4/13/25

Today was a semi-emotional day. It was Palm Sunday and our day to do coffee and donuts. Palm Sunday was my favorite church holiday as a kid because it meant I got a "toy" during mass (the palm). Even as an adult I hold onto the palm the entire mass. Mskate and I got the donuts and set-up things before mass. Our church maintenance guy likes to help out I didn't recognize him at first after he got a major hair cut. After mass when we did the coffee and donuts it was super busy, we went through 2 pitchers of tang (normally we barely make it through 1), 2.5 pots of regular coffee (normally it's 1.5-1.75), and we went through almost all the donuts (normally there's half a dozen to one dozen left), and I had to do a lot of running around. I told our priest about how much I like Palm Sunday and why I like it, and he chuckled. After mass mskate and I went to Meijer to get a baby shirt for our "forever memory" build a bear to send with my grandma in her casket. We got a baby swim shirt and mskate made a cricut design for the shirt shirt like what my grandma would wear when I was a kid (it says "this grandma belongs to" on the front and then her 3 grandsons and the 2 wives on the back). Then I straightened my videogame room/storage room while also looking for some hair clips that mskate wants the bear to wear (which I did find). It's a very nice final gift now. Now I'm watching Animation Domination. Good Sunday. Later.

4/12/25, a special Easter day

Today was a very big day. I've talked about my grandma on hospice a lot, and today was our big Easter party for her. Originally we were going to do a party in one of the party rooms, but she can't leave her bed now, so we did the party in her studio apartment. We had my family, pepperBC's family, her best friends, and some old neighbors. We had pizza and accordion sing alongs. She can't really stay alert much anymore, spending most of her time with her eyes closed and head drifting over to the side, but today she held her head up a lot and/or opened her eyes, and said a couple of things to her best friend. After the party mskate and I went to the mall and we made a build a bear for her to take in her casket. We made a little message that plays when you press the paw, a modification of the same thing I said in the first build a bear I made for her over 20 years ago, but with mskate saying it with me. It's very meaningful for us since she really liked build a bear, always liking to dress it up in different outfits over the years. Making "the final build a bear" was very emotional, but it was a good thing. We also saw the Easter Bunny, and since mskate worked for Santa at Christmas and it's the same people who run Santa we were able to do it for a majorly discounted price (the manager said "this is [mskate], she can donate if she wants but we'll hook her up for free." Afterwards we got a free Rocky Mountain Chocolate cookie or Hagandas ice cream. I got the cookie and mskate got the ice cream. When I got home I saw a community post from yuriofwind (a creator I've followed for 10+ years and got some inspiration from in how I make videos) talking about his health problems and how it is probably the end, and so I made a tribute video to him. I didn't really realize how much influence he had on my videos until I saw that post. I tagged him on twitter and blue sky and hope he sees it. I was going to write a blog about the Easter party today, but it was too emotional and I was tired so I'll do it tomorrow. Later.

4/8-11/25

Things happened and didn't. Mskate stayed with her parents for some days while she watched my grandma and filled Easter eggs for a fundraiser she's doing, which meant that I was home alone. I made my cheapskate chili and had that Monday-Thursday. I went to Chuck E Cheese a couple of times and played the Halo arcade game they have. One night I played through 5 of the 6 levels and had a kid join in as player 2. Unfortunately I didn't get past the scarab in the final level before I ran out of credits on my card, so I had to go home afterwards. On another day I did "level select" and just played the final mission. One of the employees had a Freddy Fazbear pin on her lanyard, and I commented on how it's ironic to be wearing Freddy at Chuck E Cheese. I finally got my October blog done. I also found a new place to post to, subnano. They don't host videos, but the guy who made it set it up so I can embed videos, so I'm going to embed my rumble links. He posted about it on reddit and I found the post, and he said "I added the feature early because you asked for it." It's big thing is that you can do "pay per post," and I plan on using it as a way to tip my videos (video will always be free, but there will be an option to unlock a thank-you for the tip).

Tomorrow is going to be my grandma's last holiday since she's on serious hospice. We got some things packed up and prepared to have a good final celebration. I'll give details tomorrow. I also put smashed pennies in one of my penny books. Now I need to do a little extra cleaning. Later.

4/7/25

Well things are super busy in my world. This morning I started a pot of chili and had that for dinner. I got my Ann Arbor Big 10 Gymnastics blog written, which was quite a lot. I also started organizing my smashed pennies, and need to find my Disney 100 book to put the Disney 100 pennies in it. I also watched an episode of 7th Heaven with mskate since she watched it in her youth but I didn't, and it's available with paramount plus. I also watched an episode of The Rookie. Also, Stop Skeletons from Fighting finally put together and uploaded his 16 player Faceball 2000 video and investigation, and reminds me that I need to get a video I'm working on done with a similar "I have a question that no one seems to have answered, and after scowering the internet I found an answer with a pretty crazy journey." Later.

4/1/25

Happy April Fools Day I guess. If things weren't so crazy in my life I might have worn my morph suit to work for the morning meeting, but I didn't. Mskate made it back after being with her parents for a while. I cleaned out under the coffee table and that was a lot of stuff. I wrote a lot of my October blog, so I will get that done soon. I watched St. Denis Medical, The Neighborhood, Night Court, and Shifting Gears, as well as an episode of The Rookie and Ninja Kamui. Getting tired. Later.

3/29-30/25

This weekend was a busy day followed by a calm day. Saturday was a day of out and doing things. With my dad starting to feel better and being a big Looney Tunes fan I had the great idea to go see The Day the Earth Blew Up with him before going to see my grandma and maybe going out to Chuck E Cheese with some family, and Mom was going to take the 2 hours it would take to see Looney Tunes as a time to just take a big break. However, Dad was having some problems and wasn't able to go to the movies with me. In the alternative Mom and I went to Chuck E Cheese and had a stuffed crust pizza with ham, pepperoni, and pineapple using the 50% off coupon my bronze membership gave me this week. She enjoyed it, and the price was good considering this would have been $30 without the coupon. While we were there we also played games. I played the spongebob coin pusher and unfortunately didn't really win. We played skiball and was fun. We played wheel of fortune and found someone left 13 credits on the machine, so we just kept playing double play over and over again, and one game we won 51 tickets after getting 1000 points and picking a letter that had 4 instances, and later picking the right word. I also played the Pink Panther escape game and I was able to win twice, 50 tickets each time. We also rode the ride simulator thing, which was a great use of the points since it's a nice little ride simulator for like 5 minutes and it only costs 1 point. I also used 320 of our tickets on trinkets for Easter egg prizes (mskate is doing a fund raiser where we set-up an Easter egg hunt for people in their front yard the night before for a fee). After about 1.5 hours at chuck e cheese we went to my grandma's memory care facility and watched Out of the Box on Disney Plus while we fed her dinner. Out of the Box was a great choice since she likes to watch shows with kids and it's a show that's just kids playing pretend. After about 2 hours with her I went to mskate's parents and watched some figure skaters since it's the world championship going on right now and her family likes figure skating whereas I'm indifferent. After that I just went home.

Today was a very calm day. I went to church and that was kind of it for the day. After mass I dug out the Donald Duck Numeo we got for my grandma for her birthday, we're going to give it to her now since she likes her "babies" (stuffed animals, particularly little Disney Numeo guys) and we don't know how much longer she has left. I cleaned up some things, throwing out some garbage, collecting expired medicine to take to a collection site, and made some individual servings of snack foods for lunch. I also made one of my animal crossing lego sets. I also spent most of the day watching Tiger and Bunny, an interesting anime series a friend recommended to me 10+ years ago in college that has been sitting in my backlog since and with it leaving hulu at the end of the month I decided to try to watch it before it leaves. I'll make a review of it once I finish it since I only have 3 episodes left and 1 day left. I also finished writing my blog about my Big 10 Women's Gymnastics adventure, and bought the hotel for next weekend when we're going to the Big 10 Men's Gymnastics finals, and made sure all our bills were fully paid. Later.

3/27/25 (A Religious Experience)

Before I get to today, an update with my grandma. The past 2 days have been VERY difficult. Her dementia is making it hard to breath in her throat (it's getting to the brain stem) and it was hard for her to eat things, so it was time to go on hospice. She was able to go into a private room because we weren't sure if she was going to die soon. I drove up to see her and spend some time and say my goodbyes. About 3 hours with her and then went home. Very emotional. Then the next day she went back to her assisted living facility, and I went back up to see her again for some hours, this time making sure to set-up the spare roku in her room so whoever was with her could put on some streaming app we have since all she gets are local channels. It was another good visit, just spending time with her, but now she seems a bit more stable. The thing though is she can't hold a conversation, she says some things but she's not really all there. This week mskate is staying with her parents because she's looking over grandma and watching skating with her parents, meaning that I have the house to myself.

Now for today. This morning is when things started unexpectedly with what I can only describe as a religious vision. About an hour before I normally wake up I was woken up by a younger woman dressed in white calling me by name and shaking my leg (remember, I'm in the house alone). I wake up a little and see her, then wake up fully and she disappears but I can still hear her in a voice that is a little familiar, as she tells me to go back to sleep and I'm able to see her again. This is when I realize that this was my grandma, young and whole, I recognized her from all the pictures that I did for major videos that I did for her, at about the same age as me right now. I won't go into details here and now (that will be for a different project), but it was really great. She told me how much she appreciates all that people are doing for her and have done for her, about how she was glad to see so many of our major life events and even though she really wanted it is OK with not being able to experience great-grandmotherhood and that her best friends / my grandparent figures will be able to experience it for her, settle out some of the frictions we've had and get closure there, and then just go through ALL the stories that she and grandpa would tell me in chronological order, and then I saw her with my grandpa when he was young and able bodies, and my uncle who was now walking (he was in a wheel chair his entire life), and my older sibling who my mom lost in pregnancy; everyone was whole. Really really touching and special moment for me that I'm glad I was able to have uninterrupted, since when I told mskate about it she was all "yeah I would have interrupted you.

I ended up going to work a little later than normal because I had things I had to get ready for the day with and this went a little longer than my normal morning routine, but it was all good just meant I had to stay at work a little longer. After work I watched Dawson's Creek, ate some of my chili, and went to chuck e cheese to use our fun pass. I also wrote most of my women's big 10 gymnastics competition blog, just need to put the pictures in, but I'll get to that tomorrow. Later.