Church Choir

On Christmas Eve, we had a big singing service where the choir featured prominently. I did 3 songs as well as performing on bells. The bells are my favorite part. When there's a part of the song that calls for both my bells to be rung at the same time, I ring them and spread my arms out triumphantly. The audience got a chuckle out of my larger-than-life gesticulations. I sang well too. One problem is that, whenever I first get on stage, I have the endless urge to yawn. I ended up yawning both before and during some of the songs. I don't know why I yawn, I just do.

Above is a post-concert photo of myself and my friend Katie. This was a special moment for Katie's Mom. Normally, Katie does not like to wear "girl clothes", but somehow Mom got her to wear a fancy red dress for the concert. She's one of my best friends.

Giving is Part of Christmas Too

While I really like GETTING stuff for Christmas, it's fun to give things as well. In my class, we worked on a big project for a gift to our parents. I made the card shown in the image above as well as a yellow and green pot, which I threw myself, for Mom and Dad. I was so excited about my gifts that the very first gift I wanted Dad to open was one from me. Giving gifts is also fun.

Yay Christmas!

Jumping for joy at my favorite gift--socks!


I had a great Christmas this year. I got almost all the gifts I asked for and have been really enjoying them since opening them.

Top of the list are Wii games. I especially like Super Mario Bros. One really cool thing about this game is that it has team mode where 2 or more players work as a team to get through levels. Teamwork is quite helpful since this game is very tough, much tougher than Super Mario Galaxy. Right now, Daddy and I are stuck at the first Bowser level. (For those who don't know, the plot in all of these games is the same: Bowser, the evil dude, kidnaps Mario's friend Princess Peach. Mario must then defeat Bowser and his endless hordes. To be more precise, Mario must defeat Bowser many times since defeat on a lower level simply causes Bowser to retreat to a higher level without relinquishing the Princess.)

I also got a cool electronics circuitry kit. Last night, Mommy and I built a light and fan combo using first serial and then parallel circuitry. Electricity is interesting.

Happy Festivus!

December 23 is the traditional day for Festivus--the holiday for the rest of us. You might recall Festivus from Seinfeld, but it turns out it's much older. It was invented in 1966. Tonight, for the first time ever, we celebrated Festivus.

We started with the bringing in of the bare aluminum pole--prized for its combination of lightness and strength. Here I am bringing in the pole.

From Aidan's Weblog

Next, we had the traditional airing of the grievances. Here, we point out all the ways other family members have failed us throughout the year. It's really fun. Since Festivus is on the 23rd of December, I decided we had to make a list of 23 grievances. Here's the beginning

From Aidan's Weblog

While initially, it was hard to come up with grievances, eventually, the whole family got into the spirit of the occasion and the grievances came flowing forth.

From Aidan's Weblog

From Aidan's Weblog

Following the airing of the grievances, we had the traditional Feats of Strength. As you might know, the holiday continues until the head of household is pinned in a wrestling match. Initially, I was overmatched by Daddy...

From Aidan's Weblog

But I soon spied a weakness and pinned him!

From Aidan's Weblog

Festivus is a truly great holiday--amazing more people don't celebrate it.

Graham Crackers

From Aidan's Weblog

In addition to my artistic skills in gingerbread, I also work in another important medium--graham crackers. Here is a graham cracker house I built in school all by myself. The key to this structure is a "skeleton" made of a milk carton, which provides stability for the grahams. As you can see, my education is not confined to marshmallows. Frosting and M&Ms are also important components.

The duck is supposed to add to the visual interest of the shot since everyone likes to look at rubber ducks.

Gingerbread

 

One of the best Christmas traditions is making gingerbread houses. I made one out of graham crackers in school, but it doesn't compare to the real deal. So Mommy and I made a house on Friday afternoon. It's beautiful. I think it's our most deluxe one ever. It even includes Sun Chips as part of the decorations.




The image above is a politically correct version of Hansel and Gretel, which we read in a zillion versions (including the original German) in school this week. Here "Hansel" (the African-American) and "Gretel" (the Asian) meet up with the (Caucasian) witch at the gingerbread house. Shockingly, despite her black pointy hat and black moon and stars dress, they don't recognize her as such.

Science!

 

We finished up the last week of school before vacation with a little sceince. This week's episode--the mystery of molecules. We made a whole bunch of molecules out of marshmallows and toothpicks. This was totally cool. When Daddy came home, he offered a couple of mysterious comments about the project. First, he asked me about "covalent bonds" (which I have no clue what he's talking about). Then something a bit more delicious--he observed that the hydrogen atoms never link to each other and never link to more than one other atom. I hadn't noticed this, but it's interesting.

Snow!

Well, for the first time in my life, it snowed in Walnut Creek. I woke up this morning and couldn't believe it. The yard was white with snow. We went out before school and made snowmen, had snowball fights, and generally were amazed. I went over to the Bennetts (our next door neighbors) to tell them incase they hadn't noticed. It turns out, they had. They built a snowman in their backyard too. Hooray for snow!

I hate spelling

Friday is spelling test day at school. I really don't like spelling. I'm okay at it, but it's a lot of work and very frustrating. Last night while studying, I got quite upset. Mommy got upset with me as well since I didn't want to keep on going. Here's my biggest beef with spelling--why did all these other stupid countries take over England at various times and leave their crazy spellings behind.

This week's episode: A million different ways to spell the long e sound. I had to spell between, piece, belief, believe, reason, mean, least, and so on. It makes no sense to spell the same sound so many ways!

ghost

 

Yesterday, Daddy and I had a little fun making a ghost picture. Here's how it's done. I first pose backlit in front of a window. Then, I move from the area and Daddy shoots the same picture with me absent. You have to use a tripod for this to work. Then we import both photos into Photoshop and lay the Aidan on on top. We then twiddle with the translucency on the top image until the appropriate ghostlike effect is attained.

Boo! Did I scare you?

Homework Marathon

 

Sadly, my weeklong vacation from school is over. My teacher kicked off the week with what seemed to be a "homework marathon". In addition to the usual homework, she forgot to give the spelling pretest so instead of having to correct only the spelling words I got wrong, I had to do all 22 of this week's words. Daddy, thinking that this wasn't exactly fair, administered the pretest to me at home, so I only had to do 13 of the words (I got 9 right). But even the pretest took a long time. Better was the math, which I rock at. 25 for 25 on tonight's math quiz.

Tonight's homework lasted about 1.5 hours! The photo above is taken during my 20 minutes of reading.

Daddy technical notes: The lighting on this shot is done using a remote strobe placed to Aidan's left and front and set manually at 1/2 strength. The camera is over his right shoulder thus creating the sidelighting effect.

Aidan technical notes: It's not really helpful in reading when Daddy is setting up complicated camera arrangements and shooting with flash while I'm trying to read.

Aidan in the Rain

Another dance extravaganza with props.

Cinema

Daddy and I made a new movie this weekend--my first sequel. It's railroad crossing of doom II. This time we used stop action techniques for added realism. We also did a series of vignettes rather than a single story--sort of like episodes of Cops.

Enjoy!

Geotrax

 

Nothing new to report. This is just a better shot of Geotrax. Here we see the diesel making its early morning run for various machine tools at the plant.

Monopoly

 

This weekend I graduated up from Monopoly Junior to full-blown monopoly. I love this game--the money, the properties, the little pieces, and especially the deal making. I won the first game I played thanks to a monopoly on Boardwalk and Park Place which bankrupted everyone else. The second game was a time limit one. I thought I had won, but Mommy had great luck at the end and pulled out the victory. The third game was supposed to be a time limit one too, but we played it out. Unfortunately, I lost to Daddy and his nasty hotels on New York Avenue.

I get to put my math skills to the test in this game--figuring out the right change, reading the rates on the property cards, and so on. In fact, I've become so good that I was the banker in the most recent game. Monopoly is really fun.

Putting up the Christmas Tree

 

Yesterday, we put up our Christmas tree as well as the outside lights. At first, I was a bit skeptical about how fun this would be, but once we got into the lights and ornaments, I had a great time. In fact, I worked on ornaments longer than ever before--about 2 hours. I also was the most careful person in the family. Here's the ornament destruction count: Mommy 2, Daddy 1, Aidan 0.

My least favorite ornament is one of an evil clown that Mommy's grandfather gave her. I wanted him off the tree, but Mommy put him on anyway. Fortunately, I don't know where he is.

The tree looks totally beautiful. It's the nicest tree ever I think.

Click here for a more extensive set of putting up the tree pictures.

Rediscovering Geotrax

 

As Mommy was cleaning out my very full and messy closet, I rediscovered my many Geotrax train things. Mommy and I set up a big arrangement in the living room and have been having a lot of fun with it since. Yesterday, the Geotrax were invaded by "giant stuffies." The trains were a bit frightened but the stuffies meant no harm. In the afternoon, the Bennetts came over and Patrick and Elizabeth played with the trains. They seemed to love them. A key highlight was when a Roman soldier took a ride on one of the trains. Unfortunately, there are a number of low clearance areas on the track and the Roman suffered smoe nasty blows to the head. We all thought that was very funny! (7 year olds love black humor.)

Hooray for geotrax!

Happy Turkey Day

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Above is a photo of a turkey I made at home. I made it all by myself from constuction paper, cardboard, and Sharpie pens. I especially like how I decorated the legs. This year I'm thankful for my friend Christopher. He came over of a playdate last night and then invited me to his house for my very first sleepover. It was very cool plus it makes my longest playdate yet--more than 24 hours! Mom and Dad are coming over to Chris's house for Thanksgiving dinner. Hooray!

Turn the Beat Around

One of my favorite things to do at night is "dance party." Check out this dance I made up to "Turn the Beat Around." Shot with Daddy's new iPod Nano. Amazing that a device about as big as a pack of gum (and thinner too) can do this.

The Many Faces of Aidan

From Aidan's Weblog

Not really anything to report. Just a quick collage of my many faces over the last few months. You can find the many faces of Aidan and other recent shots of me at my Shutterfly site.

Math is Fun!

From Aidan's Weblog

While most of my homework is pretty boring, I really like math facts. I'm very quick at adding together even very large numbers. Last night, I stayed up late doing "bonus homework" with Dad. My real homework involved adding together "doubles" like 2+2 or 4+4.

For the bonus, Daddy decided to have me keep doubling the doubles. So I added 2+2, 4+4, 8+8, 16+16, 32+32, etc. We finally quit after I added together 2048+2048 (= 4096 by the way). Dad said that this sequence of numbers had a special name, 2^n, or the geometric sequence. It apparently gets big fast. Here is a crazy fact that Daddy told me: n^2/2^n = 0 as n gets arbitrarily large. How can two tings that both become infinite end up being zero?

Above is the picture of my whiteboard with many calculations.

I really like doing calculations. I know a bunch of tricks to add and subtract numbers. Some of my tricks are incomprehensible to Mom and Dad, but somehow still manage to produce the right answers. Daddy says that I do math intuitively, whatever that means.

Wine Country

On Saturday, we went to wine country, but with a very cool twist--my friend Chris and his Mom came along with us. It was very fun. We went to Trefethen and saw Shannon. She's super nice and gave me a hug. She also had a basket full of toys for us to play with and even take home. We also wandered around the vines and a lovely fall day. Finally, we went to Mumm where I gathered up a huge number of cool acorns. While we were in the car, we sang goofy songs which made us laugh and laugh but eventually annoyed our parents.

Here is a list of the top 5 annoying things we did:

1. Pretended to be sirens while Daddy was driving.
2. Repeatedly referred to the "man zone" regardless of topic of conversation.
3. Sang songs about babies falling to their death.
4. Whined
5. Said "wiener dog, wiener dog" over and over.

Actually the annoying things made the trip even more fun!

Only in California

Guess what I did on Sunday? I ran a lemonade stand on the corner of the street. It was a nice sunny day but not especially hot. Both Mommy and Daddy were skeptical about how much business I'd do selling lemonade. But business was brisk thanks to my terrific product and my enthusiastic selling technique. Here's what I would do: Any time a car or person went by, I held up my big orange sign advertising "Fresh Squeezed Lemonade 25 cents" and began my patter (modeled after Billy Mays):

Aidan Morgan here with fresh lemonade, only 25 cents. Get your fresh lemonade here. It's only 25 cents!

When bicyclists would come by, I tried a different tack:

You get awfully thirsty riding that bike. What you need is some fresh lemonade. Only 25 cents!

I ended up selling two pitchers of lemonade and made about 20 bucks (tips really help when selling for only 25 cents each.) I really love selling stuff. Maybe that's what I'll be when I grow up--a salesman.

Silver Medal

 

I went down to Iron Horse School last night to see my art on display. When I first arrived, I was super excited since I saw that I had a big gold sticker labeled "award of merit" next to my piece. I thought this meant that I would be moving on to the state championships. Unfortunately, there is another sticker on some of the pieces, "Award of Excellence", it turns out that these were the ones that were moving on. The award of merit is like a silver trophy--good, but not good enough. This got me very depressed. I really wanted to move on. I thought my piece was the best one there. I don't want to win the silver medal, I want to win the GOLD medal.

The upshot is that I'm going to shoot more photos this coming year, so I'll have a good selection to try to win gold next year.

In related news, we've been talking a lot about seeing the cloud versus seeing the silver lining in things. Daddy thinks Mommy is too often a "cloud person." Both Mommy and Daddy said that my disappointment about the silver medal is an example of cloud thinking. I'm supposed to be proud to have gotten the silver and determined to get the gold next time. The problem is that I'm not really proud of the silver.

Bowser Defeated...Finally!

Well, at long last it happened. I made it to the center of the universe for a final showdown with Bowser in Super Mario Galaxy. It took some doing, but I defeated him and won the entire game. Princess Peach is rescued, and the universe is once more safe. I'm very proud of myself for having pushed through to ultimate victory!

Happy Halloween

 

Halloween is the coolest holiday. I get to dress up. I get to go in parades. There are lots of parties. There is a LOT of candy. I love it. My second favorite holiday after Christmas.

Victory!

I entered an art contest in my school recently. I put in 3 photos, the one above, "Bear in the Air" (a photo of polar bear on the London Eye), and a photo of butterflies in Arizona. My picture of the paper boat Donegal won the contest. I made this boat when I was in Cambridge during a visit from my neighbor Kathleen. She was from Northern Ireland and wanted a boat with the Irish flag. We floated this one in a canal near our house that feeds into the River Cam. It was near the shore in the morning when I shot this photo.

I'll be moving on to the district wide contest in the coming week. It's cool to win for my photos.

Some Pictures

Here are some pictures of me. One is of the first Cub Scout meeting this year. The others are when I was building with Kapla blocks. Find them here:

http://aidanspictures.shutterfly.com/1262

Moving day

As some of you know, goofy Geocities decided to end their free site hosting and boot all the legacy sites at the end of the month. So my website has now moved. You can find it here: http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/rjmorgan/Aidan You will notice, sadly, that the guestbook did not (cannot) migrate. But the rest of the site was ported over more or less exactly as it was. All my links are now updated to point to the right place. If, however, you still visit the old site location, you will be autoforwarded to the new one until the end of October. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Weekend in Utah

We're just back from our long weekend in Utah. It was sort of interesting...and sort of boring. Here's how I summed it up on the ride home from Snowbird ski resort:

It's better than sitting at home and staring at a wall.

Dad and especially Mom got a kick out of that assessment.

We did see a bunch of stuff while we were there. We saw Temple Square with the big church and the Mormon Tabernacle. Apparently, everyone in Utah was getting married on the Saturday we visited. We saw 7 weddings while we were there.


We saw the Great Salt Lake. Not sure why it's so great, but it is big. It's also a bird cemetery. As you walk along the dry parts of the lake bed, you encounter many bird skeletons.

We visited Snowbird ski resort. Even though it's hot in Salt Lake City, it's cold on the mountain.

Finally, we visited the aquarium, which had lots of cool creatures like this frog.

Daddy made us visit the International Peace Garden. I thought this was SOOOOO boring. Mom didn't like it either. She fell asleep on a bench.

Arizona is a lot more interesting than Utah. But Utah is better than school.

Off to Utah

 

We're off for a long weekend in Utah. After rejecting the possibility of visiting lots of fun stuff like a zoo, an aviary, and a giant church, Daddy declared me an old man. He said I'll be waiting after school outside the front window for kids from school to wander onto the front lawn. Then I'll charge out the door and yell,

You kids get off of my lawn.

He doesn't want me to be that guy---especially at age 7. Still, Utah = 1 day off from school, so it will be good, I think.

Water Balloon

 

Today Mom and I made a cool water balloon. She filled it with water while I made the face and hair. Isn't it cool. It would be a "shame" if it broke...on Mommy!

Carpet Baseball

 

After a long hiatus, we played a game of carpet baseball. I've gained a lot of power since last we played so we had to rebuild the fences to make the game more sensible. We used books to erect a big, high wall in the outfield. As usual, I player the 2006-2007 A's versus the "All Stars", which consist of all the non-A's baseball card I have. The A's triumphed in a 14-9 slugfest. Danny Haren picked up the win for the A's. Bronson Arroyo was tagged for the loss for the All-Stars. Interestingly, Aidan Morgan played for the All-Stars as first baseman and pitcher. He doubled twice and flied out twice as well.

Pick 'Em

It's the start of football season. Daddy and I have started College Pick Em and this week is the first week of NFL Pick Em. If you want to join our pick em league, leave a comment.

BTW, for week 1 in college, I beat Daddy 16-14.

Weekly Update

Photo credit: Gideon van der Stelt

Books: Henry and Mudge, Harold andf the Purple Crayon (being read by myself)
Videos: None
Wii: Super Mario Galaxy, Mario and Sonic Olympics
Toys: Kapla blocks, Little People, army men.
Games: None.
Outdoors: Hiking, paddle boating.

Accents

Here's a little something I picked up from Daddy---the ability to (sort of) do accents. Often times when I do dialogs with little people or army men, I give them various accents. My main one is my "foreign" accent, where the people swallow their r's and speak more slowly than I normally do. It's kind of fun being someone else.

Decisions, decisions

Tomorrow is the first day of football season. And I have a hard choice to make with my fantasy team. My best QB is Big Ben Roethlisberger. But he's playing the Tennessee Titans, an excellent defense. My backup is Brett Favre, who is playing the Cleveland on Sunday. Do I take Favre with the easier matchup or Big Ben? Oh, what to do? I'm leaning Favre.

Late---almost

Today started as a goofy day. Daddy normally goes off to Yahoo at dawn (5:55am to be precise) and Mom wakes me up for school. But none of that happened today. Daddy didn't go to Yahoo. He worked at home with appointments stretching from dawn to dusk instead (7am to 7pm to be precise) while Mommy didn't get up at all. Good thing I got up at 745.

Now normally 745 would be a fine time to wake up since school is at 920. But not on Wednesday. Weds is my early day, the day EVERYONE goes into school at 830. So we had to hurry up. I got dressed, gobbled down breakfast, and then was lucky enough that Daddy had a break in his schedule to take me to school.

But here's another problem. Daddy hates waiting in the long line of cars. He prefers to park about 7 minutes walk from outside of school and walk the rest of the way, avoiding the lines of traffic. I can understand this. I don't like being stuck in traffic either.

Fortunately, we made it with 3 minutes to spare.

Another wacky Wednesday.

Victory in the Galaxy

I've made great progress in Super Mario Galaxy. This weekend I defeated Bowser and liberated Luigi from a jail controlled by ghosts. I rock at Wii!

Labor Day

 

Traditionally, we celebrate Labor Day with a barbecue in our backyard. The only problem is that these cookouts are no fun. There are always lots of old, crazy yellowjackets, tons of work hauling stuff outside, and lots of meats cooked on the grill, none of which I like. So we decided to make a change--we went mobile. Instead of a cookout, we had a sunset picnic on Sugarloaf open space. Lovely 360* views, nice cheeses, a nice Chardonnay for Mommy and Daddy.

From 2009 09 07

A vast improvement I'd say.