A Funeral, 90's Game Night and Doug's SpongeBob Birthday Party

Saturday, January 21st

My weekend plans changed when I found out Manley Goodwin passed away.  He is my aunt Janet's husband, and we grew up hanging out at their house when we were kids.  Manley was a huge celebrity in town, and everyone knew him which is why it was so hard to hear that he left us to move onto a better place.  At first, I wasn't going to go to the burial but just the celebration of life, which was a couple weeks away from the burial, but at the last minute, I chose to go.

I called Mom and Dad to tell them I was getting ready to go and that I would meet them at the Rainier Cemetery.  Manley wanted to be buried in Rainier.  Jeff made sure that happened. I got some clothes on, wore warm clothes, my hiking shoes, a hat and gloves. It's been rainy and cold the past few days and I wanted to make sure I was warm. 

I headed into Rainier.  I've driven past the Rainier Cemetery hundreds of thousands of times but have only been inside of it maybe four or five times.  I parked and walked up the hill.  I saw a lot of people I knew on the way to the gravesite.  I saw Mom and Dad pull up and they helped Janet up the hill.  My great aunts and uncles were getting creaky and old.  As we all made it up the hill and said our "hi's" and "how you doings," it started lightly snowing. 

We all gathered around the covered area.  I let the family and older folks stand under the tent while I stood on the outside. Like any funeral, they started with welcoming us and got into talking about Manley's life.  After that, they did a military ceremony and presentation of colors to his sons and then thanked us for coming.  It was very well put together.  I personally enjoyed the military presentation of colors to his sons.  I stuck around for a few minutes and talked to a few people and then left to head over to Mom and Dad's house to fill up water jugs.  When I was done with that and headed home, I stopped at the recycle to get rid of the paper, plastics and metals. 

I got home and Ben and I started getting our food ready (a healthy take on Sloppy Joes) for our 90's themed game night at Lindsay and Justin's house.  I was just going to wear my Dan Marino jersey, but Ben wanted to wear Legends of the Hidden Temple T-shirts.  We chose silver snakes and had Josh make them for us.  I was kind of disappointed that no one knew what show that was once we got to the party.  Oh well.

We headed over to West Side Oly with our food, tables, chairs and a thirst for competition. I was so ready to crush 90's trivia.  We tried getting there early to get a good parking spot since we had the tables and chairs.  Sure enough, we got there, I backed in and Ben and Justin unloaded the tables and chairs.  Everyone who was coming, arrived donning their sports jerseys, flannel and 90's inspired colors.  Most of us were kids in the 90's except for Del, Josh, Heather and Celeste.  Del, Josh and Heather are already in their mid-40's, so they were the older kids in the 1990's and Celeste was born in the early 1990's, so she was a small child during that time.

We ate our 90's inspired food - Sloppy Joe sliders, taco salad with Fritos, bagel bites, pizza rolls, Fruit By the Foot and Chex Mix.  None of us could find Surge but we joked around about it.  

We played a very close game of 90's trivia that Nicole created and it made us remember some of the things we were into as kids.  We played a game called Blockbuster, a statistic game and a game where you came up with a bad movie review.  We had a great time!  There was a lot of laughing, yelling and we were all very surprised we didn't wake the baby.

We cleaned up and thanked Lindsay and Justin for hosting.  Ben and I got home, unloaded the Escape and got ready for bed.  The next day would also be busy. 

Sunday, January 22nd

A few months ago, I asked Erika what would be a good theme for Doug's birthday party?  We pondered for a while, she threw out some ideas and it just hit me, SpongeBob.  Erika thought that was a great idea and it would be easy to decorate for. 

Over the next few weeks, I collected SpongeBob decorations from Walmart, The Dollar Store and thought of ideas for stuff I already had, like making seaweed with my green paper streamers.  I had an idea of how I wanted the dining room to look.  I asked Erika if she was willing to make SpongeBob cupcakes and she said she would.  

We had a couple "setbacks" in January and as it got closer to his birthday, he told us that he didn't deserve a birthday party.  I told him, I don't care what you say, everyone deserves a birthday party and you're going to get one anyway.  He just scoffed.  I asked Mom what I should make, and she said probably pork chops, mashed potatoes and gravy and green beans.  I could make that happen. 

I purchased everything I needed the Friday before and got all of the decorations together.  Erka purchased everything she needed to make cupcakes.  I was actually really excited to see how they turned out.  That morning, I got up and started cleaning and arranging the living room.  We watched some crappy football and then started getting the food cooked.  I got the decorations up; Ben brought in chairs and helped me finish decorating while we kept an eye on the food.  I told Doug he couldn't come in the living room until everyone was there.   

Everything got ready about the time everyone came through the door.  Erika was extremely proud of her SpongeBob cupcakes.  I actually thought they turned out pretty well!  We got them on a platter and set them aside.  We all dished up, ate and relaxed for a bit.  Doug seemed to be enjoying his birthday party and thought the SpongeBob birthday theme was funny. 

We put candles in his SpongeBob cupcake, sang and he blew up the candles.  I got out the ice cream to go along with the cupcakes and dished everyone up.  We chatted, ate and then Doug opened his birthday gifts.  Mom replaced some of the stuff Jenn took when they broke up with her Amazon cards.  Erika and Zac got him some weird random things and Grandma got him a shirt.  It turned out to be a good birthday party.  

The rest of the day we spent cleaning up, doing dishes, laundry and continued watching more crappy football.  We finished getting ready for the upcoming work week.

Next Adventure:  A Little Bit of Geocaching, Errands and Top Rung

Bremerton Cache Machine 20th Anniversary Event and Dinner

I saw throughout Facebook that there was going to be a 20th Anniversary for cache machines.  I haven't been on a cache machine since the Shelton Cache Machine in December 2018.  With everything that was going on in my life at the time, made it hard to plan for them.  Then Covid pretty much murdered them altogether.  There had been some chatter on whether or not they were going to continue after Covid.

Late November to early December I started to make plans and hoped that the weather was decent during that weekend in January.  I told Ben about it and he seemed interested at the time and even made plans to get a hotel the Friday before so we could attend the pre-cache machine dinner.  As it got closer, we saw the weather was going to be unfavorable and we both got sick right after New Year's Eve, so we decided not to go.

Instead, a few days before, I asked Bev if she just wanted to go to the event and maybe get a couple caches on the way there.  She said she would ask Bob and get back to me.  I told Ben that Bev and I were probably going to go to just the dinner, he said that was fine.  Bev got back to me the next day and told me that she was able to go.  We hammered out a time for her to be at my house on that Saturday.  

At three on Saturday, Bob dropped Bev off, I had all my stuff together and we drove off in the Escape.  We got gas and headed up to Bremerton via I-5 north.  The traffic wasn't bad, and we made great time getting to Hwy 16 over the Narrows Bridge.  We followed Hwy 16 up through into Bremerton and followed the GPS onto the east side of Bremerton, over the Manette Bridge.  We got there in about an hour.  I asked Bev since we got here so early, it was still daylight and it wasn't actively raining, if she wanted to get a few caches while we waited for the event.  She said sure.

We checked to see which ones we didn't have together because we both have been to Bremerton on different occasions and found different caches.  We knew we both didn't have Whitey (GC6Y1FE) because the last time we were here it was missing so we had to DNF it.  We found a place to park (in a non-parking spot) the Escape and walked over to the "small" park.  We saw another guy was standing there looking for it and found it just as we approached him.  He knew we were there for the same reason.  We explained to him that we were here a few months ago and it was missing but glad to see it was there.  He handed it to use to sign and we put it back.  

We decided to move the car out of the non-parking spot to the actual parking lot.  I wasn't sure if there would be any parking at the next one, so we opted to walk to it.  It wasn't that long of a walk plus it was nice to get out and walk anyway since we've been in the Escape for an hour. We approached E 9th Street Mini Park (GC9D45H) and saw there was plenty of parking spots and we could have driven.  Oh well.  We found the correct hole, hanging about mid-knee in the bushy tree, made the grab, got our names on it and put it back just as another group of cachers showed up. We walked back to the Escape and headed to the next cache.  We had to be careful because one of the main roads we needed, Perry, was closed.

I set 15-TGS:  Vivien's Light Fantastic (GC3BMY5) to our phones and had Bev direct me to where we needed to go and she almost led us astray, haha.  We flipped a U, parked and I got out to grab it so we could sign it inside the Escape.  It was a fake rock, easy peasy.  We got our names on it and put it back where I found it.  We had no idea even if these caches we were finding were on the cache machine route. 

We drove further up the street for Carter's Cache (GC1WNHJ).  We found a place on the side of the road, got out and walked to the wrong side of the fence.  We walked back around and onto the flat pavement, avoiding all of the puddles from the rainfall, to grab a fake magnetic bolt on a metal piece in the corner.  They are always hard to write your names on because the logbook was so small.

We got back in the Escape and drove up Trenton Ave, cut across Stone Way near the school and onto Perry (this section of road wasn't closed) and found the event, 20th Cache Machine Anniversary Dinner (GCA2QY6) and location, Chaos Bay Brewery.  We parked and went inside.  We tried to get there as close to 5 p.m. as possible.  We saw that we were one of the first groups of people there, so waiting for food and finding a table wouldn't be that difficult.  We stood at the counter and decided what we wanted to eat and drink.  I ordered a beer (the Amber ale called Time Trap), burger and fries.  Bev had the onion rings and a drink.  We paid and saw Rhonda and her husband were behind us, so we chatted for a few minutes. 

We found a table to sit at and Rhonda and her husband came over to join us.  It was fun catching up with them, chatting about random things and sharing our recent caching adventures.  As we ate, several people stopped by to say hi including Brad, Antoine, the mom from PNWfamily and a few others.  Then all of a sudden, a ton of people showed up about the same time and it filled up fast. I was glad we got there when we did.  A lot of lackey's from HQ came and it was fun to see the support for Travis and his cache machines.  I saw the logbook was being passed around and went to sign it.

This was my 9th cache machine.  The first one I ever attended was in Wenatchee back in March 2011 and I had an absolute blast!  I wish I could have done more over the years, but I had an unreliable vehicle, a crappy job and no money...at one point my weekends were taken away from me for about a year.

Brad had a presentation for Travis and a couple people spoke on his behalf including Andrew and Abby.  Travis started cache machines back in 2004 mostly because he wanted to hang out with friends and have them find the caches for him, haha.  He said that he's not planning on doing anymore but not saying that he's going to completely not do them anymore.  He said if someone wanted to take it over that he would help them.  There was a rumor that there might be one in Yakima this spring.  We will see if that happens. 

We took some group photos, hung out at our table for a little bit longer, used the restroom and Bev and I left.  We found Good Eats (GC1W8TN) in the parking lot before we headed home in front of a business called Larson's Restaurant and Lounge.

We drove through Shelton because we didn't want to pay the toll at the Narrows Bridge.  We made our way through Shelton, Bev called Bob to let her know where we were and that we would meet him at the Neighborhood Walmart off of Yelm Highway because he hasn't figured out how to get to my house.  He said okay and would meet us there.  I needed to go there anyway to get juice for Doug.

We both got to Walmart roughly at the same time.  Bev thanked me for the fun time, she hopped in their Kia and they went home.  I went inside the store, grabbed some juice and went home.  I got in a shower, logged my caches and started watching Season 4 of Stranger Things.

Next Adventure:  A Funeral, 90's Game Night and Doug's SpongeBob Birthday Party

Seattle Kraken vs. New York Islanders

Ben has mentioned, since the Kraken became a team, that he wanted to go see a game.  Mom and I had gone during our inaugural year to see the Kraken play the Penguins.  It was an amazing experience to see the Pittsburgh Penguins play in Seattle against our new home team.  We rooted for both teams and the Penguins were victorious!  

Mom and I didn't get to go to a Kraken game against the Penguins this year because the game was in October, and we had already booked our trip to New England prior to knowing when that game would be held.  Last year it was in December and this year it was in October for some reason.  It was a huge bummer to miss it because I have no idea when Crosby was going to call it a career.

About a month ago, Ben and I got to talking about hockey and had expressed interest into going to one this season.  I got a hold of Antoine (our season ticket holder) and asked if there were any available tickets on a weekend and he said that he would look into it for us. 

He wrote me back just after the Christmas holiday to let us know that tickets were available if we wanted them.  I asked Ben if he wanted to go to the Islander game on January 1, and he said yes!  I told Antoine that we wanted them and made the trade.  We Venmo'd Nikki our money ($220 each) and they sent the tickets to my email.  Then Antoine called me to make sure I got them, and we chatted a few minutes about hockey and geocaching. 

Ben was really excited.  I made sure I knew where all of our Kraken gear was.  We had collected sweatshirts, hats, scarfs and jerseys since our team was announced back in 2020.  We were pretty excited that we finally had an NHL team in Seattle.  However, DISH Network and Root Sports no longer like each other so we were not able to watch the Kraken (or Mariner) games without paying money to do so.  I was very upset that NBC Sports also decided to stop showing hockey games like they used to for free.  Now everything is on ESPN+ (subject to blackout) or maybe TNT if you're lucky.  Sometimes it is aired on the NHL Network as well.  So, we really weren't up to speed on how our team was actually doing because we gotta look it up on our phone or watch Sportscenter to check if we won or not.

I had gone to a Seahawk game with Mom in December because Dad's friend Randy had season tickets and could not go.  He gave them to Dad and Dad gave them to Mom.  Mom asked me if I wanted to go and of course I wanted to go.  Well, Randy had another set of tickets for New Year's Day and asked if we wanted to go again.  I told Mom I couldn't because Ben and I were going to the Kraken game, and I told her to take Doug instead.  Doug needed to do something fun.

That day, after being up late) we got up around 10:30, ate a quick breakfast, Ben had some cereal and I had some grapes, yogurt and half a blueberry bagel while I watched the only football game being played on TV that morning.  I slowly got ready as it approached time to go.  I made sure we had everything we needed in our clear plastic Seahawk bag, and I got Ben motivated to get off his game and get ready.  This was the first time we wore our Kraken jerseys since I bought them November 2021.  They've been sitting in our room for over a year, waiting to be worn at a game. 

We jumped into the Escape and headed up I-5 to the Angle Lake parking garage so we could get on the train.  I didn't want to deal with traffic or trying to find a parking spot.  We got to Angle Lake pretty quickly because everyone was already at the Seahawks game or hungover from the night before.  No traffic on I-5 was wonderful!!

They were doing construction just north of Federal Way along I-5 and they took some signs down so I was looking for the Angle Lake sign, but it was gone.  Luckily, I had Ben look up what exit I needed before we drove past it.  By the time I realized it, it was literally the next exit, lol.

We found a place to park on the third level of the parking garage, the place was full because of the Seahawk game.  We purchased our round-trip train ticket to the Westlake Center and off we went.  We didn't have to wait long since our train was right there.  We jumped on and made our way north to our stop.

We were going to be on the train for a bit, with 13 stops or so in between, so I connected my phone to the Seahawks game.  We watched the end of the first quarter and part of the second quarter as we rode to our destination.  We were playing the Jets and we needed this win to put us into the playoffs. I texted Mom when we got to the stadium stop to let her know we were right outside riding the rails.  She responded sparsely.  She did say that Doug was having a good time, which was good.  He really needed to do something fun after the year he's had.

We got off at Westlake Center and Ben wanted to walk around to work up an appetite.  I checked my caching app to see fi there was a cache nearby and there was, Midtown Dump (GC7VZXR).  We needed it for the 2023 souvenir.  We walked a couple of blocks to the cache, and it was behind a bank in the parking lot near a dumpster.  We found it but the lid was missing, the logbook was mush so therefore, it was unsignable.  We took a picture of it to prove we were there and put it back where we found it.  We walked back towards Westlake Center and the Monorail. 

We walked up the three flights of stairs and went inside.  A guy who worked for the building or the Monorail told us that if we were going to the game, our transportation was free (trains, busses and the Monorail).  We didn't know and had already paid for our round-trip train ticket.  He helped us set it up and got on the Monorail for free...all we needed was our login information for Ticketmaster.  What a cool deal!  We waited a few minutes for the Monorail to arrive, got on and headed to the Seattle Center.

It took less than five minutes to get from Westlake Center to the Seattle Center Armory.  We went inside and used the restroom.  I mostly wanted to so I could wash my hands before we ate something.  But before we did, we went outside and I led Ben to one of the caches I've been to like three times since I found it back in 2019, World Wide Web (GC7VTN3).  He found it, signed the log and put it back.  We walked around so he could do some of the Adventure Labs I did in August.  I took a few pictures of the Space Needle and then we headed back inside to grab some food before the game.

Once back in the Armory, we walked by a face painting station, and I got in on that.  I wanted the Kraken logo on my face.  It took a couple minutes, and I left them a tip.  Ben didn't want his face painted.  We decided that we wanted to go to Wing Dome, so we waited in line and decided what we wanted.  I've never had food at the Wing Dome before but have heard about it throughout the years.

Once we ordered we found a table to sit at and watched the rest of the Seahawk game while we waited for our food to come out.  Ben ordered his two beers from the beer garden and surprisingly, our food came out quicker than we anticipated.  We ate our chicken burgers, fries and watched the Seahawks beat the Jets 23-6.  

It was a nice bounce back after a three-game skid.  I was glad Mom and Doug went to a good game unlike the one we went to about a month prior.  We finished up our food, went into the mini team store to browse for a few minutes and then decided it was time to go over to Climate Pledge. 

We got some photos, pulled up the tickets on my phone and stood in one of the many lines.  Ben was grinning from ear to ear.  We went through security, got our tickets scanned and walked to our seats.  I was still impressed with how clean and new the place looked. Ben was giddy the entire time.  He was so excited to go to a Kraken game.  

He was floored when he saw where our seats were.  They were so close!  We took a few pictures and enjoyed watching pregame warmups. This would be my first time watching the NY Islanders in person.  I was really hoping we'd beat them because they were one of the rivals to my other team I root for, the Pittsburgh Penguins.  

The hype video they played at the beginning of the game was off the charts!  They sure had me hooked!  Last time I was here we didn't have a mascot yet.  Buoy was revealed on October 1, 2022, prior to a preseason gave against the Vancouver Canucks.  He is a mythical troll and said to be the nephew of the Freemont Troll under the Aurora Bridge.  Everyone was in outrage stating that we missed a huge opportunity.  The team opted to stay away from the octopus because the wanted to avoid redundancy to the Detroit Red Wings mascot, Al the Octopus. 

Seriously, Ben was on cloud nine.  He couldn't wait for the game to start.  

As soon as the game began and the faceoff was taken, I could already tell the difference in the confidence and competitiveness of the Kraken compared to last season.  They were sharper, communicated better, clicked as a team and were running triangles and circles around the Islanders.  This could be the year we make the playoffs, if we continue playing well, after finishing last in our division during the previous season.  

We sat on the edge of our seats while the action was right in front of us.  There were a couple of good shots, but none seemed to want to go in.  You could hear the roar of the crowd as we got closer and closer to that puck hitting the back of the net.  Finally, after 9:53 seconds into the game, Adam Larsson finally put us on the board.  The horn blared and everyone cheered!  "Let's Go Kraken!"

There was more back and forth for about 10 more minutes and just before the end of the first period, the Islanders, Matthew Barzel, got lucky and put one past our goaltender, Martin Jones. We were hoping that would be the only goal they got the rest of the night.  The first period ended, and we were tied 1-1 at first intermission.  Ben and I stayed in our seats. 

The second period began and about three minutes in a penalty was called which put us on a two-minute power play.  I told Ben that it would be so cool if we scored on our power play.  Sure enough, at 3:38 into the period, Eeli Tolvanen scored our second goal, breaking the 1-1 tie.  The horn blared and the crowd roared!  "Let's Go Kraken!"

It was back and forth again for a while, both teams had some great shots that just wouldn't go in.  I was glad they didn't go in for the Islanders but with 13:04 into the second period, Oliver Bjorkstrand added one more to our total!  The horn blared once again, the fans were delighted, and high fives were being passed around near where we were sitting.  The crowd was definitely amped!  "Let's Go Kraken!"  We were up 3-1 at the end of the second period. 

Ben got up to go get something to drink while I held down the fort.  He came back after a while but before the third period began.  He said the lines were insane!  We shared the water throughout the rest of the game.

Most of the third period was back and forth while Kraken fans desperately hoped that we would hold our lead.  I have seen a bunch of NHL games this season so far, not just the Kraken or the Penguins, blow leads really quickly.  There were some close almost goals between both teams.  We held on and kept playing aggressive.  With about two minutes left in the game, the Islanders pulled their goalie to give them an upper hand on offense.  The Islanders screwed up and Brandon Tanev, with 45 seconds left in the game, took advantage of the open net and sealed our victory!  The horn blared and we grabbed a 4-1 victory!!

Our goalie had 18 saves; we took 35 shots to their 19 and the Islanders won 36 to our 19 faceoffs.  It was a great start to the new year and Kraken nation was excited to see how the rest of the year panned out.  Hopefully, the Kraken would see themselves in the Stanley Cup Playoffs come April...in their second year as a franchise!

I took Ben to the Climate Pledge plant wall so he could see it.  It had grown since I was here last.  We got a couple of pictures.  Then I wanted to go into The Lair because I know people think Buoy is ugly but I kinda wanted a plush doll.  We grabbed on, got in line, paid and took him over to the view of the rink with Kraken win on the TV in the background.  I had to convince Ben to smile.

We left Climate Pledge and headed back over to The Armory to get onto the Monorail.  Apparently, they close all the doors to The Armory except for one and of course, we went to the wrong one and had to walk all the way around.  Lame.  The line was long but there were two Monorails going...so we didn't have to wait that long. 

We got to Westlake Center and walked a couple blocks to the entrance down to the trains below.  We got onto the Angle Lake side and waited about two minutes for our southbound train to arrive.

We hopped on and made our journey south to the Escape.  The train ride seemed longer heading back than coming into Seattle for some reason...usually it's the opposite.  The train arrived at Angle Lake, we got off and walked to the Escape.  We left and stopped at the 7-Eleven across the street for some drinks.  It was one of the creepiest 7-Eleven's we've ever been to.

We merged onto I-5 south and drove towards home.  There wasn't any traffic, so it didn't take us very long to get home.  We drove to Tumwater so I could check on Alicia's dogs while she was out of town visiting family for the holiday.  I let the dogs out so they could go potty and checked their food and water.  I gave them treats, but them back in their house and got home around 10:30.  I got in a shower, ate some chili because I was hungry, followed by some popcorn because it sounded good and worked on my blogs.  I logged the cache we found earlier and turned on Sportscenter to watch highlights from our game. We went to bed just after 1ish.

Next Adventure:  Bremerton Cache Machine 20th Anniversary Event and Dinner