's a company that makes Easter chocolates and they did Santa and his reindeer, but I swear the reindeer were just the bunny mold with antlers on the ears in the foil.

Now with gifts over we went to get mskate's aunt from 2 blocks away. When we got her in we gave her her little gifts from us (rice krispy treats). She really liked them. We had breakfast and all went well. Now for some of the Delilah story, she was going absolutely crazy with the bone thing, running around everywhere, digging in her dog bed, and general hyperactivity. After breakfast aunt's daughter picked her up and went to their next activity. She also brought over her dog Edison, a big dog that they gave some big rawhide treats to that were too big for Delilah. The dogs ran around together and had a lot of fun. I don't know if they knew each other before this, but they enjoyed each other it seems like. We rested for a few hours before going to my parents. I watched A Christmas Story on TNT during this time (because TNT aired it on the odd hours and was a different channel). It was fun.

It's now about 2PM, time for my parents party. We got there before everyone else, and then mom and grandma got there. We helped grandma into the house and got her seated. After Mrs. G joined us we did coloring cookies; one Easter we got my grandma these coloring book cookies with edible markers and we found it's a food and activity my grandma really likes (it's the only thing she eats really quickly). We got her the cookies on Christmas Eve and we did them on Christmas day, with some extras for her to do at a later time. We were going to use the different markers from other times but we lost them. Oh well, we'll get them another time since this is going to be a thing we do with her for a while. After the cookies we did oplatke, a Polish tradition. Mskate and I got the oplatke from our church since ours does it, and it was fun. We did it at our little gathering and dad and vikingpolak did it with our grandpa and aunt. It was a fun little time.

Now for the other part of the party, where my dad and brother came back from aunt and grantpa's. Normally grandma's long time friends with the accordion come over but they had to stay healthy due to an upcoming surgery. Oh well, we still managed to enjoy ourselves, just a lot of talking. We had dinner ham, rolls, corn, green beans, and sweet potatoes. Mom didn't serve the ham on a very good plate, it was pretty shallow resulting in me spilling the juice on myself. It was a good dinner. After dinner we had desert with IRA and mom-in-law joining us. Grandma gave IRA a minions magic towel, and he made his when he got it. Since he's a bit of a doof he activated his towel by soaking it in water, and then bringing it out sopping wet to show everyone. I cleaned up the water he was dripping everywhere. Mom-in-law also brought over a dancing snoopy toy that she got for Christmas to entertain grandma, and I showed her a dance she could do to dance along (hold her arms up in front of herself and do windshield wipers). It was a fun time. When we were done we got grandma all packed up to go home, and went back to the in-laws. Delilah was still very excited, and dad-in-law figured there was something in the new bone that was making her all crazy. Apparently she didn't sleep much that night.

Now it's the day after Christmas, Boxing Day if you're Canadian (which I'm not). Mskate's dad got fed up with the paw struck treats so he threw them out. Delilah was looking around sad that she lost her treat toy. I later dug them out to give to Edison since his dog-mom causes a lot of trouble, so causing her some trouble wouldn't be that bad (he got pretty excited as well, but he just liked the new toy thing). We went to my parent's house and set-up the gifts. We gave my dad a lot of peanuts stuff (peanuts hot chocolate, the Charlie Brown and Snoopy show complete series, 4 TV movie set, and a pop-up card with the Christmas special scene where Linus says what Christmas is all about), and some cooking things I think. We got my mom brownie mix (she really likes to make brownies), bath and bodyworks soaps and lotions, gift cards, and some other things. We got my brother a flash light, shirts, an amo box, beard wash and conditioner (that we got from bed bath and beyond in the bankruptcy sale), and some other things. I got this peanut butter cup and chocolate trailmix insert mix (really good), a game called "nice buns," a squishy stress ball thing, a spongebob puzzle, spiderman across the spiderverse, a slinky, Crash 4 it's about time, pickles, sunflower seed kernels, katamari, spongebob socks, a ruby tuesdays gift card, a taco bell gift card, uber gift card, slide wistle, and a rubix cube key chain. Mskate got dominos, gluten free cookies, an american girl doll play set (a truly me doll she's naming Noel), bath bombs, lotion, and a warming unicorn. Mskate and I got matching Disney shirts, so we know what we'll wear next trip. We also got Disney 100 happy meal toys, a collection process we worked on when it was in restaurants and we are only missing 3. This is also when I gave her my gifts, The Aristocats on Bluray with the Disney 100 slip case with Marie on it (she loves Marie), and Miracle on 34th street. After all the gift giving and breakfast cinnamon rolls and bagels we watched an episode of the Charlie Brown and Snoopy show. It was REALLY funny, I picked a winner. After that we gathered up our stuff from both houses, and went home. For the next many days I was just working on finding places to keep all our new gifts. One thing I need to do is find a place in the curio cabinet for the happy meal toys that are basically just figures.

The days between Christmas and New Years were pretty chill. For the most part I organized our new presents and rested. 2 days before New Years Eve we went up to mskate's parent's house so she and dad-in-law could see The Polar Express in IMAX for his birthday, and IRA and I went to see The Boy and the Herron, the movie the Hayao Miyazaki came out of retirement for, reopening Studio Ghibli just to make (though basically that just meant that the people that made Studio Ponok went back to the old offices since they made their own studio after Ghibli closed). It was a really good movie, even though it had a lot of "Ghibli old lady face" and "Ghibli fluids," along with some "Ghibli frog face" if I'm not mistaken (3 elements of Ghibli movies I don't care for). I'll be making a review at some point. Since the theater we went to was close to where Cousin M lives IRA and I stopped by after the movie for an impromptu visit. We talked for maybe an hour just catching up, which was great since we didn't see him at Christmas. Then the day before New Years Eve we had a funeral for one of the scout moms from my old Boy Scout troop. It was sad but it was great seeing so many people I haven't seen in over a decade. Since she was so involved in the troop (regularly being an adult leader on camp outs and driving us up in her 15 passenger van (the memory I shared in facebook that made the sons smile, and I shared in the "write down a memory"). So many people from my old troop came, so many people I remembered but didn't recognize (I said "who am I not recognizing" but when he said his name I would remember instantly). After the funeral the luncheon was held at the VFW post that we would regularly partner with for blood drives with or hold banquets at. One of the VFW men recognized me from 12+ years ago, which was so cool. It was just a regular troop reunion, and the good thing is since mskate and I grew up in the same area she knew a number of people and wasn't "I don't know anyone, stick with me and don't socialize to the full extent with your old friends" like I imagine many spouses would be in situations like this. About halfway through before one of the sons had to leave we took a picture with all the old scouts that were there including the old scout masters. Just a great little thing.

Now it's New Years Eve, I had some ebay packages to mail so I went to Meijer for the authorized USPS shipping location. While there I did some shopping and used some coupons while also buying on sale Christmas stuff (primarily chocolates, but also a dog sweater for Delilah next Christmas). I basically got everything for 50% off, yay. Then after my shopping I went to Wendy's and got one more free Jr. Frosty (got mskate a small vanilla diet coke and I had the frosty). Then it was time to go to our camping friend's New Years Eve party. Our contribution to the party was a meat and cheese tray, plate of cookies, champagne, fireworks, and board games. The food went over very well, and the champagne was great for the New Years toast. The game we brought was the Nice Buns game my mom got me for Christmas, and it was a really fun game. The goal is to get 3 sets of 3 cards of the same color (9 total) before your opponents, while also avoiding the "fishy buns" which prevent you from making a set, while rolling dice that determine how many new cards you can get and if you can get rid of your fishy bun if you have it, and while there's a lot of chance with the drawing of cards and rolling of dice there's also a lot of skill with how the players play the dice and cards. We had one game that went on for about an hour because we got really into strategy of how to play the dice and cards, and played it 2 or so other times. It's a really fun game and will be bringing it camping. Since my godfather and his family weren't going to be there for the ball drop I lit off some of my fireworks for my godbrother around 10PM (the others would be done at midnight). He's still young and doesn't have the "backyard shows," so he was yelling "you need to call the fire department, I've never seen up close fireworks." My godfather was a little nervous about this since he's been to some irresponsible backyard shows, but he also knew I was responsible and safe. I lit off 3 in the drive way while he and my mom stood at a far distance, and he thought they were really cool. I'm sure there's going to be some "can we do fireworks like [Pokematic] did" and there's going to be things like "no, that's a thing only specially trained people like Mr. [Pokematic] are able to do on New Years and the 4th of July." Mom also took a photo of me with the firework and said "you're just like [you're uncle who would light off the fireworks when we did 4th of July parties 20 years ago]." We all just hung out until about 10 minutes to midnight, and then we started getting ready for the ball drop. I popped the cork on the champagne into the back yard and poured as many glasses as the hosts had, and everyone that wanted some got it. I also jokingly told the hosts "send one of your kids to find the cork in the morning." We counted down the ball and toasted the drinks. I lit off the remaining 6 or so fireworks for an audience of about 5 people. The fun thing is I bought this kit and box of tanks about 7 years ago and have been gradually lighting them off 1-4 at a time over new years and 4th of July at my house, and with this it's now about done (still have some small ones and tanks left, but "the show pieces" are all done now). Now it's time for me to get a new kit since everyone really liked them (and hopefully I can get some on sale now that new years is over). Shortly after the fireworks it was time to go home.

So there you have it, my Christmas and New Years 2023 extravaganza (with a hint of Thanksgiving and Advent). It was quite a great time. It was also quite an eventful 2023 (which I'll recap in another blog). New Years day is the last day of my break (which went very quickly), and will be populated with various "get ready for the work week" stuff (and maybe some sales to get more fireworks). This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Oh and here's Steamboat Willie, hosted by me on this blog (not linked). I can do so because it is now 2024 and Steamboat Willie is now public domain.

A Historical SpongeBob Weekend

Hey everyone. Back in August I saw that SpongeBob The Musical would be playing in Dayton this weekend (November 22nd) and I asked mskate if she would be interested in seeing it together since I was interested and Dayton is close enough for us to go to. While SpongeBob isn't really her thing, she knows it's something I enjoy and would enjoy having a little date weekend. Friday was SpongeBob, Saturday was all mskate's choices, and Sunday was travel home day.

Friday was a simple day. I took the Friday off work and left 7AM after eating a quick breakfast. I drove all the way to mskate but since she was still working I had some time to myself. I went to the videogame store in her city and spent about an hour there, looking for PS2 games I don't have. I picked up 12. After shopping I went to the thrift store in her city and did some thrifting. Unfortunately I didn't find anything there. Oh well. I still had some time before mskate got home to let me in, so I sat outside her apartment and watched some hulu and youtube with the end of the range of the wifi. When she got home she needed a rest, so I just watched Home Improvement in the warmth. After the rest, we watched I Want to Eat Your Pancreas, and she really enjoyed it.

Now for the main event, SpongeBob the Musical. I got dressed up all special.

Slightly kidding, I wore that under my pants and jacket.

Mskate wasn't too thrilled about me, being me about it, but once she saw I wasn't the only one wearing very casual and SpongeBob stuff she was cool with it. The souvenir stand didn't have any posters, so I unfortunately didn't get something from there; I have enough t-shirts and don't use buttons and bags and such, but I like getting posters to hang in my nerd cave. Since we got there early the doors weren't open yet, but thankfully there was a guy giving a talk about the history of SpongeBob and the musical. Here's a brief clip I took.

It started with Stephen Hillenburg's start in a tidal pool park and his creation of a comic book of the marine life in tidal pools and went all the way to the creation of SpongeBob the Musical. I didn't know he created a comic book, or worked on Rocco's Modern Life. When he said "Rocco's Modern Life," I gave a small excited fist pump and he said "oh I see you're a fan, anyone else fans? No, you should check it out." Also when he said "SpongeBob has been on the air for 20 years" I thumb pointed to myself saying "fan since the start." Then at the end there was a little trivia question for "how many times has SpongeBob failed his driving test." I was thinking about the season 1 episode where he failed 38 times, and the speaker said "superfan, let's let the kids have a chance." When they were saying "1000 times" and "that's too low," I thought "oh no, it's the episode where Mrs. Puff gets replaced, that was...9,256 times," so when he called on me I said "well if you're going off the season 1 episode it was 38 times, but later it was 9,256 times." I was still off, because it was 1,258,058 times, but because I was such a super fan he gave me a consolation prize of a reusable bag.

By now it was about time the doors opened, but first I went to the bar to see if they had any SpongeBob themed drinks. When I go to the movie theater it's not uncommon for a big movie to have a themed cocktail, and I like to try "the cliffhanger" and similar. Unfortunately there wasn't "the fry cook" or "Texan squirrel" or similar, so I didn't have anything. Just like with The Monkees we went to a higher floor thinking "based on what I paid we're probably up higher," but then the usher told us "no you're on the 1st floor." After finding our seats I decided to walk around some and take in the sites.

After doing my blogger/vlogger thing, I sat down and enjoyed the band.

It was pretty fun. Mskate got a little frustrated when they just kept going beyond when the show was supposed to start. Anyway, about 5 minutes or so before the show started there was a guy dressed as Patchey that was walking around taking pictures.

Appreciate the pictures, because I almost got in trouble for them. One of the ushers came up to me and said "no pictures." I thought he was just a super fan cosplaying as Patchey, but apparently he was part of the show. Anyway, the show started not much longer after that and you can check out the companion review podcast.

It was a really fun day. At the end of the show they shot streamers over the front of the audience. The last time I went to a show where they shot streamers over the audience I stuck around to collect the streamers. Then again, the last show I went to with that was Sesame Street Live when I was 7, so there's that. Seeing that it's almost 20 years later I didn't do that. We left the theater pretty much immediately after the show. We went to our respective sleeping locations and that was it for the night.

Now comes Saturday. We went to our favorite breakfast place once we were both up. I decided to try something different this time, super breakfast sandwich; scrambled eggs, bacon, and cheddar cheese on white toast. She had an omelet. After breakfast we went shopping. We went to TJ Maxx to get clear nail polish and a picture frame. The clear nail polish was to seal the decal I put on a hair brush for her birthday gift, and the picture frame is for a Christmas present for my grandma. After TJ we went to Bath and Bodyworks for a little Christmas soap present shopping for the ladies in our life (moms, grandmas, and her) since all the hand soaps were on sale. We did some more walking around the mall, but there wasn't anything else worth noting. We just hung out at her place and watched Home Improvement for a few hours until our next activity. It was fun watching it with her because we were both little kids when it first aired and our dads really enjoyed it. "I remember watching this when I was really little, my dad really liked this show," "mine too, I remember watching it at our old house." I had soup from the grocery store that's across the street from her for lunch. We also made a gingerbread turkey as a little art and cooking project. The turkey turned out good.

Now for the next activity, Christmas village thing at the Dayton historical village. The historical village is a bunch of different buildings and such that was around Dayton for the last 200+ years, like from the time before electricity to the late 40s. They were making gingerbread cookies, roasted chest nuts, and hot cider in the pre-electricity area, and I had a gingerbread cookie. It was a good cookie, and the first one I had this season. After the cookie place we walked around the village some more. We went to a working printing press, and it was cool to see all the old equipment and old way of doing things. They also had the backgrounds on some old sayings. Like, "mind your P's and Q's is based on how lowercase p and q look similar, and with print mirrored it's easy to mess up," and "dingbat is actually fancy way to fill empty space." We also went to a history of bikes from this factory. Here are some pictures.

Bicycle built for 3, and a bike with a radio. It was neat.

The next place was this train museum. They had cabooses, trolley cars, high class train cars, and souveniers. There was also a little train we could ride on. Like, it was this mini-engine that could pull 4 cars with 5 people to a car around a little track. It reminded me of this part that was by my house we called "the train park" because they had the same kind of thing. Mskate and I had a fun little ride. Here are the pictures of the train car.

We also went up this observatory tower thing. The sign said it was 120 steps, and by the top we were tired and I felt like I had a good work out. However, we did get a really nice view of the lights, and it was worth it for the exercise. After that we went to a Wright Brothers museum. They had the work shop they worked in, some prototypes, a 13 minute video of the history of their experiments and journey to flight, and the piece de resistance, the actual plain the Wright Brothers made their flights on and the final project of Orval (bring the plain back home and build a museum around it).

I had some cheese fries after the Wright Brothers, and after that we looked around the historical museum. Apparently cash registers were a big industry in Dayton, as was prohibition.

We're definitely going to go back there for a day trip sometime, because there is a LOT to see, and we were getting pretty tired. We had take-out for dinner, and I made it romantic with candle light, and watched more Home Improvement the rest of the night.

Sunday wasn't too spectacular. I had my left overs from dinner for breakfast and went to church. After church we packed up my stuff and I went home. It was a really fun weekend, full of a lot of fun things. Well, this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Family Campout 2019 Fun

Hey everyone, it's that time again, family campout with my camping friends. It's always fun seeing the camping friends considering we only see each other a few times a year (not because we're anti-social, but because we all live so far away now and it's like the only time we can see all get together). I packed everything on Thursday and went over to my parents house for the night. When we were planning things on Wednesday my mom asked me what time I would get there on Friday, and I said "well I was planning on coming over on Thursday night," and that made things a little easier because we were able to practice pack. Then at night I watched SpongeBob using my parents slingTV subscription. I have playstation vue and don't get Nickelodeon, so it's great watching Nickelodeon at my parents house. I watched SpongeBob's Big Birthday Blowout, and I need to do a review of this, because it's the 20th anniversary special and it's basically an apology for Truth or Square, one of my first reviews. [Editor's note, I did do a review, here it is]. We went out for pizza on Thursday for family fun. That was basically Thursday night.

Now for Friday. We packed-up the perishable things (cooler food) and that was it since we packed all the other things the night before. We drove a while and stopped at the outlet mall. Normally we stop at the pepridge farm store because I like goldfish crackers and millano cookies (and it's always fun to see what kind of other things they might have), but since I still have a bunch of stuff from last year we didn't stop there. We did stop at the Colman store and I got a cooler and my parents got my aunt a cot. After that I just kind of played my switch and slept while I waited for us to get to camp.

Now we get to camp. We were squatting on my godfather's site this weekend. We arrived before them, so we spent the time waiting for them to show-up visiting with the others that were already there. We gave my aunt the cot and not too much longer my godfather and his family showed up. I helped them set-up their tent, and being the tent expert I am, it went up quite easily. While I was working on the tent, my godbrother was on top of the car helping to unload the cartop carrier. Watching him do that, I was quite jealous, because my parents never let me climb on top of the car for any reason. After helping them set-up camp, we had lunch. I had a hamburger and spam sandwich, with cheese. Yum. This year I didn't have to share my burger with my cousin's dog Louie, because he was far more comfortable this year. Here's a picture I took with him.

After lunch we went to check into our motel. It was pretty uneventful, just unload our night bags, sleeping stuff (my cot and sleeping bag), and electronic stuff for at night. After check-in we went back to camp. Since it was so hot and I brought my gold rush nugget buck, and I read there was trace gold in the area, and that it's recreational gold panning is legal in my state, I put on my swimsuit and went swimming for the first time in years. My goal was to go into the lake some, dig down to what I thought was black sand (I remember from as a kid if you dug deep enough you'd get to black colored sand) and hopefully find some gold. If nothing else, just have fun playing on the beach. I didn't find anything. A lot of my camp friends asked me what I was doing and wanted to watch, and I have experience panning the dirt I buy online so I kind of know what I'm doing, but there wasn't any gold in the lake. Doing a little more research on where to pan for gold, I figure a lake is a pretty bad spot since you want basically "1 way water flow to wash away lite sediments" instead of "2 way waves layering the lite stuff on top of each other." Oh well, it was all for fun anyways.

[time skip in writing]

Woops, I must have said "I'll come back to this after a break" and then 3 months go by. I'll do my best to recall what happened, but it's going to be a little more fractured.

After swimming we had dinner and a camp fire. It was a fun time hanging out. When it came time for the squatters to leave we went back to our motel. The rooms didn't have air conditioning, so we were hot. I remember waking up like 4 times throughout the night and drinking 4 cups of water because I was losing so much water. Breakfast was pretty typical. I had a muffin and bacon at the motel before we went to the campground.

Saturday was pretty eventful. The morning started out pretty tame, just hanging out, catching up. One of the gen 2 girls teaches Zumba and brought her music with her, so she led a Zumba class for anyone that would join in. My mom was one of them, as were some of the other moms. I also did some dog sitting for Louie while his owners went swimming. He had some separation anxiety (because he was rescued off the street), but when I took him for a walk he got really happy and enjoyed the exploring. I brought some manga with me (Splatoon volume 2 and Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man's Chest) and decided to read it after lunch. Well then it started raining, and I was REALLY glad I brought my manga because otherwise I would have been really bored. Everyone huddled under various dining flies, and some people brought out cards for different card games. I had a few people look over my shoulder to see the manga, and I had a little fun explaining why it read backwards. I think around 3PM my parents said "lets go back to our motel," and we did. I did some web surfing and watched TV, and we waited until it was time for mass.

Mass was a little different this year. Normally we go to this church that's kind of out in the woods on Sunday, but this year we went to a church that's in the city on Saturday. That meant I wasn't able to watch the sign language interpreter, because the woods church has ASL. Afterwards my mom ran into someone she knows, apparently an old friend of the camping group. She introduced me as "remember my eldest son? This is him now." That tends to happen quite frequently with me; not as much as when I was in middle school and such, but still happens occasionally. After church we went to the pizza place for dinner. We've been going to this place for about 10 years now, and this year we decided to eat in the restaurant. While we were planning to eat in the restaurant, it was really good since it was still raining. While I was there I found this little sign.

I thought it reminded me of Sarcastic SpongeBob. wE wAnT yOuR cOmEnTs

By now it had stopped raining. We had a camp fire with the wood we kept dry and the chairs we kept dry. We also burned some card board boxes. One thing I did was I brewed decaf sun tea all day, because that night I was going to make my special cocktail "backwoods arnie." I made up some shots for everyone that was old enough to drink and interested, and a lot of people were and thought it tasted really good. My godbrothers also wanted some to drink, so I let them have the decaf sun tea. I made sure to tell their dad it was just decaf sun tea, because I didn't want him thinking I was giving his 11 and 6 year old alcohol, or caffeine before bed. When we went back to the hotel we realized we should probably open the window, and that made things much better.

Sunday was pretty low key. Normally Sunday is church day, but since we already went we didn't go. We had a communal breakfast where we had pancakes, bacon, French toast, and whatever was left over that people didn't want to take home. After breakfast we said our goodbyes, packed-up our camp chairs and other things, and went back to check-out of the motel. After that we started our drive back home, and after unpacking all their stuff I made my way back home. It was great to see everyone again. This has been pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

A Short Vacation

Hey everyone, I have some vacation time and I wanted to take a little trip. I hadn't visited my godfather in a while, and I haven't seem mskate in a while either. Since they live in the same state and there was a holiday weekend, I worked it out with them to take a little trip to see them. Here's the adventure I had.

Friday I took a half day off work. I had a half day of vacation time and I wouldn't have made much better time if I took a whole day. I packed up all my stuff the night before and left from work. It's not like it would have been that much more of a drive since I live close to work, but I didn't want to get tempted to "take care of some stuff at home" because I tend to do that. It was a 4 hour drive with some stops along the way. Not many, but still some. I stopped at a Walmart and picked-up special beer for my brother and dad. There's this one beer they really like that's not available in our state, so I picked-up a case for them. I also wanted to see if there were any videogame things I can't find at my own stores (amiibo, DLC cards, etc.). Unfortunately they didn't. A funny thing was I was asked by a salesman if I had one of their local utilities suppliers (trying to sell me theirs). I told him which I had and he was confused, because it's out of state. He did recognize it though, so that was funny.

After some more driving I arrive at my godfathers house. My godbrothers (age 10 and 4) and godsister (age 7) were out playing, so they were the first to see me and really happy. I got out and gave everyone a hug. They helped me unpack my stuff and take it in. After all my driving, and difficulty sleeping the night before out of excitement, I needed a break. I just lied down for about an hour. Not really a nap, just "clear my head." After that I played monopoly with the kids, because my oldest godbrother loves monopoly. We had dinner later, and did some more playing. My youngest godbrother enjoyed climbing on me, because he's at that age. It's come full circle, because at that age my godfather was my human jungle gym, and now I'm the human jungle gym for his son. After the kids bedtime, I visited with my godfather and his wife for maybe an hour. It was nice having some adult conversation after kid time.

Now for Saturday. We went to daily mass as part of their daily routine. After mass we played more monopoly, because that's what they like. After lunch we cut down some dead trees. That was interesting. I remember last time I visited we did some demo work. It was pretty fun taking down the trees; demolition with chain saws, I felt so manly. The kids also enjoyed it, because it's not every day you cut down a tree. We originally were just going to take down 2 of the dead trees, but we ended up taking down all 4. After taking the trees down I suggested we take a break. It was cold, and while we weren't FEELING tired, I knew we needed to take a break because one's body does not get fatigued the same way when the environment is cold (I find it's a "go go go go go then BAM! can barely move" as opposed to a gradual fatigue with all other temperatures). What was really cute was my godsister wanted to make everyone hot chocolate. That really hit the spot. After our little break we chopped up the trees into logs for their log cabin project, as well as chop the limbs up for disposal.

Dinner was quite fun. We had a camp fire weenie roast. They have a little above ground fire pit with a cooking rack. I helped build up a fire. One of our traditions is our families go camping every summer (I've talked about it before), so having a little camp fire at home was fun for everyone. I did a lot of the cooking, because I like camp fire cooking. I had like 3 hot dogs, it was good. After dinner and the fire it was time for the kids bedtime. After they went to sleep we got the surprise tucked away. My godsister is getting a new bed for Christmas. Right now she shares a room with her brothers, and here's another cool full circle thing. When I was growing up my godfather had a bunk bed for when he had guests with kids stay with him (and with our camping friends, that happened kind of often); now his kids are using that bunk bed. Back to the story, their mom found a bed on craigslist and we had to find a way to keep it hidden. The headboard and footboard weren't that difficult but the part the mattress sits on was going to be difficult (it was the size of a twin mattress). Since we played hide and go seek the night before, I knew some of the good hiding places. I found we could stick it behind the deep freeze and it would blend in with the wall and shelf already there. Hopefully it lasts until Christmas.

Sunday was a quick day with them. Their oven went out so I helped move the new oven from the garage to inside the house. After church I said my goodbyes because I had to go see mskate. They didn't realize I wasn't going to stay for lunch, but they understood I had other people to see on my trip (well, everyone above the age of  9 for sure). The drive to mskate's wasn't that bad. She's about an hour from my godfather's. I gave her a call when I was maybe 30 minutes away and we made plans on what movie to see. The options were The Nutcracker and the 4 realms or Illumination's Grinch. She wanted to see Nutcracker more than Grinch (she doesn't care much for Dr. Seuss), but being a good friend she offered an alternative in case I didn't want to see Nutcracker. However, since I will probably see Grinch on my own and probably wouldn't see Nutcracker alone, I said we should see Nutcracker. On the rest of my drive I came up with a funny Seuss rhyme about what we were seeing.

We're not going to see Dr. Seuss
I know you don't like him because his words are too loose
Instead we'll see the cracker of nuts
A movie I know we will like luts.

When I arrived I told her my little rhyme. It got a chuckle. We said hello and I set-up her Christmas tree timer. It wasn't too long before we went on our way to the movies. The Nutcracker was alright, I'd say worth a rental, but nothing really worth going to the theater for. After that we did some charity Christmas shopping (she had to get play-doh, and I helped pick out a fun set) and explored the down town. She wanted to explore there kind of since she moved there but didn't want to go alone (and since she's a smaller woman and there were some slightly sketchy stores, I don't blame her). It was a nice little downtown though. We went to a used book store where I got a batman and superman compilation comic. She wanted to get something for her brother but wasn't sure what. Since I like a lot of the same things as her brother, I picked out a comic book adaptation of Batman Forever. I don't remember what she got for herself, but she liked it. It was a cute little book store, full of all sorts of books, and a trap door that lead to the cellar. After the book store we went to the goodwill across the street. Unfortunately I didn't find any unique VHS tapes, or videogames, so goodwill was a bust. At the end of the street there was a music store, with CDs and vinyl. I looked through the vinyl comedy section and found a Steve Martin album and a Monty Python album for cheap. I bought them. We also saw the Coco soundtrack on vinyl, and it was a really cool picture press. Neither of us bought it, but it was cool to look at.

After our adventure we had dinner. We considered going to this Irish Pub that was in the down town, but after looking at the menu online we decided against it. Instead we went to one of the bars we found on our little adventure. I had a super grilled ham sandwich with fried onions and barbecue sauce and one of the house cocktails. Mskate had a cheeseburger with a gluten free bun and a diet coke. When she ordered the options were red, pink, or no pink. She got a little confused and said red. After ordering I made sure she really wanted a rare burger. Turns out she got a little confused because she's only used to rare, medium, and well done and she really wanted no pink. When our waitress came back with our drinks I told the waitress about the mistake. Our dinners were good, and so was my drink. When we got our bills she was kind of surprised my dinner was cheaper than hers even though I got a drink. Well the hamburgers are more expensive and the gluten free bun added some money. After dinner we went back to her place and watched The Greatest Showman. I hadn't seen it, and it was really good.

After the movie I left for my hotel. I booked one that I thought would be close, but turns out it was on the other side of the city (and it's a wide city). The fun thing about the hotel was they had on demand, and nickelodeon. Since I have playstation vue I no longer get nickelodeon, so I was able to watch season 9 SpongeBob. Yay. During the middle of the night the smoke alarm in my room started chirping, so I had to change rooms, at 2AM. That was an experience, but at least I got a bit of an upgrade. I left the luggage cart in my room all night.

Now it's Monday morning. I slept in and had some continental breakfast. I got fruit loops and ate them while I watched SpongeBob in my room. Afterwards I checked-out and went to the videogame store that's close to her. I bought 16 PS2 games and a PSP game. They were cheap and kind of all over the place in terms of genre. The guy behind the counter asked if I was filling out a collection. I told him how I'm working on a complete north American set, and how I'm 20% of the way there (2100 games for a complete set, and I have 400). He asked if I have one of the most expensive games yet (which came in recently and was on their ebay page); I chuckled and said "no, right now I'm working on getting all the cheap stuff." I always enjoy bringing a big stack of PS2 games to the counter and seeing what the clerk says. After the store I went on my way home. I wanted to check out this entertainment center with arcade and go carts and more that I passed on my way down, but when I got there I found out they're closed on Mondays. Oh well, I needed to get home anyways; not because anyone was expecting me, but I had to get ready for work on Tuesday. I did find a goodwill on the way home, and found an interesting collectors edition of Jurassic Park and The Lost World Jurassic Park; what makes them interesting is they're a 2 tape set with the movie on one tape and bonus features on the other tape. All in all it was a really fun trip. I look forward to the next little adventure. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Lets shoot a short film

Hey everyone, so today I spent all day with my film club filming a short film. This was an all day event, that involved lots of shooting on location, with 4 or 5 different locations. One of which was a convenience store and another on a bus. It was really interesting.

Now as an engineer with some experience in video production, I lacked much of the skills which would be required to shoot to the level in which we were. I don't know how to operate an audio recorder of professional quality with all the specific settings. Low gain, high pitch, other things either on or off. I don't know what all that does. Mono or stereo or 5.1 surround, the extent of my understanding. I could work a DSLR camera if shown how, but I don't know all that would need to go into framing a shot. I could try, but I'll let the other guys handle it. I can act, but not to the level of the guys in the theater department. I ended up being an extra in one scene and equipment pack mule. I did have the plastic bag and the coke bottle that were useful, and added to the cool toys for the set up shot.

Now here's how my day went. I got up at 7:30 because I could have sworn the director said crew be there at 8:30, and I wanted breakfast, and since I lack a car requiring me to walk to the location, I allotted plenty of time. Well turns out the caf opens at 9 on the weekends. I wouldn't know that since I always sleep until at least 9 on typical weekends, with atypical involving some other form of breakfast available that's better. So I stocked my pockets with a couple power bars and ate one before leaving, since we were planning on eating at Jimmy Johns and I'm not a big fan of sandwich places. Well turns out no one showed up until 8:30 and that was just 1 person. Everyone else got there between 8:45 and 9. Oh well.

We start getting ready to film at about 9. Our audio person couldn't figure out how to turn on the audio or exactly what some of the settings were. I was able to do turn it on and that was the extent of my abilities. She figured out the rest. I ended up playing "guy milling about in store," and "dude," 2 extras. I got to just look around at the merchandise, and look like I was looking for beer with my friends, while watching the craziness. What exactly is that craziness, you'll just have to watch the video. We did end up making a bit of a mess with the fake blood. I asked our Director of Photography if he wanted help cleaning it up but he said it was fine. OK.

After that, we went on to do the exterior shots. Before I went out to do them, I got a 12 oz coke in a glass bottle. I've had 8 oz but not 12. This bottle is big. It doesn't have a twist off top, but good thing I have a can opener that I could use as a bottle opener on my multi-tool. This inspired one of my other friends to get one since he could open it due to my resourcefulness. Anyways, the next shot involved a little girl as a character. It's true, never work with animals or children. I later had a run in with the animal part, but here's what happened with our child. She was rather shy and quiet. When I heard that she might flub her lines but I didn't expect her to just not talk and get super stage fright. We ended up getting what we needed.

We waited for our main character to clean up to do the before the store scenes. And while waiting, a guy nicknamed "Sponge bob" came out to his corner and started his yelling free-styling and stripped dancing. He has his shirt pushed up so it's just on his neck and his chest is exposed, with his pants sagging. He harassed our guys a little since we were shooting some shots from across the street. Luckily once our director said that we were shooting a short film he left us alone. We got our shots on time, thankfully. Now time to break for lunch.

Most of us went to the caf right next to our next location on campus. In the credits, a joke is going to be Bistro 3 (the caf) catered the event. Our next scene involved the bus stop right our side the caf. It's adjacent to dorms, so naturally some guys start harassing us. They're throwing some really bad ones at us, ones I don't wish to repeat here since they got really R-rated and I like to stay at most PG-13. I was just thinking, "OK shut up guys, you're just being obnoxious." Then they quoted Money Python with "you're mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries." That made me laugh, but glad that the director was able to get them to shut up.

Our next shot took place on a bus. That was fun. All 7 of us and all our equipment just get on one of the city buses and go for a 45 minute ride and shoot. I didn't have any part because I had extra parts in the convenience store. I just ended up talking with a friend while this all happened.

Our final shot took place at our main character's house and his "girlfriend's" house. His house had lots of fun stuff, comic books, comic book DVDs, video game Lego's, action figures, and the like. It was fun. I brought my Naruto key chain, Naruto figure, Trunks action figure, spongebob cereal box prize, and hidden leaf headband. Everything else was brought by either our star, or the guy whose house we were filming at had it all on hand. We shot it at one of our member's house, and he and his roommates have a cat with extra toes. The extra toes look like a thumb on her one paw. It's really interesting.

Like I said, most of my duties for this project were equipment lugging and extra. I carried the tripods, boom mic, and other stuff from location to location. Well location to car, and car to location. The rest of the time I mostly spent time being behind the scenes and bonding with other guys who weren't doing anything at the moment. Fun time.

Now I've been keeping things under secret this whole time. I don't want to spoil anything. Once it gets all edited, I'll be sure to embed it here. But I warn you, it is R material. It has some f-bombs and some strong violence. So strong that it made one of the cameras get blood on it. It might seem like it has more swearing due to the amount of times we ran scenes, but there is swearing. Not something to watch with your kids or parents, unless you guys are cool with that. Well this has been Pokematic signing off and bu-bye.