Exploring the Final Days of Bed Bath and Beyond

Pokematic's 30th Birthday Fun

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pokematic's Easter 2023 Fun

Hey everyone, it's that time of year again, where we recognize the death and resurrection of Jesus. I'll start this little blog off with Palm Sunday, aka, my favorite mass; not Holiday, but my favorite mass of the year. It always has been, and for 1 reason, palms. Everyone gets a palm leaf, and we wave it singing hosanna; it's the one mass where we get something to interact with, and even as a 29 year old man it still gets me excited. When everyone else had set their palm down, I kept holding mine. I might as well fast forward to Thursday (since nothing of note happened in the week) where mskate and I got our feet washed for Holy Thursday's mass. This is the 2nd time I've had my feet washed, the first being when I was a confirmation student when I was in highschool. It is kind of interesting being a stand-in for one of the 12, and I'm glad I was able to share this experience with my wife.

Now it is time for Good Friday. Morning was pretty basic, just mskate and I getting ready for the day. I made pasta for lunch (no meat) and we ate it on our way up to our parents. I got my allergy shot when we got up there and after that we went to the Hallmark Store where we got IRA a green ranger plushy toy thing. After shopping we went to Good Friday service with my dad where we got the last 5 stations of the cross. It was good doing that with him, especially since we did it at his home perish and they have a good perish. After mass we went to mskate's parents to pick up IRA and some other things. Mskate had gotten an Easter gift from one of her coworkers which was angel wings (or "chrusciki" if you prefer the original Polish) and a bunny made out of a wash cloth with some chocolates in it. We decided to give the wash cloth bunny to IRA and share the angel wings with my family (because we're Polish). This was funny, when we got there Duke was sleeping in his bed put in front of the glass storm door just enjoying the sunlight, and when mskate pet him he just stretched and enjoyed the touch. Then when I pet him he got alert and excited because for some reason I'm his favorite human to play with and he always gets a ton of excitement when he sees me; and it's not like I'm even much of a dog person that gets excited to see him and insists on playing with him or just has a sense of "I'm a dog person, I want all dogs to play with me" or something, a lot of times I don't even try to play with him and just want to see the family, but he always is like "oh cool, the playful human is here, come on let's wrestle, now chase me" whenever I see him ever since I first met him. He definitely doesn't see me as an enemy since he's always clearly playing and I've been around long enough and have done enough with him where he definitely trusts me, so I'm not "misinterpreting his aggression as joy" or something like that, he just has some kind of attraction to me.

Now it was time for us to have fun with my parents. We got to their house and started the fun. First we prepped the egg dying kit. Every year I forget to bring my kit and every year we screw up something. This time it was we didn't dissolve the tablets in vinegar before adding the water, so the colors didn't turn out as good as they probably could have been, especially the red one (which for some reason the red/pink color always seems to have a problem, I don't know why but it does). We let them sit for half an hour or so as we did mskate's allergen free pretzels. That was pretty interesting since the dough didn't want to stick together as most allergen free dough is known to be, but we made it work and got the pretzels good for her. I tasted a piece and it tasted like a pretzel, which is good since gluten free bread can be weird. With the allergen free pretzels done, we dyed the eggs and did the cookie craft. IRA found these coloring cookies at a grocery store where it's a cookie with a line art drawing on the frosting, and there are markers with edible ink to color them. Grandma, IRA, and I all made one, and I think mskate made the last of the 4 after we finished ours. It was a pretty fun activity, especially since I only had 3 colors to chose from so I had to think "what kind of contrast can I use while also making it look good?" I think it turned out OK.

Since grandma has lost basically all fine motor capabilities due to arthritis we were concerned she wouldn't be able to do it, but since the arthritis has also hit her rough motor capabilities she had the small movements necessary to color by moving her whole arm, so that was great. Later she ate the whole cookie and rather quickly, which is not really like her (she used to not care much for sweets, and always ate very slowly). Mskate looked up the company and they do other holidays, so we're going to do this at Christmas too, and save the markers so we have more colors to choose from. While we did this the eggs were sitting in the dye building up color, and since we are adults now we had the patience of letting them sit and get a deep color. This brought back a lot of memories of how we would dye eggs at grandma's house, and joked that we should all climb on the dining room table like the old days. Oh fun times. At some point during this we watched a "how do they do it" clip on discovery plus about pretzel making, which was fun.

Now for the food fun. My parents made Easter baskets for everyone; I got Reece's peanut butter eggs, peeps, a Lowe's gift card, a lottery ticket (with a dollar coin), and a little Easter bunny "get the ball in the cup" toy, mskate got peeps, jelly beans, a Disney gift card, a lottery ticket, and a little Easter bunny "get the ball in the cup toy," IRA got Reece's peanut butter eggs, jelly beans, a Target gift card, a lottery ticket, and a little Easter bunny "get the ball in the cup toy," and vikingpolak got a 6 pack of beer, cash, a lottery ticket, and a little Easter bunny "get the ball in the cup toy." IRA and I really enjoyed the toy, and I got good enough where I would win. Vikingpolak and I won on our lottery tickets while mskate and IRA didn't win, even on the "loser's 2nd try" tickets my mom got as a back-up since grandpa Pop would do that when us grandkids would get lottery tickets as gifts. Now time for dinner. The family was going to have French toast and omelets cooked with butter, but since that is the 3 things mskate can't eat vikingpolak got a salmon fillet for mskate and whoever else wanted it. Mom took care of the French toast and enlisted me to take care of the hash browns. I made 2 pans of about half the potatoes that they prepaired and that was enough for half the family, then the other half were cooked and the rest of the family got enough. It was a good good Friday family dinner. This was also the time when everyone that wanted one got an angel wing, and we had enough left to share with my grandpa and aunt when my dad and vikingpolak see them on Easter.

With dinner over it was time to make the pretzels. This has been something we've done since I was really little, and very fun. IRA struggled a little bit but I showed him how to do it (he was doing the crossing too low down by the middle giving the pretzels long arms, and I demonstrated he had to do it pretty close to the top). For 3 or 4 pretzels I did the Mennonite method of "flick twisting" and I was successful after some "and then they came undone" failures. I also burnt my thumb taking one of the trays out, but oh well. We visited for a little while after the pretzels just to let them cool, and then we said our goodbyes, took IRA back to his parent's house, and went home.

Saturday was a simple relaxation day. I worked on writing the blog and mskate and I went on a walk in the park by us. I thawed the freezer so I could clean it and get the ice maker working again (I think the line completely froze or something, and I want to see if I can get it working again). Unfortunately that didn't work, but since I emptied the freezer I took the opportunity to clean out all the crumbs that have happened over the years. I also found that Tubi had The Passion of Christ streaming on it, and since our decan said it was a good movie to watch to really get a sense of what a Roman crucifixion was like since the 4 Evangelists didn't deem it important to go into detail of what a crucifixion was like, and it was quite good, though I have to say, it is a VERY difficult movie to watch. Like, I watch R-rated movies every so often so it's not like I haven't seen violence before, but this was super intense. I think I will have to do a review of it, but I will just say that it really helped me understand what our Lord and Savior went through, and I was happy I watched it on Tubi with ad breaks because I needed them to catch my breath. That night we went to the Easter Vigil, and there was just 1 very interesting thing that happened. Typically with the Easter Vigil the church is dark and everyone receives a candle to light when it's time, and those candles have wax shields because wax is going to drip, and our church uses paper wax shields. One lady's wax shield caught on fire when she lit her candle and fell to the ground, and mskate and I sitting on the end were ready to jump over and help, but she was able to step on it before anything happened. This left her without a wax shield though, so mskate went out and got one for her. So yeah, that was a little exciting.

OK, it's Easter Sunday, Jesus is risen. I had one of the pretzels we made on Friday for a breakfast snack before heading over to my in-laws for their festivities. Before I get to the fun, we were greeted by the dogs. Since around this time last year their dog Duke had a seizure and is getting very old mskate and I try to go in through the side door to not excite him (because for some reason he thinks I am the most entertaining person in the world and gets super excited whenever he sees me, but we can minimize the excitement by just "appearing in the house" by using the side door instead of going in through the front door), but this time he already saw us and was barking so we just went in the front. He tried jumping but wasn't able to, so we were able to bring our things in before getting to the big presents. My father-in-law goes all out for holidays, and he had this elaborate spread on the dining room table for everyone. He said "the Easter Bunny came" and I said "no, the Easter Bunny just leaves a basket of candy, this was Easter Santa," and he agreed that it was "Easter Santa." The thing I enjoy the most they get me every year since we got married are these milk chocolate eggs with white chocolate chicks in them. There's nothing super special about them, but the fact that it's a hollow egg with 2 halves joined together (and not some chocolate egg with a peanut butter or caramel filling), and that hollow egg has something in it and not just air, I'm just kind of fascinated by them. I got some other chocolates and gift cards, but the chocolate eggs with a chocolate chick inside are my favorite (maybe I'll do a food review one day). Mskate got a lot of peeps and gummy candy, and a Lego Disney parade train (not for use on a track). We ended up making it while we were at her parents house and now it sits proudly on the stair landing shelf with the rest of our Lego displays.

After the fun we picked up a close friend of the family that they call "Aunt" (we'll call her "aunt C" in the blog). As we were driving up mskate said "we could pick up aunt C on our way to my parents," and since we were driving the pickup truck that's pretty high up I asked "could we though," which made her realize we would need to wait until we got to her parents and could borrow a car. We picked her up no problem and she enjoyed spending time with the family and visiting with the dogs. Delilah jumped up next to her multiple times and just let her pet her, and Duke managed to jump onto the couch to see her. Mskate initially put him on the other couch with me because she thought he wanted to see me, but he very quickly made it known he wanted to get down, and once he was down he ran over to the other couch and jumped up on it (something he doesn't do anymore, because he's old, but regularly forgets he's old). We had eggs, bacon, fruit, hash brown patties, and chocolate croissants. I'm going to have some breakfast for a few days. Mskate also paid for her old skating club to set-up an egg hunt in the front yard, and IRA and I were told to do it. We completed it in probably 1 minute, and I won by 2 eggs. In the eggs were bouncy balls, stickers, yoyos, finger puppets, and sticky hands. It was fun not having a parent say "now you need to give some eggs to your brother so it's even" for once, considering we're both adults and can handle winners and losers.

It's now about the time we went to my parents for their festivities. My dad and brother were at my aunt and grandpa's, and pepperBC's family was doing something else, so the group was a little smaller this time. We gave grandma her Easter basket and she was really happy with it. We got her a fuzzy bunny card, magic water coloring book, and some chocolates. She really enjoyed it. We visited with everyone for a while, then it was dinner time. We had ham, chicken, potatoes, rolls, carrots, corn, and asparagus. Given that everyone from the asparagus story was there (J and P, and Grandma), we reminded everyone of the asparagus story. It was a fun time. After dinner the in-laws came over for desert and accordion time. They also brought over aunt C, and she and grandma really hit it off. We sang some songs like Peter Cottontail and A Tisket a Tasket, and some others. For desert I had some chocolate pie and ice cream, and then spilled some on my pants so I had to wash them and then spend 10 minutes in front of a space heater drying them. No stains though, so I'm good. It was quite a fun day, and at about 7PM we packed up our stuff and went home.

Monday was pretty simple. I did a bunch of grocery shopping and sorted all our food from the festivities, filled up the gas tank, and shipped a package for ebay. I also started out the day wearing long pants but then changed into short pants after lunch time and getting hot unloading the car, so I guess it's officially spring. I wanted to do more work on running inventory on the ebay inventory and shipping material, but I just did that and watched some comedy specials on my free trial of showtime. This was a great mini-vacation, and I'm quite happy with it. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Pokematic Goes to The Disney Immersive Experince

 Hey everyone, Disney is no stranger to making unique experiences, and one of those unique experience came to near my area, the Disney Immersive Experience in Detroit. This isn't the first time I did a special event in Detroit, but it is the first one I did with mskate. The story of how we got to doing this is kind of something. My parents were planning on doing it and bought the tickets, but my mom got sick so she and dad weren't able to do it and gave the tickets to mskate and I. Mskate heard about it but figured it would be too expensive (it was like $38 per person), but when it's free then sure. We got the offer Thursday afternoon for Friday afternoon, which might not have really worked since I work a pretty normal 9-5 type job, but my boss let me have a half day since things are pretty slow at the moment. That worked out great, and so mskate and I were able to go to this special event.

The show was at 2:00PM and we got there at about 1:10 PM, just because we wanted to make sure we had enough time to get there and find parking. That ended up being a little bit of overkill since we were there close to an hour before our show. This ended up being OK since we were able to enjoy the other exhibits before the show. The Immersive Experience is in what seems to be an old 100 or so year old theatre that probably did small shows and had been converted to do these kind of events, and the 3 levels each had a different exhibit. On the first level was a "what is Disney animation and how was it done" and the gift shop, the 2nd level was "this is how the early line animations are done and this is what the final animation is like" along with a "how to draw characters" thing, and the 3rd floor was where they had the immersive experience.

Let's start with the 1st floor. The gift shop was honestly kind of lame. It had a lot high quality Disney merch like collectible post cards, stuffed animals, loungefly backpacks, posters, and such, but it was all overpriced (like Disney World level) and nothing that said "Disney Immersive Experience." We would have bought a pin or poster or something that said "Disney Immersive Experience" if there was something like that (and add the poster to my "poster wall" if that was what we got), but alas there wasn't that. There were some left over things from the last experience they had (seemed like it was some kind of Van Gogh thing), which would have been cool if they had a Disney thing, but nothing. The "how does the animation work" was pretty cool though. I enjoyed reading about how Walt Disney did it, seeing the Beauty and the Beast reproduction cells and how they overlay on each other, the explanation of the multiplane camera (again, it's the same thing I saw in Disney World), but most impressively, the actual key frames of Cinderella's dress transformation with the one screen showing those key frames played at full speed and another screen showing the final result. To actually see the real pencil drawings that actually went into the final film with the notes added by the animators (most notably the colors to use), that was really cool. I probably could have spent the entire pre-show time just admiring these pieces of animation history and seeing all the different details, but we had to see the 2nd floor.

Before I get to the 2nd floor, I need to talk about the stairs. The stairs had line drawings of 75 different characters, and mskate and I knew maybe 73 of them. The 2nd floor was so cool. They had clips of the 2D animated films and shorts with line-drawing and final animation side by side on the wall, which was so cool. I'm sure I've seen side by side comparisons of the 2D animated films or shorts in the past, but never on a 10 foot screen I could walk right up to. They had some scenes from Bambi, Beauty and the Beast, The Sword in the Stone, Dance of the Skeletons, Micky and the Beanstalk, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, and probably some others I'm forgetting. One thing that was really cool was the parts where the character wasn't moving, like when Arthur was pulling the sword there was a part where just his head was animated and his body was still, and in the line drawing was just his head. This was super geeky of the behind the scenes and how it worked. In this room there was also some pages from the final shooting script of Frozen, and what I found quite interesting was that it was basically formatted exactly like a live action production script (at least from my limited encounters with seeing real production scripts). There were also these clay reference models that the animators would look at when drawing the characters since of course, some times we see the character's back or side and the animator needs to know what that is supposed to look like, and since it's a team of animators it needs to be consistent animator to animator. That was pretty cool. Then there was the "how to draw Disney characters" thing, and I tried to draw Goofy. The "how to draw" was not exactly "the best" since it was kind of "draw a circle, draw his mouth, draw his hat, draw his eyes," and not exactly a "how to draw those things." I still think I did pretty good for not being a drawing artist.

Now for the main event on the 3rd floor. We had to walk through a curtain thing and find a place to sit in this big white room with a "Beauty and the Beast" type library with all sorts of Disney icons on pedestals and paintings with different scenes from Disney works (with some occasionally were line test animations). What makes me think this was a repurposed theatre is there was a very clear stage and mezzanine at some point with arches that look "artsy," but it was all painted white so the images could be projected. The floor was also part of the display, actually interactive. At the start there were stars projected onto the floor, and if you walked around the stars would be pushed out of the way. It worked best closer along the wall because that's where the sensors were, but it was pretty cool. There weren't a lot of seats (the few benches near the wall were labeled "handicap accessible"), which basically says the experience was meant to be seen by sitting on the floor. Had we had VIP tickets we would have gotten cushions to sit on, but we just had basic tickets, but we're young so it wasn't that big a deal. The interesting thing was we were the only people without kids, and we weren't quite sure if this was going to be "for kids/everyone" or "for older audiences." The first 2 floors definitely were for older people (pre-teen at the youngest), but maybe this show would have worked for kids.

Now for the main event. This was truly an interesting event, one that can only be experienced. It was basically song clips of animated Disney movies done in a full 360 perspective. Like, the most memorable one for me was the Lion King one with Circle of Life where we were in the Serengeti and instead of cutting to different animals at dawn like in the movie they just had all the different animals everywhere. There was also one with A Whole New World where we're in Jasmine's room with the scene playing out on one wall and the other 3 are just her room, and when we leave the room changes to the sky to give the feeling of flying on the magic carpet, and then it shows us the worlds of different movies. There were also 3 different musical numbers where bubbles were blown into the audience, 1 time with fog in the bubbles (that got the kids running around as they wanted to pop the bubbles). One of the bubble songs was Show Yourself from Frozen 2, another was probably a Little Mermaid song, and I don't remember what the fog one was but it definitely matched. Throughout all of this, I'm pretty sure we either saw some deleted animation or new animation just for this experience. I'm not just talking about "the 3D renders that were used to make rooms since the movies weren't animated in 360," I mean like when Tiana was singing "almost there" there were some wide shots that I don't think were present in the actual movie (one wall showed like "all wide shots" and the other wall showed "mix of shots" which I think came directly from the movie, so we saw things that were originally out of frame). It was really cool. The last song was Show Yourself from Frozen 2, and I have a strong feeling that was "very conscious," because while the Frozen franchise is easily Disney's most profitable IP at the moment (because it's the only Disney Princess franchise at the moment, girls like princess movies), I have a feeling there would have been problems if it was Let it Go, with half the audience belting "LET IT GO! LET IT GO!" and the other half groaning hard. The show lasted about 45 minutes, which is probably about as long as they could have made it work.

So, was this worth the $38? It really depends on the person. I know I got $38 worth out of it, but I'm a pretty big Disney movie and animation fan (seeing actual pencil drawings from Cinderella was probably worth $10 alone, seeing the actual Frozen shooting script probably $5, and then the side by side comparisons was worth $10-15, and I don't even know what I would pay for what I think was deleted animation from the movies). Mskate also probably got $38 worth since she really enjoys Disney, but I don't know if she had the same kind of reverence for the behind the scenes stuff I do and probably didn't get the same kind of fulfillment out of it I did. The kids in the audience, the ones running around were probably bored so they likely didn't really get it, and the parents watching them probably didn't get the full immersion that is required because "where did Steven go?" Since it was a "sit on the floor" experience, I don't know if my parents would have gotten enough out of it either (but they might have gotten to the benches which would have given a good enough experience). I say if you're a big Disney or animation fan it's worth it, and maybe even if you're just a fan that isn't necessarily big, but other than that it might not be worth it. Also with the VIP ticket you got a cell print or some sort of art piece from the movies along with a wrist band that changed color with the show (similar to magic band plus), which were really cool but I don't know if those would have been worth the ticket price (though we were like the only people without VIP tickets based on all the wrist bands we saw). I'm glad I did it though, and I might go so far as to say "I would do it again" because with my 135 degree field of view I know I missed things. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Pokematic's New Year in New Mexico Adventure

Hey everyone, during all the Christmas fun mskate mom-in-law and I decided we would go to New Mexico to see her aunt that's on hospice over the New Year holiday. It wasn't going to be an easy trip for them, but it would be important since she doesn't seem to have much time left and the rest of the family was figuring out when to see her as well. Plus, this would be my only time to meet her and would basically be the only time I could see her, so it was pretty perfect. I took this as an opportunity to try out my new fire stick and luna controller (I basically bought it so I could have my streaming when traveling and so I could play my twitch prime luna games, and this was a great time to try it out). We basically spent the week between Christmas and New Years prepping for this trip, and while that was kind of stressful and ate all my time (I wanted to finish a bunch of blogs and videos, but that didn't pan out, though I did get my book published digitally, so win), it all worked out. Mom-in-law stayed with us the night before the trip so we could get to the airport easy.

It's now New Years Eve and we're getting ready to travel. Our bags were all packed and we loaded everything in the jeep. This time when we got to the airport we made sure to park in the cheaper long term parking structure (because when we went to Texas we parked in the twice as expensive short term parking structure). The craziness starts here because it was way hard finding a parking spot; we drove around 3 levels and just narrowly found a spot at the 4th level, and the navigations was confusing so that made things all the harder. TSA wasn't too difficult, but there was a problem with the TSA cares thing mskate applied to so she wouldn't have problems with her diabetes pump (they didn't know what it was so we had to go through normal security). After that we got to our terminal no problem, and just waited for the plane.

The plane ride was kind of interesting. Normally we fly Delta, but American was much cheaper so this was the first time flying that airline. The last times when I flew Delta the airplane had a screen in the chair in front of you to watch movies and TV shows, and the built-in nature made it pretty convenient and easy to use (just plug in headphones and select your entertainment on the screen). American was kind of different, since it was basically the exact same service (free movies and TV shows), but it required connecting to the in-flight wifi hotspot and going to the free section (not pay for in-flight wifi) in a web browser. The interesting thing is the plane seatbacks were then build with smart device holders. I was just a little fascinated by it. I ended up watching A Charlie Brown Christmas since I haven't watched it yet this year and then the apple tv plus episodes of Peanuts. The episodes were good, but definitely not worth apple having it's own streaming service. Next is where things got bad. After the Peanuts I found a 2020 version of Saved By The Bell, apparently a Peacock original. I wouldn't say I'm a "giant fan" of Saved By The Bell '89, but I enjoyed watching it in middle and highschool in the summer on TBS, and watched all 4 seasons, the college years, and the TV movies on hulu in like 2017, enjoyed the unauthorized story on lifetime that covered Duston's story, and enjoyed the people reunion article from 2009, so I'm definitely "a fan." I just like the cheesy sitcom format of characters getting into simple problems and everything gets solved at the end of the episode, it's just fun. So when I saw there was a 2020 reboot I was curious, and then when I saw it had the old cast reprising their roles as adults with us following their kids I was excited (because that worked so well with Girl Meets World). After 2 episodes I found myself incredibly disappointed. This wasn't a reboot, this was a cynical commentary-satire of the original series and it's fantasy elements, with the Zack Morris stand-in (Zack's son Mack) and a Jessie stand-in basically getting called out for their priviliage constantly while the inner-city kids struggle to keep up, it just wasn't entertaining. I'll probably go into deeper detail with a full review later, but this truly sucked and I do not recommend it. Like, there's a plot point about how expensive it is to hang out at a sit-down restaurant after school every day, and how unrealistic it is for kids to afford that. Uh yeah, it's escapism entertainment, that's why I like the original show. I don't remember what else I watched on the flight, but it was better than that. I also played Animal Crossing as I worked on catching up to reality.

After the plane ride we got to our layover in Dallas. This was kind of interesting since it's a really large airport, so large that we needed to take a people mover to get from our arrival terminal to the departure terminal. Before we took the people mover though I went to the candy store in the terminal we arrived at and got a Spongebob Finder's Keeper's egg with Sandy as the prize (I'm currently working on a full collection, and have a list of product codes with the corresponding toy, and one day will hopefully get enough to make an article on how to tell the boxes apart, but for now you can enjoy this food review). When we got to our terminal mskate and mom-in-law got Panera Bread while I got McDonald's. I was going to get points with the app but unfortunately my phone died so I wasn't able to get my points. Oh well. Something cool that happened was someone gave mom-in-law a food voucher which saved us $12 on their order (but they had some trouble entering  it so I had to do it for them). We ate our lunch and then waited for our plane.

The flight from Dallas to Albuquerque was generally uneventful. I decided to check the movie section and finished Minions Rise of Gru, and some other movie that I don't remember. The thing that was more memorable is I think the cabin lost some air pressure because I was getting altitude sickness and mskate's diabetes pump had an altitude alarm. That was uncomfortable, but I still made it through. One thing I did while on the plane was take some stock footage of take off and window views. I plan on releasing some as creative commons.

Youtube Link for Getting Video

Youtube Link for Getting Video

When we got to Albuquerque things were pretty calm. The airport had a lookout point and we made the note that we had to check it out on the way back. We also stopped at one of the gift shops to look around and they had something like chili lemon pistachios (or something else that was a unique flavor and sounded really good). I almost picked them up to try it out and would normally pay like $7 for the bag but would be willing to pay $3 airport markup (I want to say my spongebob surprise egg was like $1-2 more expensive than normal), but the bag was a whopping $16, no thank-you. Leaving the secure terminal was also pretty nifty. At most airports I've been to one takes an escalator down to a level and it's all 1-way traffic, but this had like an airlock system where one walks into a room to where there is a door gate style, and the gate style doesn't open until the back door is fully closed, and then the exit door doesn't open until the gate style is fully closed.

Now the fun begins, because we had a 1 hour drive from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, which meant a pretty large uber fair. We ordered it no problem and just waited at the ride share pickup location, and I ate snacks to hold me over until we got to the hotel. I packed a decent amount of snacks with a wide variety to make sure we had food for everyone when we needed it, and that was good because I needed some. Mskate was worried that I wasn't wearing my coat while we waited outside for the uber (despite being in the desert, it got kind of cold in the winter), but it was only like 50 degrees which when I have my warm winter blood for 20 degrees and below, 50 is cool t-shirt weather (which is what I happened to be wearing). The ride there was pretty neat, I got a lot of video of the mountains and roads, and our driver drove Dean Norris of Breaking Bad fame (Hank). His story was "I picked him up and he's wearing these large sun glasses and I said 'do I know you' and he said 'no I have a very familiar face, you're confusing me with someone else' and I said 'no, you're Hank,' and he said 'dang-it, you Albuquerqueans always find us Breaking Bad guys.'" That's pretty neat. Since mskate had the problem with her insulin pump we had to find a pharmacy to get syringes. Our driver stopped at a Walgreens that was kind of on the way and let us get some. We gave him a really big tip for how accommodating he was.

Checking into the hotel wasn't too difficult. I had the confirmation printed off just in case but all they needed was my ID. When we got to our hotel room I pulled all of the extra snacks that were packed in the clothes suit cases and put them on the desk for getting to. I also set-up the firestick and got set-up with that. The cool thing about the wifi is since it was a Drury Inn my phone recognized it from other Drury Inns so I didn't even have to add the network. That was pretty neat. Dinner was soon after unpacking and it was pork sliders and baked potatoes, and it was really good. I also had a vodka cranberry sour with my dinner. Best part, Drury Inns have free dinner and drinks. The cost might be a little higher than other hotels, or the room quality might be lower quality than other hotels for a similar price (the place mskate and I go to in Columbus is about the same price or cheaper than Drury Inns with higher quality rooms), but a continental breakfast, continental dinner, 3 free drinks a night, and unlimited fountain drinks and popcorn any time is a great value.

OK, now it's time for us to see Aunt P. We chose this specific hotel because it was within walking distance to her house (I want to say 4-5 blocks away), and even though it was getting dark we walked over to her house. I was pretty interested with all the adobe architecture, but I couldn't really take it in because I had to be very aware of my surroundings. In general Santa Fe seems to be a pretty safe city (with stories I'll get to later), but even then there wasn't a lot of street lights where we were (using our phone flashlights) and there were a fair amount of dark corners a mugger could hide in. I lead the way while carrying the semi-heavy bag that could be used as a weapon if needed (nothing to incapacitate someone, but enough to break their focus). Thankfully it didn't have to come to that, but there was still risks due to ice resulting in us taking an uber on the way back (but I'm getting ahead of myself). Getting there on the Saturday we did was really good because Aunt P was having a good day and was pretty animated. Mskate talks about her a lot so it was great to finally meet her in person, along with the care taker that is the favorite. Even though it was a good day for her, it was pretty late, so we only stayed for about an hour before she said "not to poo-poo you, but it's getting late and I want to go to bed." We said our goodbyes and when I gave her a little hug I also shook her hand, and Aunt P didn't want to let go of my hand. I asked if she liked my hand and she said yes, and I said "thank-you I've been moisturizing," the first of many silly exchanges between the two of us. Our Uber back to the hotel was in a Tesla, and we were all pretty impressed with it. We had some trouble opening the doors because you have to press on the handle to get the handle ready to open, and then it can be pulled to open, and I don't remember the door open from the inside but the ladies had some trouble getting out of the back so I had to open the door for them when we got back.

One detail that was a little "overlooked" I guess you could say, is it was New Years Eve, and I pretty much always stay up for New Years even if it's just me. The kind of challenge though was the 2 hour time difference on top of the traveling with a 1 room hotel room (no sitting area like last year), so I basically had to keep it down as I wrung in the new year. I watched Animaniacs on my phone for some hours while everyone else went to bed, and I intended to just stay up to watch the east coast NYC ball drop (because I live in eastern standard time and that's my normal new years count down and ball drop), but I ended up falling asleep at about 9:30 PM local time-11:30 PM normal time and missed the NYC count down, but I ended up waking up at about 10:55 PM local time-12:55 AM normal time so I pulled up Dick Clark's Rockin' New Years Eve and watched the Puerto Rico ball drop (at least I think it was Puerto Rico, as I do the math while researching this blog they're actually 1 hour ahead of eastern standard time and normally the central time countdown is out of New Orleans, but whatever). Either way I had fun.

Sleep through the night to New Years Day Sunday. I wanted to keep on my normal sleep schedule so I woke up at like 6AM local time 8AM my time, and after an hour of hanging in the room it was breakfast time; a simple continental breakfast with pancakes and hash browned potatoes. 9AM though is when things got really cool. The St. Francis of Assisi Cathedral Basilica is like literally next door to the hotel (there's some court yard area, but nothing significant between hotel property and church property), so we got to go to mass there. It is a really big and pretty basilica, with a lot of stained glass and murals, but it doesn't end there. Since there is a large Hispanic population all of the hymns were half English half Spanish, and the old testament reading was in Spanish with the English translation available with the hymns. Oh but it gets better. I don't know if this was his home parish or he was just there for the weekend, but the bishop lead mass while we were there, and since that happens about every 2 years or less at my home parish that was pretty cool; and if it ended there that would be enough but it just keeps coming. At this particular mass they were honoring 2 police officers that died in the line of duty, so there were a lot of police officers in dress uniforms and what I believe was a "police march snare drum beat" during the opening hymn (maybe that's just how they do it at this parish, but it had that "honoring a serviceman" sound). Oh but that's not all, to top it all off the incumbent New Mexico governor was at the mass as well because it was inauguration day, and she and her husband brought up the gifts and after mass received a blessing from the bishop in front of the basilica with a lot of media attention. It was quite ordeal. Mom-in-law said she saw people with ear pieces, meaning that her secret service security detail was there. Talk about cool. After mass we went back to the hotel and just rested for an hour or 2 before we went to see Aunt P.

Now that it was day time I was able to enjoy the walk over much more. There was a lot of cool Adobe and some interesting architecture.

Today was a lesser day for Aunt P. We planned on staying most of the day with a lot of non-visiting time so I had my switch and phone ready for wait around time, and I'm glad I did because I think about half of the time we were there Aunt P was napping (not in a row, but on and off she would just nod off). One of the funny things is she zoned out a lot and the caregiver was saying she was going to her own world. Here's a fun interaction from this.

Caregiver: [P], are you in your own world right now?

Aunt P: yeahh...

Pokematic: can I join you?

Aunt P: nooo.....

Just a funny little thing that happened. We had pizza together for lunch and that was good, and later mskate and I went to Kakawa a specialty chocolate and ice cream shop to get Aunt P a milkshake and us some specialty treats, but unfortunately they were closed, so we saved that for the next day. In addition to us one of Aunt P's friends that also lives in Santa Fe joined us for visiting, which was nice since I heard about her a lot as well, and that helped break up the time while we visited with Aunt P the whole day.

When it was time to go the friend gave us a ride back to the hotel and hung out with mom-in-law for about 2 hours while they caught up, and mskate joined them for some of the time, but since I had multiple degrees of separation on this I just hung out in the room until dinner (which was about 2 hours from when we arrived back to the hotel). Now as we were driving back to the hotel there was a sign that caught my attention, but you'll just have to wait until that part of the story. For now I'm going to tell you about Drury Inn dinner on Sunday night. I want to say it was some kind of chicken, and since I don't like chicken I had the hotdog. Now it just so happened that the soup of the day was chili, so I ended up having myself a chili dog and baked potato for dinner in addition to a whisky sour. 

After dinner mskate and I went a few blocks down from the hotel to downtown Santa Fe. For the most part we just walked around the various shopping areas and enjoyed the Christmas lights that were still up in the city square. It was really quite nice. We went into some mini-malls and "shopping arcades" (the Santa Fe arcade, with no coin-ops), and even though a lot of things were closed it was still fun. What gave me quite a laugh was going into the five and dime. I don't think this was a "traditional five and dime" since there was a lot of touristy items and souvenirs, and no one was wearing raspberry berets (and I didn't feel like giving the cashier a hard time by asking if he worked for Mr. McGee since I'm sure he hears that joke multiple times a day and I wasn't buying anything), but it was still fun. One thing mskate and I enjoyed doing when we were dating was walking around city areas and it's fun to still do that now that we're married.

Now it's Monday and after eating hotel breakfast mskate wanted to go to a local restaurant to get some breakfast food she could eat (food allergies). It was a little Mexican cafe 1 block from the hotel and she got breakfast tacos. Now because I live in the north and most of my experience with Mexican food is Taco Bell (blasphemy, I know), my perception of a "breakfast taco" (along with other "breakfast versions of lunch and dinner foods") is "a normal taco with scrambled eggs in it." Since eggs are one of her allergies she asked for them on the side (I ate them) and I expected a "pretty standard taco" after that. To my surprise it wasn't that, it had hash browns, sausage chunks, and bacon pieces, and not a whole lot of other "traditional taco ingredients." That was pretty neat. After breakfast we walked around some of the shopping that was closed the previous night, and as we were walking we found a place that had free dog treats, so we picked one up for the dog of the caretaker that would be taking care of Aunt P today.

Today was going to be our last day visiting with Aunt P, and it was pretty fun. Today for lunch we had Chinese food, and I had sesame beef which was pretty good. After lunch mskate and I went to the chocolate store again this time knowing they would be open. This was quite a cool place. First, they had all sorts of fancy and exotic chocolates, many of which were allergy free. Mskate said "I'm going to limit myself to 3 things, and I want 2 of the peppermint patties, and I can't chose between the truffle and raspberry filling." I suggested just getting one of each and that ended up being the right decision. Since it was expensive I wanted to get something I couldn't get anywhere else (sure, it won't be Kakawa quality, but I can get peanut butter cups and chocolate covered cherries anywhere); this is why I chose the Aztec chocolate chili ice cream. I knew about Aztec chili chocolate from The Polar Express and other sources and it seemed intriguing, but in my half a dozen or so adventures to border states this was the only place I've seen that had Aztec chili chocolate, and for it to be in ice cream (a food that is a "spicy food antidote") I was even more interested. And of course, we got Aunt P her milkshake since that was our primary reason for going there. It was quite a busy place, where I think we spent somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes just waiting for our milkshake and ice cream.

When we got back I sampled some of my ice cream and wow was that an amazing flavor. The Aztecs were definitely onto something when they put chili in the chocolate. For the most part it tasted like a rich chocolate ice cream and would be another "it's high quality but I can get this anywhere," but the heat added by the chili was a very unique addition that didn't change the flavor at all (like, it wasn't "chocolate and hot sauce," it was "chocolate, that was spicy"). It like, woke up my taste buds to bring more of the chocolate flavor in. Add on top of this that my mouth was very confused because it felt like it was hot due to the chili but was actually cold due to the ice cream. If you're ever in Santa Fe and enjoy spicy foods some, I highly recommend getting the Aztec chocolate ice cream from Kakawa chocolate, because it is an experience like nothing else I've had.

Aunt P really enjoyed her milkshake, and this is when this day's funny Aunt P interaction happened. She drank about 1/4 of it and then kind of "lost the straw" as mskate was holding it for her. After not going for the straw for a minute or so I said "I think she might be done," and then she gave me a look of "the hell I am" and started drinking again and had about half of the milkshake before putting it in the freezer. We visited for about another hour and then said our final goodbyes. I said "it was good meeting you Aunt [P]" and she said "it was good to meet you too," and that made mskate and mom-in-law quite happy since that was like the largest sentence she said the entire trip.

We went back to the hotel and rested a little bit, and this is when I had one of the coolest things happen on the trip. Remember that sign I mentioned some paragraphs back? The sign said "video library," and I was very curious to see what that was, and since it was just a block away from the hotel I decided to find out. It was kind of in the back of a tiny strip mall, out of view of the main road in a kind of unassuming store front (I think it just had a sign that said "video library" in basic font, and nothing in the windows), but some times that is a sign of something really special, and this was no exception. It turns out this is a 41 year old video rental store, the oldest in the United States and 2nd oldest in the world (the oldest being a German store that is like 3 months older). This place was SO COOL! And when it says "library," oh it means it. Most video stores have the cover of the movie facing you to try to get your attention and make it easy to see the movie you're looking for (or in my case when I would go to my local video stores, the movie I didn't know I was looking for). They have them on a shelf with the spine facing you to maximize the amount of DVDs they can have on the shelf similar to a library, and this place easily had thousands of DVDs on the shelves typically with only 1-4 copies of a movie that wasn't super popular like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, or Hitchcock, so there had to be at least 1000 different movies on the shelves. They also had "check-out slips and return date stickers" like one would find in a library book, just adding to the whole "library aesthetic." I didn't rent anything because I had no way of playing them, but I did buy a T-shirt because I had to support this business. Then the thing that was super amazing was I asked the owner if she would give me a small interview for my vlog and she said yes. She told me about the history of the store and how she has all sorts of media, and off camera she said she I wasn't the first person to ask her since there was someone that was making a documentary on video stores that were still open long after many were gone. And then she gave me some stickers for the store which was really awesome of her probably because she could tell I was into it (and probably because I bought a t-shirt). If anyone is in Santa Fe, you need to check out The Video Library.

Dinner was pretty low-key. Mskate ordered a Frito salad from one of the restaurants in town since she couldn't eat whatever the hotel was serving, so we went there together and while we were waiting for our food we found the t-shirt store she went to last time she was there and got me a Santa Fe shirt. Hotel dinner was nothing super special, I want to say they had chicken so I ended up eating a hotdog again. Mom-in-law and I both got double drinks (her a wine, me another cranberry vodka sour) to help us fall asleep in prep for the early morning, and that was basically it. It just so happened that there was a Barbra Walter's special that the ladies wanted to watch on hulu, so I set it up for them on the firestick and got a lot of praise for bringing it (because before it was just me watching cartoons on it). I have a feeling the firestick is going to be a staple travel item in the future. After the special we got everything packed up and ready for the trip home. 

Tuesday morning had to be the most crazy part of the trip. Packing up and checking out wasn't a problem, but the Uber was. Despite reserving the ride 12 hours in advance and having multiple confirmations, the driver canceled on us leaving us kind of stranded. We didn't have a back-up plan since we haven't had problems with uber in the past, but that wasn't a great thing. I was the calm one in the situation so I asked the hotel staff if they had any suggestions. One of the valet guys said "I got you, call Rob he's very reliable, he has 6 or 7 guys and if they won't drive you he'll do it" as he handed us a business card. Within 15 minutes Rob picked us up and we called him "Rob to the Rescue," and he said he liked it so much he might start using that since he gets a lot of business from Uber and Lyft sucking. (his business is independent from major ride sharing and taxi services). If you haven't noticed, I normally don't like referring to people by their real names in my blogs unless they're a public figure like Tommy Wiseau, but his company doesn't have "a brand name," it's just "Rob," so ask your hotel for Rob if you need a ride when you're in the area because he's good. He also had some cool stories, like giving Dwite from The Office and Danny Trejo a ride once in addition to some singers I didn't recognize. I want to say he was a little more expensive than Uber, but the reliability was definitely worth it.

Going through TSA was pretty easy this time. We had the information for TSA cares and this time they actually knew what it was. We had a TSA officer specifically assigned to us, and she took us through an xray machine that was just for us and it was really nice. Mom-in-law forgot a water bottle in her bag so that got flagged and made things annoying. I also had my pocket bunched up from emptying it into the bin, and had to get patted down. It was cool being able to explore the airport some, like sitting in the observation deck and looking at the planes. I did a little exploring but as a small airport there wasn't much to look at, so I just ended up back at the terminal and waited for the plane. Something that was really funny to me was this one boy keeping himself entertained by talking about a game he had and how "if you have 15 things then you have 15, but if you have 20 things then you have 20" or whatever it was. To most people this would just be kind of cute and kind of annoying, but I thought it was hilarious because that reminds me of the "and you know what happened next" story. A little back story, when I was like 5 or so I went to a family reunion with my parents and grandparents, and supposedly I didn't stop talking over the entire 10 hour ride and like every other sentence in my recounting of the cartoons I watched was "and you know what happened next." When I heard that I was thinking "that must have been what I sounded like back then." The plane ride to Dallas was pretty uneventful, I just played Animal Crossing while watching Movie Money Confidential (a documentary on independent movie financing), and some of the Apple TV Plus movie Luck.

Dallas though is when things got crazy. I want to say that our gate changed 3 times (one as we were getting off the plane and going to the gate, two after we had made it to the gate and settled in for waiting); always in terminal C so we didn't have to take the people mover, but still "gather everything and move" while we were trying to get lunch (mom-in-law and I each had a cheeseburger from TGI Friday's quick service, and mskate ended getting Chick-Fil-A by the way). It was kind of interesting though, since we experienced 3 different types of gates; the first was kind of open with some modern design in the chairs, the second was a pretty basic gate with the "connected leather airport chairs," and the third was kind of a mix with "updated connected leather airport chairs" with power outlets and some with recliner leg rests. I also stopped at the same candy store from some days ago to see if they had any different spongebob eggs, but they didn't and were all Sandy. Oh well. On the final flight to home I finished Luck and watched most of an episode of Bell Air, the Peacock Original drama version of the Fresh Prince of Bell Air show. Unlike the Saved By The Bell show, this one was kind-of good since it wasn't trying to critique the original, and I guess the Fresh Prince story lends itself to drama stories more than Saved By The Bell (especially since they tackled some heavy plots in the original Fresh Prince), but it was just kind of lacking since it didn't have the original cast (Will Smith was Will, Alfonso Ribeirto was Carlton, James Avery was Uncle Phil) and I for one watched Fresh Prince for the comedy not for the situations.

When we got back things were pretty simple. We left the airport and went to the parking structure. It wasn't very hard to find the car, and no difficulties on the way back. The parking was a little expensive ($80), but whatever. Since the replacement xbox media remote for IRA and dad-in-law it came while we were away I sent it home with mom-in-law. This was a great trip. It was great meeting Aunt P, and then I saw the governor and bishop at mass, and then I went to the oldest video store and got an interview with the owner, on top of all the other neat things that happened. This was a great way to spend the New Year. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Thanksgiving and Black Friday 2022

Hey everyone, it's Thanksgiving again, which means it's time for my annual Thanksgiving and black Friday blog. Let's start things off with Thanksgiving. Every year my parents host and now we've started that we spend the night with my in-laws that weekend (mainly because their guest bed is comfortable and can hold 2 people). When we got there I started showing the black friday deals to dad-in-law because there were some things I figured he might be interested in trying to get, and while he said "oh that's really cool" a lot he didn't say "that's a thing I want you to try to get." Eh, no big deal. Thanksgiving morning was pretty low-key. I got my paper with all the circulars, and while it's a little expensive at $5 a paper, I ended up getting meijer bucks which saved more than that (but I'll get to that later). IRA and I went over all the things so we could know where we wanted to go. Mskate and her mom watched the parade and it was fun ocassionally getting called in to see a favorite character, but it's not exactly my thing (I've been to the Detroit Thanksgiving parade once and that was really cool, but just watching on the TV isn't super interesting). Whatever, after that it was time for the main event.

Mskate and I arrived around 1 or so I think, and this is where I had a lot of fun. In my lets play of TMNT Turtles in Time, I mentioned how my brother and I used to play this arcade game a lot whenever we went to the Wheels Inn, but were never able to get very far. Well, with the release of the Cowabunga Collection, we finally had our opportunity. I brought over my PS4, both controllers, charging dock, and the game, booted up the arcade version of turtles in time, and we played through the entire game start to finish. Under normal circumstances my mom would probably be encouraging us to spend time with more people, but she was there those 4 or so years and knows how big of a deal this was, and we were accomplished. This was probably close to 20 years in the making, but we finally beat TMNT Turtles in Time. I had beaten it a year or so prior, but never both of us. Now we just need to beat the NES game and all will be complete.

Before I get to dinner, I should talk about the other event. My grandma, TanMan's grandparents and uncle, and grandma's friends all came as well. Grandma's friend's wanted to buy some copies of Mskate's book, so we ended up having a little book signing which was fun. I got some pictures of the event for mskate to put on her book instagram and facebook page so it looks like it was a real book signing. OK, with the book and game out of the way, time for dinner. My parents made a traditional dinner with turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans, corn, and cranberry sauce, and then ham for those of us that don't like turkey (like me). Mskate and I have basically decided that our contribution will be brussels sprouts since we have a good recipe and it goes over so well, and then on like Wednesday I picked up a loaf of pumpernickel bread from the grocery store and brought that as a contribution. My mom was making a big deal about how "that is such a grown up food" (I'm kind of picky), and I was like "Mom, I've always liked pumpernickel bread, we used to get it every time we went to Frankenmuth [starting from when I was like 3]." Dinner was pretty good, I got my non-China plate like I do every year (now adays I could be trusted with the China, but I like to keep that "tradition" alive). After dinner grandma's friend always brings deserts, especially her lemon meringue pie. She said she had some trouble getting enough lemon and wasn't sure if it was going to be good, but what she lacked in lemon she made up for in sour so it was still a win in my book. 

After dinner we did the accordion sing along. IRA and mom-in-law joined us for that, and it was a fun time. Not long after it was time to go home mskate and I went back to her parents house and IRA and I watched some of the south park specials on paramount plus before bed. We had to wake up at 4AM because the first store opened at 5 and we had to make sure we got there.

After a mostly restful night, it's 4AM and IRA and I need to get going. I had pop tarts and a bagel and I don't remember what IRA had, but it was something on the road. Our first stop was Best Buy since they opened at 5 and had the most things we wanted. We got in line and it just so happened that the local news was there interviewing people. I got interviewed and showed off the loop and list of items we were out hunting for. The cool thing is we ended up on the news.

Once 5 hit we went to the movie section and started searching for what we were after. I ended up finding Spiderman No Way Home and Morbius, and IRA ended up finding some other things. After the movies we went to the videogames and I got Doki Doki Literature Club Plus and Death Stranding. I don't remember all that IRA got, but I do know he got TMNT Cowabunga Collection on switch, so that's good for him.

After Best Buy we went to Walmart because we thought it would be open at 5 according to the commercials, but there were people waiting and apparently they opened at 6, so we improvised and instead went to Kohls about a mile away. I had 2 things I was looking for, Harry Potter Defense Class Lego set and an Air Conditioner cover. Here's the problem I ran into, they were out of the Lego sets (they had them, but not what I was interested in), and the AC cover was only available online. I did end up finding some things, instax film for mskate and a winnie the pooh shirt for mskate's mom (and when I got home I ordered the AC cover).

By now it's 6AM and we were going to go to walmart but gamestop was close by, so IRA and I went there even though I didn't see anything of interest (I almost bought Sonic Frontier, but it was a little to expensive for my interests so I decided to wait it out), and I think IRA got something but don't really remember. The employees were kind of weird, saying they thought it felt more like closing time (probably just Gamestop syndrome). Anyway, after that we went to Walmart. There wasn't a lot of things I was looking for, but for my parent's new 4K tv I got them a 4K Roku for $20. IRA picked up some value DVDs that weren't on sale but were dirt cheap anyway.

After Walmart we went to Meijer. This is where things got kind of big. The main things I wanted to get were new joycons for my switch (because mine are drifting bad) and a new Disney welcome mat, both of which would utilize the Meijer bucks. By chance I saw a Nightmare Before Christmas puzzle which will make for a great gift for IRA at a later date, and a Lego Harry Potter Polyjuice set for mskate since the Kohl's set didn't work out. I also got some blue Christmas lights that I am using for a craft project, buy 2 get 1 free and $5 for 100 lights, which works out pretty well for what I need. We also got some Puperoni dog treats for Duke and Delila, so that will work out well. After Meijer because it was kind of close I picked up 4 poster frames for the puzzles mskate and I regularly do (70% off, great deal).

Now it's time for Target. The main things I was after were the apple gift card for the $15 rebate, pop socket for mskate, a second tree for mskate and I for all the Disney ornaments, and tide pods for the $5 rebate. IRA got some things I think, but these were the main things that made the trip worth it. After Target IRA and I went to Barns and Nobel because IRA was a little interested in the graphic novels, but didn't find anything. Since Bed Bath and Beyond was pretty close we went there and I got mskate a popcorn popper since she really likes popcorn and microwave popcorn isn't all that easy due to her allergies, so this is hopefully going to be a fun thing for her.

Now we're pretty close to the mall, and that means Macy's and Bath and Bodyworks. At Macy's I had 2 things I was after, the sterling silver Micky head pendant for like 75% off and the Micky and Minnie plushies. Since we were so close we went to the mall and to Bath and Bodyworks. The sale they had was buy 3 get 3 free, so we got 6 different $7.50 hand soaps. IRA ended up paying me for 2 of them so he could give one to my mom and one to my grandma, and the other 4 are basically going to go to those people as well (maybe my aunts as well). We stopped at the other target but I was running out of energy and interest, so I just stayed in the car while IRA ran in. He didn't find anything, but that was OK since we were tired and wanted to rest (it was like 9AM, we had been out for 5 hours).

After about a 2 hour nap I did some amazon black friday shopping (as well as getting the AC cover from Kohls.com). I ended up getting Ed Edd n Eddy the complete series (I know it's not "fully complete," but I love this series and it's complete enough and if they ever release the rest I'll just buy it separately like I did with Teen Titans and Teen Titans Trouble in Tokyo), nerds ropes, amazon fire stick and luna wifi controller (because my computer can't accept a controller while playing luna, and this would be good when traveling), the movie Used Cars, gaffer's tape for either my dad or brother, disposable rubber gloves for cleaning and crafting, apple juice, tomato sauce, and 4 different allergen free snack boxes for mskate.

After the shopping it was time to go put up my grandma's tree. VikingPolak and I went down to her basement and got her tree, and then everyone else just brought up her ornaments, lights, hip shaking santa, and pants down santa. I helped put the tree up and strung the lights, and put up the window lights while getting the timer set-up. After that I "did my part" and mskate put up all the ornaments. We had left overs for lunch/dinner, and that was pretty much that. After the tree trimming we went back to mskate's parents house and relaxed. IRA and I watched more south park specials, and then I passed out from being tired. We spent the night one more night and then went home the next day.

Nothing of major note happened on Saturday (mskate worked on our Disney tree, and I did some processing of things), so I'll just jump to my Aunt's Sunday Thanksgiving trip. We went to see my Aunt and Grandpa for the day, and after church mskate and I went to my parent's house to pick everyone up, and we all rode up in our truck. While we were waiting for my mom to get home from my grandma's house, I showed dad how to get to the Hallmark Channel on Sling, because I got the Hallmark Channel on our sling account to share with my parents since they cut the cord and my mom isn't the most technologically literate person (and when I first showed mom how to get to it she was surprised to see all the movies she had access too that aren't Hallmark).

Our visit was good. I was able to get my switch back after forgetting it at her house the month before. We filled them in on how Mskate's book and part time retail job was going. We fixed some things up for them since she is replacing all her smoke detectors and they're not the easiest to replace since the connectors are different, and she needed some blinds put up in her sewing room and they were kind of complicated. We had a combination of left overs from both of our dinners (aunt made some stuff for her and grandpa, so dad brought some of what he had as well). I brought what was left of my pumpernickel bread and grandpa enjoyed it. It was a good visit. This was a good Thanksgiving. Well this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Pokematic Goes to The Fly Trap in Ferndale Michigan, a Diners Drive-ins and Dives Restaurant

Hey everyone. It was my dad's birthday and mskate and I wanted to do something special for a birthday lunch. Well, he and I both enjoy Diners Drive-Ins and Dives with Guy Fieri and it turns out that The Fly Trap as seen in "Off The Hook Specials" and "Triple-D Classics" wasn't prohibitively far from where he lives. We were going to go to The Union Wood Shop from "Kid Rock's Detroit Tour" and "Pork Hall of Fame," but they were closed until 4PM, so we went to another place in flavor town. Maybe next time.

Anyway, we went there and it was pretty cool. Here's some of the décor.

I was kind of surprised that they weren't playing up the fact that Guy featured them since Blimpy Burger really played it up. That actually could be for the best, because it could be kind of tacky. It was also a rather small place. I know the camera adds 50 square feet, but it's still always kind of weird when a place from a TV show is so much smaller than it looks on TV. There were maybe 15 tables and a bar, and most people were sitting at the bar. The fire marshal set the maximum capacity at 75 people. Oh well, size aside it was still pretty neat.

We got our menus and it took us a little time to figure out what we wanted. Ultimately mskate and dad settled on the The Patty Wagon and I went with the Hamburger. I wanted to get something "more interesting" (and next time I'll probably also get The Patty Wagon), but the burger would require the fewest changes for my pallet and I wanted to see what the Buzz Sauce was like. With the limited menu options for all of us and what ended up being a bit of a wait, we were kind of wondering if it was worth it. Well, once we got our food it definitely was.

My Hamburger with Buzz Sauce

Dad's Patty Wagon

Mskate's Patty Wagon without the bread and cheese

These were were REALLY good. Like, this was more than just a burger. That sauce made it a little spicy and other flavor that really complimented the onion and lettuce, and the home made bun really helped. Dad and mskate both really enjoyed their Patty Wagon, and I had some of Mskate's and it was really good. Dad even thinks he might take Mom there because it's not crazy far away and has some good quality food. Once again, Guy knows his restaurants. There was some left overs and we got this cute little take-out box.

After eating I went to the bathroom to wash up. Here's what the doors said.

"Either" and "Or"

I asked myself "am I an 'either' or and 'or'"? I asked one of the waitresses which bathroom was the men's room, and aparently they were unisex. They could have done something to make it a little more obvious, but whatever. I decided I was an "or." It was a pretty good restaurant. Maybe check the menu beforehand to make sure there's something you like, but if you do go it's worth it. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.