Sleepover

For the first time in a long time, I had a sleepover at Chris's house. While Chris and I went through times where we disagreed about fun things to do, currently we get along really well. We spent much of the day playing with Hot Wheels cars. In one scenario, most of the cars worked at the bank, a toy cash register I owned. But some of them instead, enjoyed using the bank differently--by trying to rob it. Naturally, this led to some wild and wacky car chases before the bank robbers were apprehended.

Fifth Grade College

My teacher faced a bit of a rebellion today. He often assigns homework covering topics that are never discussed in the class. For instance, this week I had homework on lines, line segments, planes, parallel and perpendicular lines, none of which were even mentioned in class. Needless to say, this makes doing homework on these topics difficult and time consuming. Well, today, there was a mutiny. After a lot of grousing, Mr. Telles asked the class how many individuals took more than one hour to complete homework every day this week. All hands save one were raised. The lone missing hand had opted not to do substantial chunks of her homework and hence could complete it on time. Yeesh.

Homorable Mention

I competed in Reflections again this year, in two categories rather than only in photography. My video of the Warter Moment is slow motion movie I took of water drops falling out of the sky and into a clear glass bowl,. I added the slow motion effects, the title and ending screen, the soundtrack, and so on, using Microsoft Movie Maker, which I highly recommend.

This piece got honorable mention in the film category, but the whole family thinks it should have won. The winning entry was a three slide Ken Burns style slideshow of Neil Armstrong's moon landing made out of paper, scotch tape, and aluminum foil. I suppose the judges found the homemade quality of the work to be charming, but I thought it seemed pretty lame.

I also entered two photographs, one was a still image of the moment that a drop of water splashes into a glass cup. The water is dyed with food coloring to make an even cooler effect. This image was actually pulled from my movie. Happily, our video camera lets you extract high quality still images from it. This image did not even win an award at the school, much less the regional level where the work tonight.

My other entry was the sunlight glinting off of a broken haystalk. I took this picture on a trip to a pumpkin patch. It won first place at the school, so I had hoped this might be representative. Alas, it was not to be.I lost out to a photshopped self-portrait.

Still, I did well, and I'll be bsck to do even better next year!

Leopard Cookies

I got a new stuffie not too long ago, a cute leopard that I made at Build a Bear. He had a story recently, which I wrote down.

Once upon a time, leopard found a chocolate chip cookie. Noticing that the color of the cookie and the chips resembled leopard spots, he named it a "Leopard Cookie" and proudly announced his discovery to all the other stuffies. A see turtle, Hanu, scoffed, "Silly leopard. That's a chocolate chip cookie, not a leopard cookie."

But leopard insisted and decided to take his case to court. The two sides in the court case were Leopard and Hanu with judge Eagle presiding. Leopard made his case, pointing out the remarkable similarity of the chips to leopard spots and of the dough making up the cookie to the color of leopards. Hanu continued to point out that the cookie had a perfectly good name already and did not need another. But one of the narrators, a small, blonde fellow, kept nibbling away at the cookie. Before the judge ruled on the case, the cookie was eaten.

When at last it came time for a decision, the judge noticed the glaring lack of evidence--there was no cookie, leopard or otherwise. This was enough to tip the scales of justice. Citing lack of evidence, the case was closed in favor of Hanu. No leopard cookies.

Geometry

Today, we started a unit on the baffling topic of geometry. The source of the bafflement is the insistence on using the same letters to describe various things. For instance, the two points, A and B, can describe a line segment, AB, a line AB, or a ray AB. Worse yet, the ray AB is not to be confused with the ray BA, which is a different thing entirely. On the other hand, the line and line segment AB is the same thing as the line and line segment BA. Yeesh. Math is supposed to be precise. This doesn't seem precise at all. Why don't they use one set of letters to describe one thing.

And don't get me started about planes. While I like paper airplanes, the geometry planes are an entirely different matter.

Conquest of the Empire

 Now that Dad is back from Europe, strategy gaming has returned to the household. Right now we're playing Conquest of the Empire, about the battle by various factions for the control of the Roman Empire. The four factions competing are controlled by Purple Zebra, Swirls (a tiger with swirls instead of stripes), Puppy, and Piggy. Daddy controls the last two and has the Roman centurions greet each of their orders with

Ave Puppy!

or

Ave Piggy!

Ave, I've now learned, means "hail" or "praise be to" in Latin, the language of the Romans. My Romans mostly just talk in Mario accents. It's still early going, but Purple Zebra and Piggy are in an alliance against Puppy and Swirls. We'll see how things play out.

Viral

A recent visit to my Youtube library revealed that one of my movies went a bit viral recently. Railroad Crossing of Doom now has over 11,000 views. This is especially surprising since it is not even the best of the Railroad Crossing of Doom series. The sequel, Railroad Crossing of Doom II, is better. For old times sake, check it out here:

Playmobil Survivor

For the most part, I don't play much with my Playmobil guys. Sometimes they come out when friends come over but rarely will I pull them out myself. Well, this weekend I decided to pull them out and discovered how amazingly fun they are. They have so many different things they can carry and outfits they can wear. Of course, since most of my playmobil guys are knights, these additional items mainly consist of weapons. Anyway, what made them so much fun to play with is that Daddy and I conducted a game of Playmobil survivor. There were 16 contestants divided into two tribes. They had to participate in many different events including shooting watermelons from a catapult, sword throwing, and so on. One of the tribes had a big advantage since a coffee drinking barbarian built his own catapult. Anyway, it was great fun. There was a tie in the final vote, so the million dollars was split between Yellow Ice Climber and The Black Knight. The Black Knight had to leave the show earlier in the season for medical reasons but then got to come back later in the series. Yellow Ice Climber also had a difficult path. In one tribal council, all the votes but his own were cast his way; however, he played the immunity idol to nullify those votes thus resulting in the ejection of Rock Star from the competition.

Chimes Concert

On Friday, the end of the year concert was held at my school. I played the chimes. Relive the excitement here:




The best part about playing the Blue Danube is that *I* picked it out. I asked my teacher if we could play it as I thought it would make a good chimes song. She agreed and arranged it herself for us to play. She gave me a big shout-out for the suggestion at the concert.

Pokemon Tournament

Dad and I are running the biggest Pokemon tournament ever. We put together 16 decks including a bunch that we constructed ourselves. I made one crazy deck that is half Pokemon and half energy. Amazingly, it managed to win in the first round of the competition. I like constructing my own decks. For awhile, I was afraid to do it because I thought I would do it wrong, but now I'm gaining confidence in my skills. Of the 8 decks remaining after the first round, three are homemade. One, called Fight Club, was constructed by Daddy while the other two, Call of Legends (pictured above) and Electrifying Psychic Energy were my constructions. The Pokemon card game is such fun. I'm always surprised people who collect the cards but don't play the game. I can often find good trades with them. I exchange cool looking but weak Pokemon for strong but less cool looking ones from them.

I wonder who will win the tournament? Stay tuned.

Cap Gun Wars

I really like old school toys. Many of my favorite toys are not the latest high-tech things, but older toys that Mom and Dad used to play with. For example, I like old school little people a lot more than new ones. I love the green Aidans. I like how they don't have names and that they're smaller and more vsersatile. The new ones are all doing specific things. For example, one of my Sonya Lee's is handing money to someone. While this is fine when handing money makes sense, there are lots of situations where it doesn't. And I don't really like that she already has a name. I want to name her.

Another example is army men. Sure there are more high tech guys that are bigger and poseable, but I prefer the anonymous green (and gray and tan) guys. You get a lot more of them, and they're a lot more fun to have wars with.

I recently discovered another old school treat--cap guns. These guns and their ammo are hard to find in the Bay area. Lots of people are anti-gun, and they don't want kids to have fun pretending to shoot stuff (and other people). While a lot of things are the same with these uns compared to the ones Daddy had growing up, one thing is different. The new ones all have bright orange covers over the end of them. This is so that police will not mistake a cap gun for the real thing and accidentally shoot a kid (or adult) waving one of these things. The picture above is my favorite cap gun--an old west 6 shooter. I also prefer old school caps, the ones that come in a red roll of paper, to new ones that come in a plastic circle. For one thing, the old school ones produce a lot more smoke and sparks.

Over the weekend, the whole family--even Mom---were running around the house and the yard having cap gun fights. This was super fun.

Weird but Good

Normally, when Dad comes home from work, he's totally destroyed. He'll often head straight to bed to rest his back. Sometimes, he cannot even sit during dinner. He has to stand because sitting leaves him in so much pain. On these days, I really wish he didn't feel so bad. But we still have fun. He'll read me stories or play Pokemon cards with me while he lies in bed.

But today was different. In fact, today was pretty weird. Dad came home from work today in good shape physically. And it wasn't even because he took painkillers early, which he sometimes does when going out with Mom. (Dad says this isn't a good thing since the painkillers then run out in the middle of the night and leave him immobile by morning.) Sometimes this happens but the goodness only lasts a short time. But not tonight. Tonight was weird...but in a good way. He played toy car racing with me up until bedtime. Toy car racing is an activity reserved only for the times Dad is in good shape. It involves bending and crouching over the track, and that can be really hard on him. Tonight, there were no problems at all.

Dad is on a new, much higher does of a neuro suppressant called Gabapentin (generic Neurontin he says to tell you). This drug makes him really sleepy. In fact, he told a funny story about work today. Apparently, it makes him so sleepty that he was falling asleep all the time during work. To try to combat the effects, he ran around his office and did jumping jacks. That must have looked really silly to the people passing by his door. Then he did work standing up. But the drug made him so sleepy that he fell asleep standing up and plummeted to the ground. On his way down, he woke up and managed to slow his fall enough that he only banged his head off his desk a little bit. He's got a little mark on his forehead from this. I feel sorry for him though I cannot imagine falling asleep standing up.

At any rate, maybe the new drugs are working because I cannot remember the last time Dad was in such good shape in the evening. He seems more hopeful too. It would be great if I could have my old Dad back although the new one is super fun as well. In some ways, the new one is even better since he doesn't pester me to run around outside like the old Dad used to. Anyway, I hope this means he's getting better.

Wish I were well

I've been home with a fever these last two days. On top of that, I have a headache that will never stop. I also have allergies that cause me to have to clear my throat all the time. The throat-clearing is driving my classmates nuts. Well, here's a news flash---it's driving me nuts too. I'm taking zyrtec and nasonex for the allergy problem but it's not of much use. What a pain in the neck. I like being home from school...but not when I feel like this!

Toy Car Racing

I really love toy cars. I got several in Easter eggs delivered by the Easter bunny and found this one as I was clearing out my Easter basket long after the holiday. (While I love chocolate, I eat it only slowly.) This car is an Austen-Healey, a British car that Daddy espeically likes. I haven't taken it out on the track to compete, but it sure looks cool. Lately, I've gotten several new toy cars and it's opened up the field for a lot of first-time winners in the gravity cup series. It's no longer the case that there are only about 6 cars that can ever win, now it's more like 20-30 cars, so the field has gotten a lot deeper. I especially like making up tournament brackets and then running the cars through the brackets to determine a winner. While I can do regular single elmination brackets, I have also done brackets with all sorts of different byes, consolation rounds, and so on. I'm now a bracket-making expert.

Another Reading Project

As I mentioned previously, I'm totally fascinated with the game The Legend of Drzzt. The main character, Drzzt, is a dark elf also called a Drow. It turns out that he and all the other characters in the game are based on a series of books by RA Salvatore. Over the weekend, we visited Barnes and Noble and picked up an anthology of Drzzt stories. They are extremely exciting with their many battles and adventures. The last few days, Daddy has been reading me these stories, and we act them out with stuffed animals. I have a nice green triceratops that plays the role of Drzzt. For longer books like the Bible, stuffy acting really makes them come alive. I love to choose different stuffies to represent the characters and then acting through the stories with them. Last night Drzzt took on a group of orcs and ogres. The ogres consisted of a pair of colorful frogs, a T-Rex, and the most evil character, a Care Bear with a pair of lollipops on his tummy. We've done several stories with this Care Bear. In all of them, he's an evil genius who tries to take over the world. I like the ridiculousness of having a Care Bear, which I give a sweet, soft voice, making plans to destroy everyone and everything. Stuffy theater is one of my favorite things to do in the evening.

Drzzt

About two weeks ago, Daddy picked up a new game, the Legend of Drzzt. It's a Dungeons and Dragons board game. There are a number of great things about this game. First, it's really strategic. You have to manage your characters, decide who to attack, decide when to heal, and so on. I really like strategy games. Also, it's really exciting. We've managed to get out of some tough situations where we were surrounded by monsters. But the best part is that, unlike regular D&D where Daddy is a dungeon master, here we get to play cooperatively to try to beat the dungeon together. Daddy is a very good strategist, so I'm glad to have him on my team!

Camp Arroyo

On Monday through Wednesday of this week, I'm off to Camp Arroyo with my class. This is the first time I'll be away from Mom and Dad (and relatives) for several days in a row. I'm a little scared but also pretty excited. I love camping and being on my own should be pretty fun. Fingers crossed that it all works out.

Pokemon Cards

I'm totally into Pokemon cards these days. I picked up a world champion deck from Target about 2 weeks ago and have been crushing Dad with it ever since. In fact, this motivated Daddy to get his own champion pack (a different one from mine), so he could compete.

This got me thinking as to which of my decks is the best. So I decided to hold a tournament. Apart from the 2 champion decks, I have 8 regular decks of Pokemon Cards, so we paired each of them off and set up a single elimination tournament. We decided to play a short form version of the game (only 3 prize cards rather than 6) and this has produced some very exciting games. In the first battle, one of the decks had fainted two Pokemon and was one hit away from victory. But the other decks rallied back and managed to knock out the rival's third Pokemon just in the nick of time. What a super close battle. We've already got 2 decks in the semi-finals. We'll see who the other two decks are that make it here as well.

4 Lane Elimination Tournament

I love running tournaments. Recently, we introduced the idea of creating a Hall of Fame for all-time winners in Hot Wheels and other things. This makes the stakes even higher since winning a tournament puts a car one step closer to the Hall of Fame. We already have a couple of vehicles enshrined in the Hall. One is Little Red Roadster, the all-time gravity racing champion. It has won more gravity races than any other car. The second is RoadRunner, the fastest car I own. It has never lost in 4 lane raceway. A relatively short drag course with 4 lanes.

Lately, we've been playing a lot of 4 lane elimination raceway. This is similar to 4 lane raceway except that the track keeps narrowing. After the first third of the race, 4 lanes collapse to 2 lanes. There are little triggers that cause the cars that are behind to get flipped off of the track. The track collapses to a single lane near the end of the course. The winning car is the one to survive and cross the finish line first. The cool thing about 4 lane elimination racing is that, while some cars are faster than others, there is enough randomness that nothing is assured. Last week's champ was an 18 wheeler called "Rubber Duck" after the protagonist in the CW McCall song "Convoy", which I like a lot.

Brief aside: Aunt Holly and Uncle Ted were shocked when I launched into the Convoy song as we were walking to dinner.

Rubber Duck beat a long futuristic racer named Greased Lightning. This week, Greased Lightning was again in the finals against a buggy type of vehicle with machine guns mounted on the front and sides. Since it does not have a name printed on the bottom of it, we named is "50 cal" after its main armament. Both Daddy and I thought that Greased Lightning would win, but 50 cal pulled off the stunning upset and took home the trophy. He's now one step closer to the Hall of Fame.

Aunt Holly and Uncle Ted Visit

This weekend my Aunt Holly and Uncle Ted came to visit from Miami. I had not seen them in years, so I didn't really remember them. I did, however, know that they give some of the coolest gifts. This Christmas they sent me the Hot Wheels camera car, which is totally awesome. I have to put up some videos from the car some time soon. They were kind enough to bring me a cool bright yellow soccer ball when they arrived. It's the prettiest soccer ball I own.

Anyway, after they arrived, they did what adults usually do: talk, talk, talk, talk, and more talk. I was pretty bored with that so I played my 3DS quietly.

Later in the afternoon, I got them interested in playing Settlers of Catan. They had a great time. In fact, when it was time to go to dinner, my Uncle Ted said, "One more turn, one more turn." Then it was Aunt Holly's turn, and she said the same thing. If Daddy had not stopped the game, we probably would have missed our dinner reservation entirely. They even talked about how good the game was at dinner too. I was so happy since this is the first time I've gotten someone other than Daddy to play with me. Settlers truly is an awesome game. It's in my top 3 favorite strategy games. For the record, the others are Civilization and Risk:Godstorm.

Christmas Play

 

Over Christmas, I participated in a short drama camp run by the church. The culmination of this was a play we performed on Christmas Eve. I played the role of a shepherd. The plot was a play within a play--a group of students are putting on a Christmas play and everything is going wrong. Particularly funny was a girl playing a role of an angel who was hoisted up in the air on pulleys. The setup was such that she would kind of drift arouund in circles and have to get out her lines only when she was facing forward. Mommy and Daddy thought it was a very funny play.

Zoe, Pippi, and Squeaky

 

Over the Christmas break, we got to do a lot of rat-sitting. Several of the classes, including my own, have pet rats in class. The two rats in my class are Pippi and Squeaky. You can see them perched atop my head and shoulders in the photo. These two are very nice rats. For a long time, I didn't want to pick them up since their little toenails bothered me. More recently, however, I've been braver about this and now it's kind of fun to have them run all over me.

We also had another class rat, Zoe. She was being taken care of my a teacher I had previously. Sadly, she got very sick, which is why she was home with us. Mommy really takes excellent care of the rats and especially wanted to try to help Zoe get well. Unfortunately, Zoe had cancer, so she never could get well. But she had a wonderful time at the end of her life. Mommy gave her special foods becuase she has trouble eating regular rat food. (She lost strength in some of her paws so that, when she tried to eat foods that required her to use her front legs to hold the food she would fall over.) Mommy also let her run around the house, since she couldn't really run very well and it was difficult for her to move around the cage. Shortly after New Year's Day, she died. We buried her with flowers in the side yard. It was really sad.

Strategy Games

 

I am totally into strategy games. We have quite a collection and I enjoy playing a different one each weekend. Last weekend we played Conquest of the Empire. We played this previously using the simple rules, but this time we played with the deluxe rules. I especially like the power of some of the cards to really shift around who is winning and losing. Whenever we play these games, we have four stuffies playing the four different sides. I control two stuffies while Daddy controls the other two. Part of the enjoyment is having the stuffies react and talk about how things are going in the game. Daddy makes up all sorts of funny voices for the stuffies, and I'm getting good at voices too. Our most recent "voice" belongs to Berkeley Bear, who sounds Russian. Daddy said that the voice is actually from a cartoon character named Boris Badinov, who used to appear in the Bullwinkle cartoons. Boris (er Berkeley Bear) is always talking about anvils, factories, and the amazing strength of Russian women. Not only is there a lot of strategy in these games, they are also quite hilarious too.

Sailing

 

On Saturday, we went sailing again. Since it is rainy season, there is a lot of water in a nearby creek creating pretty good conditions. Unfortunately, there's not much current in the creek, so the boats mainly go where the wind takes them. Still, there was lots of excitement. There is a portion of the stream where things get narrow and end in a small waterfall. Several of the boats "shot the rapids" and went down the waterfall. Boats are not much good after this experience, but it's so cool to watch them pick up speed and slide down.

R/C Car Racing

Daddy and I got a really cool R/C car for Christmas. It's ridiculously powerful and fast. It also has all terrain tires so that it can go over rough ground with ease. Lately, Daddy and I have been playing tag with the cars. He uses one of my older cars, a green outer space type vehicle, while I use the new one. His vehicle is more agile but slower while mine is fast but harder to maneuver. Our favorite game is car tag. The "it" car has to chase the other around the yard to tag it, at which point the process reverses. It's quite nifty to go chasing one another around the yard.

One time during a chase, my car went at top speed over a tree root which acted as a kind of jump. It got huge air and ended up doing a barrel roll in midair before landing on its wheels and continuing the chase. Another highlight was when I drove on 2 wheels up a ramp formed by my scooter. This produced an amazing jump into the wood chips.

R/C car racing is a total blast.

Pinewood Derby

 

It's pinewood derby season once again. I wanted to choose the thinnest possible design so as to be more aerodynamic. I noticed that thin designs seemed to dominate last year's Blackhawk 500 (the regional pinewood race). So this year's entry is the Pikachu-mobile. It's nice and yellow (though lots of graphites dirties it a bit). I was excited for race day. Things went well in the heats. I wond 3 out of 5 races I competed in.

Then disaster struck. Normally, the 5 fastest cars compete in the finals. This year, however, they screwed up the computer settings and only ran the top 3. Despite desperate pleadings from Mommy and Daddy and other parents whose kids were "on the bubble," they didn't end up fixing this, so I did not get to compete in the finals. That made me really upset since my car was the 5th fastest in the heats and would have been a strong contender in the finals. Still, we did pretty well finishing 5th overall.