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.

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.

Reading

I've discovered that there are some very good books out there. Who would have guessed. Daddy introduced me to Captain Underpants--what great literature. I thought for sure that nothing could compare to these stories.

And indeed nothing does. But Roald Dahl comes close. We first read James and the Giant Peach. While I had some misgicings, it was nice to see the peach crush Aunt Spiker and Aunt Sponge. Then we went Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This took all Dad's voice talents. In the story there are 4 kinds of English people, plus Germans, Southerners, New Yorkers, and a bunch of other regions. Daddy seemed to like the challenge. Now we're reading Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. Roald Dahl is pretty cool.

Weekend before school

I'm not looking forward to school. I'm really not. But this weekend was fun. Daddy apparently didn't look forward to school either so he thought we should have maximum fun for the last weekend before the start of the school year.

Saturday was an amazing day. We went on an adventure where we climbed a big mountain. Then we hit some golf balls. At night, we played Wii baseball. Then, to top it all off, we had a backyard campout.

Sunday was equally cool. After church, we went kite flying. I set a new record with the height of my kite. It was so high I ran completely out of string. More baseball and then a campout with Mom.

Pretty Leaves

Here are some pretty leaves I found in the driveway. I like how they're yellow and green--my favorite colors.

Captain Underpants

From underpants

As you know, I generally don't like to read. While I can do it, I'd rather not. Mostly because nothing interesting has ever been written. Fortunately, I finally ran across a series of books worth reading---The Adventures of Captain Underpants.


These are the first books that are so exciting, so insightful, so amazing, that I'm happy to pick them up and read them myself.

From underpants

Pretty weird, huh?

Striped Shirts Stink

This morning before church, Mom and I had our usual fight about what I should wear. She wanted me to wear a striped golf shirt. I did not. Here's a short photo essay about my feelings.

Sleepover

 

Summer is great. Play dates, sleepovers, fun! Tonight, my friend Chris is sleeping over. Of course, not much sleep is occurring, but I'm still having a great time. I introduced Chris to my two favorite things at the moment--Super Mario Galaxy and Dungeons and Dragons. Our D&D friend, Cynwyd, unfortunately died by being squashed under a rock trap. But we managed to defeat some Morlocks thanks to the sleep spell of Chris's character, Jones. He's a wizard. My character is a priest named Lightning. I had some close calls with the Morlocks but have so far been unharmed.

My Least Interesting Photo

wine2, originally uploaded by John-Morgan.

My Daddy has uploaded many, many photos to Flickr over the years. Some were better than others, but the one above is, according to Flickr, the least interesting photo he's uploaded. It's more uninteresting than this photo:



which is a sign for bubonic plague in Lake Tahoe.

It's vastly less interesting than this photo:



A houseplant.

Weird.

Backyard Campout

I'm looking forward to this weekend's excitement---a backyard campout. Only here's the twist, it's not in my backyard; it's in the Cubmaster's backyard. A bunch of my friends will be there too. Should be fun!

D&D...

Can be pretty scary. Last night our party ran into a wererat. He seemed like a nice enough guy, but I knew something was up when he grew a tale. We defeated him and his rat friends. Tonight challenge was ghosts. Mom picked up some haunted goblets and ghosts attacked us as we headed for the exit. Apparently, they don't like their goblets disturbed. Ghosts are really scary.

Yahoo is Mean

My website, which has been hosted at Geocities since I was born, is now to be deleted by my Daddy's friends at Yahoo. Here's the announcement:

GeoCities is closing on October 26, 2009.
On October 26, 2009, your GeoCities site will no longer appear on the Web, and you will no longer be able to access your GeoCities account and files.

If you'd like to move your site, or save the images and other files you've posted online, please act now by downloading your files or upgrading to AT&T Yahoo! Web Hosting. See details in the help center or upgrade to Web Hosting now for only $4.99 a month.

Now you would think that they would at least make it easy for you to pull your content off their server and send it somewhere else for hosting. Sadly, they don't. Here's their solution:

The simplest way to download your published pages and images is to visit your GeoCities web site:

Right-click on any page and choose Save Page As... from the menu that appears. (If you're using a Mac, hold down the Ctrl key and click the page.)
Choose a location on your computer to save your files.
Click OK or Save to save the code and images associated with your page to your computer.
Repeat these steps on each page of your site.

But this is completely obnoxious since, during the save you end up saving the AD CONTENT displayed on the page as well. So if you want to move your site, you then have to strip out all the windowing and ad hosting code Yahoo inserted.

This is really not a nice way to treat longtime users. Yahoo is mean.

Courses

I like to design courses for people to compete on. Last evening, I designed a series of ring toss courses for Daddy and I to compete doing. A lot of my courses had the goal posts located in the garden and at other tricky spots in the yard. It's great fun when someone manages to put a ring on one of the goals in my course. I also like to see how the difficulty changes as I move things around the course.

Dungeons & Dragons

I've fallen in love with a new/old game--Dungeons & Dragons. I cannot remember how this game came up in conversation, but when I heard about it, I thought it would be super fun to play. So far, it has been. My characters are based in the town of Seaend, which is menaced by a terrible dragon in the hills. My characters have gone up an attempted to plunge into the many caves in the hills, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. We recently completed a big adventure where we defeated the king of the Bugbears and his horde of hobgoblins.

At times I find the game scary, exciting, and even sad. When my character Superman died recently while battling the Bugbear, I was definitely sad about it. There's a kindly priest in town where I take my characters who died to be buried. But I'm not too sentimental. No character gets buried with armor and weapons since these are useful in other adventures.

Maybe the most successful character is Bob the Priest. (He's level 2). He managed to kill the bugbear and acquired a bunch of treasure including a magic pearl of spells. The weird thing about Bob is that, being a priest, he's determined to give all his loot to God. MY other characters have tried to discourage this sort of thing, so now Bob is only giving half his stuff to God.

My Daddy was telling me about the most successful D&D characters he ever worked with (he's dungeon master). Their names were Duke, Scaggament, and Moritor under the control of Uncle Dave. He mentioned that they founded their own giant church (Church of Zeus) and had armies of guys. I want my guys to be as successful.

Concert

We had a big concert in church yesterday. I had a performance with the chimes and sang two songs with the choir. The second song was an extravaganza where all the choirs, even the adults, sang together.

It was a great event. I'm especially proud of my chime playing. I was in charge of the melody since I rarely screw up when playing chimes. It sounded terrific. Best of all, no dreaded chime injuries. The last time I played, I accidentally hit myself in the head with a chime during the performance. However, being the professional that I am, I played through the pain and completed the song without incident.

You can check out a few photos here.

Get Well Greeting

My favorite team, the Oakland A's, is having a ton of problems with injuries. Here's how bad it is: Last night, the starting pitcher got injured when he cut himself reaching into the A's medical kit to get a band aid. I thought I'd try to cheer the players up by sending them a get well card. I made a picture of the A's logo on the front and wrote something like:

"Dear A's,

My name is Aidan. I am 7 years old. The A's are my favorite team. I hope your hurt players get better soon.

Love,

Aidan"

We sent the card off to the A's stadium this morning. I hope this helps the players to feel better.

Aidan Obama-ized

I thought this was pretty cool, so Daddy and I made an Obama-ized version of Aidan. For some reason, I picked Easter as my slogan.

What a Game!

Last night, Dad and I were watching the A's on TV. We noticed that they were playing the Diamondbacks. Since the D'Backs are also a favorite team of mine, this got us thinking about going to the ballpark. A quick check on the internet revealed that the A's were playing a night game with them tonight and, best of all, Danny Haren was on the mound. That settled it, we were going to the game.

It looked like a mismatch. Haren was pitching against rookie Edgar Gonzalez (5 + ERA in the minors). Seemed like the DBacks and Haren should win. First inning, Gonzalez gets in a jam and gives up a run. But Haren gave up a 2 run homer in the first to Jack Cust. After that, it was all A's for a time. Three homers later, the A's lead 5-1 in the 8th and Haren is lifted for a reliever. But in the top of the 8th, the DBacks storm back with 4 runs of their own to knot the score at 5-5.

Both teams threaten but neither breaks through in the 9th, so we're going to extra innings. Now I've been to two A's games so far this year, and they both went to extra innings. In the 11th, the DBacks score three runs in consecutive singles and doubles. Things look bad for the A's, but they manage to score 2 runs and have runners at 1st and 3rd with one out in the last of the 11th. Jack Hannahan comes to the plate. All he has to do is hit a fly ball to tie the game. But Hannahan instead hits a sharp grounder to short, flip over to second and then on to first for the double play. Game over. A's lose. Since I was sort of rooting for the DBacks, this was fine with me.

After that, it turned out it was a fireworks night, so we caught some cool fireworks too. Another great (and late) night at the ballpark!

Frisbee

I've discovered a new skill--the art of throwing a frisbee using the classic backhand technique. My previous technique was a kind of semi-discuss type of throw. This could produce long distance, but I had no idea where the thing was going. The backhand enables me to throw it where I want to throw it. I was playing catch with Daddy in the backyard and was able to throw accurately enough that he could do an assortment of trick catches.

Wolf

Last week, we had the cub scouts court of honor, kind of our graduation ceremony. I got merit badges for a bunch of sports: baseball, football, basketball, bowling, and golf. More importantly, I got my Tiger Cub badge, which puts me on the road to Wolf scout. I'm really proud of all my accomplishments in scouts this past year.

Open House

Yesterday was the open house at my school. It was a day that I got to present all the cool stuff I did over the course of the year. The highlight was the coral reef window, were we made things like sea urchins, kelp, starfish, and jellyfish. I also got to present my writer's workshop stuff. My particular niche is writing about Wii games. I wrote an extended piece about Wii pool. Currently, I'm working on a piece about the Wii Play tank game.

I also got to show Mom and Dad a coaster with a rainbow on it that I made. It's really cool.

Hoedown and other stuff

Last weekend was the Alamo School Hoedown. It's a sort of carnival with games and prizes. While it was a rainy weekend, I had a lot of fun nonetheless. I ended up taking home a giant watergun shaped like a crayon. It shoots out tons of water. I can't wait to spray Nainnie when she arrives.

Here are some photo highlights.

Ninja

It's a raining this weekend. That's unusual since it rarely rains here after April. That means we have to invent fun inside activities. I came up with the idea that Daddy and I should dress like ninjas and strike various warrior poses. I shot the pictures of Daddy and he shot those of me. To make them even crazier, we used posterize mode in Photoshop to make them seem more like cartoons of superheroes.

Here's my most menacing shot:



Check out the whole stream here.

Trefethen

We visited wine country on Saturday. As usual, I love to see Shannon, and I got a bunch of small toys to play with, so it was pretty fun. Even cooler is that I learned that my photo of "skull guy" was featured on the Trefethen website as part of the shots taken of their Halloween decorations. Apparently, several people asked about which member took the shot and they were surprised to discover that the "member" was a 6 year old boy (at the time of the shot).

My first publication---cool!

Best Game Ever

Last night was the best baseball game ever. It didn't start out that way. There was a lot of traffic, and it was very cold in the ballpark. Once the game started, it got even worse. The A's pitcher, Dama Eveland, was rocked for 3 runs in the 1st. But the A's came back and took the lead off of Dice-K in the bottom of the innning. The scored stayed that way until late in the game. Then, the Sox managed 2 runs to tie it all up.

Now even though it was a school night, and even though I had to get up early tomorrow, and even though I had a playdate after school, and even though I had baseball practice, and even though I had scouts after that...Daddy let me stay up for the game. (Clearly someone with the right priorities). I stayed up really late...and got on TV!



And, happily, the A's won in 12 innings. What an amazing game.

Check out the photo highlights here

A's v Sox April 14, 2009

Let's go Oak-land!

Happy Easter

I got up early this Easter Sunday to hunt for eggs in the yard. I was so excited that I neglected to put on shoes or change out of my jammies. I found 24 out of 33 eggs left around. There was lots of good stuff in the eggs including chocolate, magnets, and toy cars.

After this, we went to church, and I had to wear a collared shirt. Yuck. I hate collars, and I hate buttons. But I put up with it and ended up wearing my Easter outfit all day.

After we returned, I hunted down the remainder of the eggs and participated in a photo shoot. Mommy has the family photos, but here are some Aidan ones.

Happy Easter.

New Shoes

My feet are getting bigger. I got some cool new shoes over the weekend. Some silver sneakers to replace my "bouncy ball" sneakers and a new set of spikes. My spikes are customizable--you can change the color and logos of them with inserts. Right now, they're red since I'm on the Red Sox. I like my new stuff.