Pokematic's Florida Wedding Adventure

Hey everyone, in less than a year I have another cousin getting married, this time in Florida. Yay. This time it was just going to be my parents, brother, mskate, and I. Our craziness started a little before the trip, because we neglected to buy a gift from the registry and had to bring one. Mskate bought a Nora Flemming bowl with a palm tree charm and I gathered birth year penny rolls. We were planning on only bringing carry on bags (because checking a bag is expensive and we could pack everything necessary in 2 carry ons for our 2 night trip), and while we still managed to get everything in 2 bags it was tight. I also had to make the tough decision to not wear my pokemon tie to the wedding and instead wear my grandpa tie (because he can't travel anymore). It's unfortunately that my grandpa can't travel anymore, and by extension my aunt who takes care of him, but that's life and I told them I would take lots of video so they could still see it (I did that for my last wedding as well). Since the wedding was going to be in Saint Augustine and there would be a lot of free time, we also packed ready for a fun adventure. OK, onto the adventure.

Day 1 Saturday. Our flight was kind of early so I fried up a pound of bacon the night before to eat on the way for breakfast (though only half seemed to make it to morning, funny how that happens). The drive to the airport was pretty uneventful, and we somehow managed to not spend a ton of time looking for a parking spot in the parking structure. TSA also wasn't that big a deal thankfully, and once we got through we met up with the family shortly afterwards. While the airport is kind of cool, there wasn't much left to really do aside from battle at the gyms in pokemon go, but it was still nice hanging out with the family. The pain ride was ok, and I got to watch A Christmas Story Christmas on the flight. Now any followers know that I'm kind of a big fan of A Christmas Story, watching it every year on TBS at Christmas (sometimes to the annoyance of my family), and I've had some...let's say run-ins with attempts to cash in on the original's success, and with HBO "doing some dumb things" and desperate to not completely lose the streaming war, I went in guarded. With that in mind, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. It actually was quite good and felt like a real continuation of the story. Unintended sequels like this have a really tough job; capture what made the original so good while not being a lesser copy of the original. A lot of the time they either do something so different that it's like "the only reason this is a 'sequel' is for brand recognition" or "you're just trying to make the same movie again but failing." This one though, it follows an adult Ralphie and his family as they visit his mom for Christmas, and he deals with adult challenges of Christmas while still being optimistic. It's about equally as edgy and equally hopeful as the original, does just the right amount of callbacks that are also work as stand-alone gags, and the way it ends is dare I say perfect. Since I still had time on the flight I watched about 40 minutes of The Last Samurai, knowing I wouldn't be able to finish it this time but assuming I would be able to finish it on the return flight. I also got some more flight video I'm uploading with creative commons rights.

We are now in the airport, ready for our vacation to start. Mskate ordered our uber and we found our way to the ride share pick-up location. I wanted to explore a little more, hoping to find a candy store that sold Spongebob surprise chocolate eggs, especially if they had prizes I don't have yet, but unfortunately there wasn't any that I could find at least. The uber ride was looooong, 60 minutes from the airport to Saint Augustine. On the drive we were stopped by police assistants to block off the road so the Hero Ride could go by. It was a motorcycle parade thing where I guess a bunch of veterans and first responders ride their motorcycles on a 5 mile stretch of highway and it's blocked off so they can go unimpeded. It was kind of cool since it was an unexpected event, and only lasted 4 minutes since it was an "actual 50 MPH ride" and not a "5 MPH parade" so no big deal there (though Uber did call us and the driver to make sure we were both OK since we were at a stand-still for a long period of time).

The hotel we stayed at was pretty nice (nothing super fancy, but still "downtown" within walking distance of everything and the usual amenities like a pool and mini-fridge). Since this was in a tourist area there was a stand with a bunch of coupons for attractions. I picked up a book and looked for places to eat since it was around lunch time. I found Auggie's Draft Room in the big downtown area where we had 3 buy one get one free coupons in the booklet, which was almost perfect for our little group of 5 (6 burgers total, 5 for now 1 for later). The restaurant was about half a mile from the hotel, and that gave us some time to take in some sights and points of interest. We knew we wanted to go to Our Lady of La Leche since it's a major church (relative to the original from the Spanish settlement I think), and it was right across the street from the hotel. We also had to find a drug store or dollar store, or something to wrap the gift with since we didn't want to risk damaging the wrapping while in transit, but unfortunately that didn't happen. We did see some cool stores like a Christmas Shoppe and an antique store, and the welcome center was pretty cool with a little museum in it. I can get to those later though, time for the restaurant. I also got my picture with this fun sign.

Auggie's was pretty neat. It was kind of a mix of "table service" and "counter service," where you order your food at the counter but they bring it to your table. The burgers were your standard fair (1 or 2 patties, pick your toppings from ketchup, mustard, mayo, lettuce, pickles, tomatoes, etc.), but there was one topping that caught my attention, datil ketchup. I had never heard of datil ketchup before, and I wanted to see what this was, so I ordered it on my burger. This was a spicy ketchup, and as someone that likes to mix hot sauce with his ketchup, this was good. Then what was most interesting was the self service beer taps. My brother did this, apparently you get a card and swipe in front of the beer you want, and that keeps track of your tab as you self poor. Pretty neat. The prices were a little steep at $14 for a meal, but we were in a tourist area so a premium is to be expected and the buy one get one free coupons made it a reasonable $7 per meal. After lunch mskate and I went to The Original Likit for a frozen desert; soft serve vanilla for me and allergen free pineapple dole whip for her. This was kind of expensive, because of the tourist premium, but it was the heat of the day and I wanted something cold. We ate it on our way to our next stop.

With our hunger satisfied, we made our way to the other hotel people were staying at, the more fancy one where the rest of the family was staying. This is where we met up with Aunt and Uncle B (parents of my cousin who was getting married), and Aunt and Uncle C (parent's of my "big cousins" who weren't able to make it). It has been years since I last saw them, so it was really great getting to see them again, and since covid kind of made our wedding limited this was the first time they got to meet mskate. That was really fun, and when we told Uncle B about mskate's book he said "I want to see that, can you bring it to the meet and greet tonight?" I said we would and that made him happy (he's had 2 strokes, so we're always on the look out for things that will make him happy, and I always like to bring her book to family events since people are always impressed that she made a "real book" and figured he would enjoy it). Then before we all dispersed my cousin and her fiance came walking down the big staircase in the front of the lobby like something out of a princess movie (no ball gown, but still a "big reveal" like thing), and that was great being able to see them for the brief moment. I managed to get it on video for the home movie I was going to make and it really was like something out of a movie (just not perfectly framed and no background music). This is where I got my direction of "the ceremony is unplugged, leave that to the professionals, but everything else is fair game." OK I can work with that. 

After our little reunion we went back to the tourist area where we went to city gate spirits, a distillery with 10 different liquors available to sample. They had peanut butter whisky, smoked maple whisky, salted caramel whisky, apple pie moonshine, cola moonshine, orange cream moonshine, sweat tea vodka, tropical rum, and 2 others I'm forgetting. When we went to the distillery in Tennessee we only had the option to sample 5, but we got to sample all 10. My favorites were the cola moonshine, peanut butter whisky, and sweet tea vodka, but they were all quite good. When mom and I had the apple pie moonshine, we had our picture taken with it and said "this one's for D" since he used to make his own (I think he just mixed in the flavors to white lightning and didn't actually distil, but that was one of the things he would make). I sent the picture to his wife and kids and said "thinking about him with apple pie moonshine," and they really appreciated it. If we weren't flying I would have bought the sweet tea and cola liquors, but unfortunately we were flying and couldn't bring them on the plane with us (and wouldn't you know, those are two of the flavors they don't sell online). Oh well, we still have the memories. After that I think we just went back to our hotel for a little rest. I watched some of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On in the hotel room and think I took a nap, but it was just a simple relax time.

Since the meet and greet wasn't a dinner (more of a cocktail hour after dinner), we had to figure out what we wanted to eat. Mskate and I went to Mojo's barbecue in the downtown area while the rest of the family went to the Denny's just down the road from the hotel. I think they were more tired than us and just wanted to eat something easy, but we had more adventure in our spirit and wanted something different. First I want to say that our waiter was great. With all of mskate's allergies he was very thorough in making sure her food was safe, and that was really appreciated (I normally tip 20%, but he got 25% for going above and beyond). Next, the food was quite good. Since I was still a little full from lunch I just ordered a bowl of chili, and mskate wasn't planning on being able to eat her entire meal so I would be able to finish what she started. The bowl was quite big and was definitely enough for me (I didn't even finish it), and mskate ordered baked beans as one of her sides for me but she ended up liking them so much she ate them instead (her main course was brisket and her other side was green beans, which she also really enjoyed and from the sample I had was quite good). Atmosphere was standard fair for a BBQ place (a lot of western theming), but everything else was great.

Now for the meet and greet. We left right from the restaurant to the meet and greet which meant we had to bring the book with us to dinner. Mskate being a little shy about things didn't want me to bring the book, but Uncle B said he wanted to see it and I didn't want to let him down. I'm quite glad I did because the first thing he said to us was "did you bring the book?" I pulled it out of the bag we brought it in and he was really happy to see it, as was the rest of the family who hadn't seen it yet. Here's where things get kind of funny for me; at a big family reunion thing like this my parents would always tell me "let the distant family have time with the family you see all the time, you need to share," and I was prepared to do that again, but then it hit me "this time I am the distant family, this is my time to say 'spend time talking with me.'" I didn't get a ton of time to chat with my cousin (it's been close to 10 years since we last saw each other, kind of hard to condense that into the 5 minutes she had for me as one of her 50 or so guests), but it was still fun to share some of the things we've been up to. Then the really cool thing was Aunt C called her son in Japan (my "big cousin" who's 11 years older than me) and he got to talk to everyone. Once again my "you're not the spotlight, let the distant family have their limited opportunity" conditioning kicked in, but he kept wanting to talk to my brother and I so again it hit me "oh yeah, I AM the distant family with the limited opportunity this time." There weren't any big speeches or a lot of mingling with other guests for me (I mostly wanted to catch up with the family), but that's OK, the important thing was I got a message from the soon to be bride and groom for our grandpa and aunt.

When we got back to the room it smelled bad, kind of like a skunk. Since the AC was going we figured there was something with that, so we turned it off and turned on the bathroom vent. Thankfully the smell dissipated rather quickly, but it was still annoying, and we didn't turn the AC back on so we were a little hot that night but since it was a hotel with a connected hall it wasn't too bad.

Day 2 Sunday. The wedding was kind of late in the day (6PM I think), so we had a lot of time to ourselves. Mskate initially wanted to go to a restaurant that would have had things for her, but it was too expensive, so we went to the Farmhand KCHN down the street from the hotel somewhat close to the Denny's the rest of the family went to the night before. She got a vegan allergy friendly sandwich and I got the farmer's breakfast plate. Both of them were REALLY good, especially the potatoes, and while the atmosphere was pretty hipster it was ok (plus, they used a tool cabinet to hold all the condiments and utensils, which was pretty funny). After breakfast we walked down to the Christmas Shoppe to do some shopping and hopefully get something to put the gift in (like a bag). We found this really cool hand made nativity ornament where Mary and Joseph are oyster shells, the manger is a clam shell, and Jesus is a tiny pearl. They also had a big checkout bag that we decided was as good as we'd get, so we got that as well. We were going to buy it for like a quarter but the owner just let us have it. After the Christmas Shoppe we walked down to the fort and water just to see it (we didn't go in the fort since that costs money, but we looked from the outside and it was pretty cool). We walked along the river and while it was kind of cool, I've walked down enough rivers that it's not a super big deal to me. After walking the river we went to the main street to go to the tourist district we were at the previous day, this time to walk the entire street. While there were some cool places like a taffy store where we each got to sample 1 flavor (I don't remember which I got, but they were good). We went into a shopping arcade and checked out some of the stores. There was a candy store and I looked for the spongebob egg, but nothing. We did find a penny press and got one that said "I love you...Saint Augustine," but the press and die wheel were too far apart so all we got was "I love you." Also funny was the last person's penny didn't fall so we ended up getting 2, yay. The only other thing of note we did was go to a hot sauce store, where I sampled at least 8 different sauces. The sampling method was kind of funny, just take a spoon, put a dab on it, and lick it. My favorite was the Scandinavian Gold, and while I couldn't buy it to take on the plane, there is a store in my state that also sells it so I'm definitely picking it up next time I go that way.

OK lunch time. We went to the Farmhand KCHN again, this time for lunch and with my parents. We weren't super hungry so we split a phily cheese steak sandwich without the cheese. Once again, it was really good. I don't remember what my parents got, but it wasn't what they would have wanted since they ran out of chicken (which is like 70% of their menu) and pork, but whatever it was they enjoyed it. After lunch we got dressed for church and went over to Our Lady of La Leche. There was still about an hour before mass, but there was also a museum and gift shop so we explored that beforehand. As we were walking in I smelled the smell from last night, and figured there must be something with the lake around the area. The museum was pretty cool, talking about how this dates back to the 1500s or something. The worship space was OK, kind of your basic small Catholic church. I half expected a grand cathedral or something else more since this was like "a big landmark," but I guess everything else in the area was more of the "landmark." After mass we went to "the landmarks," namely the giant cross. Mskate wanted to get her picture with it for a new profile picture, but the wind wasn't cooperating so we just got a picture together. There was also one of the many old cemeteries on the property (because there are so many cemeteries in Saint Augustine there's a tram tour), stations of the cross, a crucifix in the garden, and a statue of Mary breast feeding. I've never seen that before, but I guess it was something Mary had to do, and given that "leche" is "milk" in Spanish it only makes sense to have a statue recognizing the life giving milk a mother makes for her child, especially the holy mother to our lord and savior. I think we mostly relaxed after that and just hung out at the hotel until it was time to get ready for the wedding (or maybe it was time to get ready and prepping took up until wedding time).

OK it is now time for the main event. Everyone is all dressed up, I'm wearing my grandpa tie and the socks my grandma gave me years ago, the bus to the venue is here, let's go. The control screen was broken so the music volume was set mid-high, but that was OK since the driver had a party mix going and the music was fun. As we were almost to the venue mskate realized we forgot the gift, so we were trying to figure out to get back to the hotel and then get back to the venue some time before the end of the night. I'll spare you the suspense, we weren't able to get back and get it that night and delivered it to their hotel the following day, so whatever. They ended up getting married at the Lighthouse Museum in what used to be the swimming pool. They had a picture of what it was like with the pool filled, and I did a comparison video showing it off.

When we got there the first thing we saw was the "celebrating in heaven" table, where we saw grandma with the other family members who've passed on. Very nice. The first relative we saw was uncle B, and I told him how I was wearing things given to me by his parents (my grandparents) who weren't able to be there and he really liked hearing that. We met up with Aunt and Uncle C, and at some point I said hello to my soon to be cousin and shook his hand wishing him luck (once again asserting the "I'm the far away family, it's my time to have a turn" thing). I took some video of the area and then we found our seats. The ceremony was pretty short (some nuptials and vows), and then it was time for pictures. Aunt and Uncle C didn't think they would be requested for the family photos and so they left the photo area, and then when they were called we were like "where are they, take our photos and then go find them." Bro and I ran up the stairs to where the cocktail hour was being had and found them, bringing them back down to get their photo taken. That was the only hiccup, all went well. After that we had drinks and visited, I took some video of everyone for the home movie and got both Aunt and Uncle C and Aunt and Uncle B to make messages to my grandpa and aunt who couldn't be there. Aunt B thought we were going to call them but when I explained it was just a video message to watch later she was able to think of something. I also got my opportunity to shake my new cousin's hand again, and said "did it before and did it after." This was also the time when I told everyone about how I was wearing gifts from both grandparents to have a little piece of them there and they all thought it was great. I also got a little interview with the grandpa that was able to make it, and he had just the best old man response to my short questions.

Pokematic: Hey there grandpa, how are you doing?

Grandpa: pretty good, but I'm tired.

Pokematic: Good ceremony right?

Grandpa: oh yeah, but I am pretty tired.

After the cocktail hour it was time to go to our tables for dinner. My family sat with Aunt and Uncle C, and we filled the whole table. The grand entrance was grand and the bride and groom had their first dance together. After the first dance Uncle B gave his father of the bride speech and prayer for meal, citing how the thing that kept him motivated through physical therapy after his second stroke was "I need to walk my daughter down the aisle in 6 months." It was pretty motivational. For dinner it was a Caesar salad, roasted potatoes, sautéed asparagus, some kind of chicken, and beef. I loaded up on basically everything but the chicken, and later on went back for seconds with what was left (I finished off the 3 remaining pieces of beef, and had some more of the vegetables). A fun thing they had was a photo booth thing, and since our table was so close to it mskate and I were able to be the 2nd people to use it and help them get set-up. We didn't get the print outs until later in the night (because the printer wasn't working initially), but we did get them texted to us. Our second picture in the set was going to be a kissing one, but we started too early and mskate pulled away right as the camera took the picture, so it looks like I'm leaning in for a kiss and she's trying to get away from me. It's quite funny. So then our 3rd picture was a kissing one that we didn't start too early. Later on in the night we did another round, this time with us using the props and being goofy.

After dinner (or kind of during it) the bride and groom cut the cake. There wasn't a lot of attention given to it, the professional photographers and videographers and myself were on it, but there wasn't an announcement of "OK everyone, please direct your attention to the desert table as the bride and groom will now cut the cake." I think they kind of wanted it that way though. After that it was time for the best man and matron of honor speeches, followed by the father-daughter dance and mother-son dance, and it was visibly emotional for my cousin, with her wiping many tears halfway through the dance. After those special dances it was time for the dance floor to open. There wasn't a lot of dancing since it was like already 9PM and the reception ended at 10:30PM, meaning I don't think we got a complete song, but that was OK it was still a lot of fun. Uncle B really got into it on some songs and that was some great video for the family back home, and on one song Dad was getting into it but lost track of where he was going and where his feet were and fell over. Thankfully he didn't hurt himself too badly (just a small cut on his nose where his glasses pads are), but it still was unnerving. I was taking video at the time and I actually got him falling over, and right when he hit the ground my gears switched from "fun time camera man" to "first responder eagle scout," and I stopped the camera and got down to his level making sure people kept their distance. Again, all was good and he joined the dance floor later in the evening.

Last time when I did a wedding party video for my cousin I tried taking video on the dance floor as I danced, and I did the same thing this time. The artistic intent was to give the audience the feeling of actually being there dancing by having the camera gently bob and swing with the music. The professionals do their thing with the steady cam, and while that's good and proper for "showcasing the scene," it doesn't feel immersive because when you're on the dance floor your view isn't steady like that, you're head is moving along to the music. My video production teacher would probably have some things to say about it, but the amount of camera movement I give is not jarring and really makes you feel like you are there with everyone. I ended up getting some good video of this, with the best man REALLY getting into Don't Stop Believing by Journey, the bride and bridesmaids squealing with excitement when dancing queen came on, and multiple other fun things. To any amateur filmmakers out there, if you're going to film a dance or party scene I highly recommend the bobbing but not jarring POV; it might be a little disorienting but it will make the audience feel like they are in the party especially if the subject is a little tired and disoriented.

At the end of the night the bride and groom had a private dance together as we all went outside to do a sparkler exit. Like with tanman's wedding, we were all getting kind of antsy waiting for them. A lot of people were struggling to light their sparklers off their neighbor's and I was able to really help since I played with sparklers a lot as a kid and experimented with lighting a sparkler off of another sparkler. Once it was time they came out under the sparklers and went to the drive away car, a convertible corvette. After that mskate, my parents, and I went back to the hotel.

Day 3 Monday, travel home day. We once again went to the Farmhand Kchn for breakfast. I tried the steak and egg bagel and mskate once again had the beyond breakfast sandwich. Mine wasn't that great (ok but not as good as the other breakfast), and mskate's sandwich wasn't as good as it was the day before. I picked up some more ketchup and hot sauce for the fries from the Auggie's left overs and that helped them go down later. After breakfast mskate and I took our present down to the hotel where our cousin was staying. We left the gift for them at the front desk, and lucky for us they were staying 2 more days so we knew they would get it. After that we just kind of hung around, too tired to really explore any more. We packed up, checked out, and ordered our uber. Nothing big on the ride back, just a long drive.

Once we got to the airport it wasn't super crazy. TSA was different, the bins were pre-conveyored and everything had to go in a bin. It took longer than normal to go through since my bins got stuck behind someone who had a problem with their bag. That was kind of annoying, but whatever. I thought the conveyor was kind of cool because it took the bin to a sensor and when the bin was empty it went to a return conveyor. Once in the terminal I did a little bit of exploring and got sabarro's pizza for lunch. I looked around for a candy store and spongebob egg, but unfortunately none. I played pokemon go in the terminal and did a bunch of gyms. The flight was OK. I was going to finish the Last Samurai but they didn't have it. Oh well, they had Clerks 3, a movie I somehow missed the fathom event for. I watched about half of it before we got to our layover, but figured I'd finish it on the next flight.

OK, now we're in the Georgia terminal. I had only an hour but that was enough for exploring. I ended up having Wendy's for dinner, and looked for something for mskate but unfortunately nothing worked for her. I also looked for chocolate eggs but once again no luck. Oh well. I played some more pokemon gyms and got ready for the plane. I was ready to finish watching Clerks 3, but like with the last flight it wasn't available and so I wasn't able to finish it. Damn. I ended up watching about half of Fantastic Beasts the Secrets of Dumbledore, because I sat that one out after Crimes of Grindlewald let me down bad. This one seemed a little better, there was more action, but from what I saw it didn't exactly wow me. Once we got home we just drove home and went to bed basically.

Day 4, Tuesday a day of recovery. This is the day that I just spent resting and recovering. Did I REALLY need this? Probably not, but I took it as my opportunity to get caught up on my shows and edit the wedding video I took for all my family. I spent probably 10 hours putting it all together, and it ended up being a really good video. It took a while to render and then upload (something I had to do on Wednesday), but it still went great and no problems.

This was a great trip. I'm quite happy for my cousin and happy I was able to see all my family in the oldest city in the United States. I also got a lot of great feedback from all my family after they watched the video. Well this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Pokematic Experiences and Reviews Barbie 2023

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.