A Pebble in my Shoe


I am an army of one, Team Polka-Dot braves the dark and the cold to catch critters by the light of the moon. It's still too far to go to get to 150,000 points, but I think I may be getting to where I play the game instead of it playing me. I'm not there yet. I both look forward and dread going outside and hunting Pokes.

Here is why: Monday and Tuesday night, it took multiple tries to login. The server hung. I got logged out. I had to reset to get rid of the music and turn on battery saver. I was boneheadedly persistent. I was so persistent, I scared myself and I asked myself: "Is this what you are willing to put up with." That was a rhetorical question of course.

On the bright side, my White Plains, NY egg hatched a female Nidoran and my New York City egg (found at a stop outside the New York Public Library), hatched out as a 716 CP Krabby.

On the humorous side, I caught a Weedle in a bathroom at Georgia Piedmont Technical College. My connection held well enough indoors, and there was a sign on the bathroom door that said: "No Cell Phones."

On the lucky side, I caught two Magikcarp at the pillar across the street from my apartment. I now have 80/400 Magikcarp candy.

On the useful and virtuous side (I think this is a polygon folks), Muguet and I have a great time when we go hunting. She is my buddy, so we sing together. My mighty Muk in the making (Really a Grimer) can carry a tune, and we sing polka songs. We sing "No Beer Today, the Strip Polka, and Who Stole the Keeska. Muguet comes in on the chorus good and loud.

When we get done hunting, I put on my Oktoberfest Fun NO PAYOLA playlist, on Spotify and listen to our favorite polkas and Oktoberfest ditties. Seriously Pokamon and polkas just go. They always have, and no Team Polka-Dot does not want to rename Pokamon Go... Polka-Mon Go, though it's nice to dream.

I have several projects for the upcoming holiday break.

1) Explore the Pokestops in Tucker, GA which I strongly suspect are there.
2) Power up Muguet and get enough candy to turn her into a Muk.
3) Get enough candy to make a Victreebell
4) Get enough candy to make a Nidorqueen and/or king.

I am not really going for the Pokedex though it looks like that. I am just going to walk and walk. I'm going to listen to polkas. I'm going to teach my mighty Muk in the making new songs. I am going to play the game and the experience will happen by itself and take as long as it takes. And I will not complain... unless I can't log in.
 
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I did not think I would get out hunting today. The National Weather Service predicted rain. I went out Saturday night to get in a session ahead of a storm, and got a weekly bonus. No, this was my first time for a weekly bonus, because I'm an observant Jew who doesn't play on the sabbath, and breaks my streak. Of course, Shabbos ends at sundown Saturday, but Saturday night I'm often busy with chores. I guess I'll be making time to get in a first Pokestop and catch.

Meanwhile, I have caught two Psyducks, two more Magikarp, two Voltorbs, and one Festive Pikachu, my third Pikachu ever. The Voltorbs were the second and third that I had ever seen.

I added a new stop to my map, which was where I caught the Festive Pikachu. That feels good. Being at 48,000 XP/150,000 XP feels wonderful. I am on winter break so have plenty of opportunity to play should the weather cooperate. Maybe bonuses are where you find them.
 

Well, I'm six days into a two week mandatory vacation. It's what you get for working in academia. I was able to make the trip up to Tucker and found nine new PokeStops. I'm convinced that the complaints that Niantic places Pokestops in a racist maner is overly simplistic. Niantic's Poke deserts occur because their mappers are not local and use outdated images that are sometimes misleading. I am thinking of my favorite Poke deserts on East Laredo Drive and North Lake Plaza. Both downtown Tucker and the area around Plaza Fiesta on Buford Highway are full of Pokestops, though there is some distance between them due to sprawl.

So far results on my bucket list have been mixed. Some days I catch two or three Magikarp. Some days I catch none. The Nidoran of both sexes are hybernating. I thought all the Bellsprouts had wilted, but I caught two yesterday. I have earned twelve candies for Muguet, my mighty Muk in the making (aka a not so humble Grimer).

Of course if you expect to fill a bucket list or get the Pokes you track, you are heading for a world of hurt. Serendipity and the long game are where Pokemon Go is for me when I play the game instead of me playing it. I will continue to play the game until I have login troubles. Then it will probably play me.

My last Magikarp at the pillar turned out to be my third Ditto. I tried to track an Abra in Skyland up on Buford Highway and it fled, but on the way back toward Mercado Fresca at Plaza Fiesta, I found both a Gastly and a Pollywag. Sometimes you just get lucky. I also managed to hatch a Bellsprout from my last 5km egg before getting another at Skyland Park, and a Squirtle (which are rare and hard to get) from a 2km egg.

Nidorans and my Victreebell are going to have to wait. I am patient. Right now I am anxious to get out and hunt again. I'm not sure where I am going. I am hoping there are Hannukah candles at the Kroger on North Decatur Road. I'm going to walk there and then continue east and up hill because I think there are Pokestops I've never seen on that road and a few I have seen on East Ponce. This would be a very good day to revisit the Toby Grant area. I didn't plan to do this and am not sure if I even want to. It's time to step out and run down my battery again.

For those of you who are curious I'm at 60,000/150,000 of level 23. I have 105 (probably a few more) Magikarp candies. Long live the long game.
 
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:disappoin
I only have two more days left to hunt until it hurts. Monday, January 2, 2017, is a work day. So it goes. All good and bad things come to an end. The Nidorans are still hybernating. Global warming and forest fires fried the Bellsprouts. I have over 180 Magikarp candies, and a big Wheezing and a Raichu in my future.

But it depresses me to look at the Festive Pikachus (all five of them) in my critter box. My Festive Pikachu is after all the same as yours if their characteristics are the same. They are cookie cutter creatures. The same is true of the Seaking I caught instead of a Magikarp at the world famous pillar across the street from my apartment.

I am 101,439/125,000 points into Level 23. I've never gotten so far without a point doubling scheme, but my points are no different than your points.

It's the places I go and the people I meet that bring Pokemon Go to life. It's the amazing Chinese, colander I bought for three dollars and change in Mercado Fresca when I went up to Buford Highway. It's the heavenly taste of New York Cheddar flavor chips and a Pepsi on the front steps of the Eagle Eye Bookstore. It's the nice staff of that same bookstore who let me recharge my phone there, and the nice lady in Your DeKalb Farmer's Market who showed me where there was another plug for charging. There's the homeless man who is an aspiring musician with whom I shared a conversation while I recharged my phone in Mason Mill Park, and the lady who gave me a Coke on the house in the convenience store on Lawrenceville Highway.

The Pokes will come, and most will go, but the memories and the map will remain.

In other news, I had a health scare with Hertzel, my real life, eighteen year old, white, neutered tom cat. I thought he had a bad tooth. He ended up with several hundred dollars worth of blood and urine tests to help find out the cause of his weight loss. He ended up with a prescription for watchful waiting. He gets weighed again in two months. With luck he has leveled off. He is not hyperthyroid or diabetic which is a big relief. Apparently his kidneys are also in good working order, another big relief.

Pokemon Go does not cause Hertzel's age related weight loss. Pokemon Go does not make it better. Getting out to play in the fresh air is just fun. I've never had a cat live as long as Hertzel and be in this good health. If any cat deserves to live to thirty, Hertzel does, and he is unique, flesh and blood, creation even if not quite in God's image. He is not a cookie cutter cartoon character created by Niantic.
 

I decided not to go to the Peach Drop because it is raining, and they serve alcohol (they sell it), and drunks and rain and crowds are just not a good combination.

I also decided not to use one of my Lucky Eggs to level. I am at 108,700/125,000 points. Quite simply, I can gain my points in the ordinary way and save the egg for when things get much harder. I managed to get my weekly bonus tonight. I now have three eggs in incubators, but the rain has put the kibosh to everything.

Friday afternoon, as I passed the old courthouse on my way home from a decent Poke run, I passed a man with all his possessions boxed up and on carts. He did not have out a bunch of merchandise, so this was not work. He'd been evicted. I gave him a large bill and a smaller one. I thought of the man whom I'd refused water without a good explanation (I didn't have any water, but my laundry detergent looked like water).

I don't think 2017 will be much better than 2016. I'm going to check the weather again. I need to update my Poke map.

 
Where have I been? That is a question I don't want to answer in detail. First, my cell phone's battery DIED and my Blue C 5+5 (an Android clone that normally runs like a top) needs a specialized battery, for which I had to wait two weeks to be delivered by first class mail. I'm glad it came that way, since post office workers are unionized and probably not monitored by algorithms. In this day and age of Trump, such things count.

Second, on the day before my battery arrived, which was also the day after Martin Luther King Day, my mother had a medical health crisis. That is all I'm going to tell you. I've been up to Westchester County once since last writing this journal. My mother is not in immediate danger. I listened to lots of Spotify but did not play any Pokemon Go.

I did try to play a couple of times but was very gun shy because of what the game does to cell phone batteries. Also I had a full plate. Also, the game took forever to load, didn't hold GPS well.... Let's just say I was worried about the battery and low on patience.

I'm just getting back into it now, and making points hand over fist. It's almost too easy, but I need a way to be in the moment and away from what else is going on in my life. I have over 60,000/150,000 at level 24. I've evolved a Tentacruel, Graveler, MaChop, and a few other things. I'm saving the Nidorqueen for when I really feel I need her, a time when I'm not doing it as a consolation prize for a bad run or as too good a reward which it won't be.

My critter box is culled so I can hunt a lot. At the half way mark to level, I want to bag a lot of weedles, rattatas, pidgeys, and spearrows and maybe sentrets. It will be time to horde easy to evolve critters again and we all know why.

I'm not thrilled with the new avie clothing. I wish I were, but there are no green outfits and anything interesting costs something. I'm not a whale. I'm a human being. It is good to be back. Pokemon Go may eat batteries but it's not immoral, evil, or fattening. In fact, I think it is good for helping me keep weight off. That should be good enough.
 

Say a thing and it becomes so. At least sometimes it feels that way. I have 90,200/150,000 points. The hording begins. Ammo is low. The walking game rules. I am holding off on my first Sentret evolution for obvious reasons.

I got a transparent upgrade thingie at my first Pokestop along with a seven day bonus. I have no idea how to use the upgrade. I guess I should do some searching. I'm at 230/400 Magikarp candies. I have 22/50 Grimer candies.

I think Pokemon Go is handling battery life a bit better. It's hard to tell.

I listen to less polka/Oktoberfest music after I get done playing. I've been listening to a lot of modern classical. Spotify suggested Toru Takemitsu. His music sounds like thunder and crying. It goes well when the sky threatens rain.

Right now I'm twisted enough that the anticipation feels terrific. I've got 60,000 more experience points worth. :t088:
 
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