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.

Weekend Reading

This weekend, we started a new book--more like a really long poem--Beowulf. It's super exciting as Beowulf takes on Grendel and Grendel's Mom. I like the Dungeons & Dragons like mixture of ultra-violence followed by praise of God. Beowulf is a tough fighter. We're reading the Seamuus Heaney translation. Very cool!

Pirates v Army Men

Here is a slide show of the battle between the pirates and the army men. I'll add to it as the story evolves.

Ahoy there!

 

This morning, there's danger on the high seas of our living room. Little People pirates have come into the port of the army men. The army men have many, many ships docked in port. Unfortunately, their ships are made from dominos and Kapla blocks, so they're not very sturdy.

From 2009 09 05

The Little People, on the other hand, have a stout bark that is much larger than the ships of the army men. Who will prevail? Will numbers plus high powered weapons manage to overcome the pirates led by Captain Mommy?

From 2009 09 05

Making matters worse for the army men, the Captain of "Ship Hotel USA" has no head for battle. (View the picture in large size to see the visual pun.)

From 2009 09 05

Another Adventure

 

Daddy's latest kick is "adventures" on the weekend. Mostly these consist of going to various outdoor places and walking around to see pretty things. Naturally, I'm against all this since life is so much simpler if we just stay in the house and play Wii or watch Road Runner episodes. Nonetheless, he persuaded Mommy to go on an adventure today, so I had no choice but to come along.

Today's adventure was to Lafayette Reservoir--a big lake in Lafayette. There's a nice trail around the edge and, more importantly, paddle boats for going out into the lake. Initially, the adventure looked terrible. I was going to ride my scooter along the path, but the rules are that scooters are only allowed Tuesdays and Thursdays. Then, when we got out of the car, it was windy, really windy, so windy that I was cold enough to need my fleece jacket.

From 2009 09 05

But things got better after that. I saw a lot of cool stuff and really liked the paddle boats. Somehow, these adventures turn out a lot better than I think they will.

Road Runner

We're back to watching my favorite cartoon of all time--Road Runner. I find myself asking why about lots of things happening in this cartoon. Daddy offers a stock reply,

Cartoons are filled with nonsense. There is no why.

Must be true. But I cannot help asking a fundamental question---given how hard it is for the coyote to catch this particular road runner, why doesn't he go after a different one?

In other news, we saw a coyote roaming the streets of Alamo a couple of nights ago driving back from the club. It didn't look much like the cartoon coyote. Wonder if it was after road runners?

Stuff I'm Doing

Thought you might like a snapshot of what I'm currently doing:

Books: Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator
Videos: Thomas the Tank Engine
Wii: Super Mario Galazy
Toys: Hot Wheels orange track, army men, Thomas the Tank Engine (press the cab series)
Games: Chess, Uno, Sorry
Outdoors: Swimming

I'll be offering weekly updates so you can track my changing tastes.

King of the Galaxy

From Drop Box

I'm back to trying to tame Super Mario Galaxy. I've made it pretty far, but it's getting very tough. Fortunately, Mom and I are a good team. It would be nice to win this game.

Under the stars

Lately, we're doing something new and fun after dinner--going to the club. For the last several days, we hit the hot tub and the lap pool for a little swimming action under the stars. I love how the sky looks at night. There are also a bunch of trees at the club decorated with lights. They look very pretty. Evenings are great.

Weekend update

Composition: King x Knight, originally uploaded by John-Morgan.

Another busy weekend of playing. I really try to jam stuff into every available minute on weekends once school has started. The highlight of the weekend was a Sunday filled with chess. We played a standard game. Then a "coach" game, where Daddy coached me on what to look for in moving. Then we played some variants. In one version, we each had only one of the major pieces (i.e. 1 knight, bishop, rook) instead of the usual two. The other variant I came up with was a pawns game. Here, the board consisted only of the king and the 8 pawns. This second variant was quite interesting.

We did some other stuff too. Went to the club for some swimming during the day and then, even better, swimming and hot tubbing at night. The hot tub is only available to me at night since the club has a rule that you have to be >13 to be in the tub. This rule is not enforced after the life guards go home. Also did some kickboarding. In fact, I'm making progress on actually having some swimming skills.

All in all, a great weekend.