Bells and Chimes

Yesterday I performed as part of the bell/chime choir in church. I was a chime person. I got interested in this idea when i saw my friend Katie practicing the chimes after choir practice. The chimes seeme pretty interesting, but I was a little scared I would screw up in playing. Eventually, I decided it looked like too much fun to miss out on, so I joined. We had a very good performance today.

Defeat

I hate to lose. I just hate it.

Last night, I went to my Cub Scout den meeting. We did a lot of fun things, but, at the end, there was a relay race contest. There were three teams and the job of each team was to sweep up a bunch of leaves and put them into bins. The parents were in charge of the sweeping while the kids were in charge of the bins. Sadly, my team finished last in this race. It made me very sad. In fact, I hid in the corner of the room to be sad by myself until I felt better. I really want to WIN all the games I play. I hate finishing last.

Disappearing comments

I know a number of you had a problem with disappearing comments. Daddy tried to fix this by modifying the comment code to requires fewer passwords. Hope this improves things.

Victory!

 

Obama is our new president! This was great news. We had a little celebration including a toast and a balloon toss. I'm sure he'll be better than Bush.I made a little blue chain with the words

Obama, Obama wins!

written on the links to celebrate.

Politics

It's almost election day. I hope Obama wins. I'm also rooting for the defeat of Prop 8 in California. To add spice to the evening, we did a politics pick-em contest. Here's my predicted electoral map:

Traffic

This Sunday was a big weekend for traffic--but just in the world of Hot Wheels. In the morning we did a traffic photoshoot. Note the hand-made jersey barriers dividing the road. I really liked these.



The afternoon revisited the traffic idea. Daddy and I watched the extended chase scene from the second part of The Matrix. While I generally don't like movies, this scene was quite exciting. We then set up the jersey barriers and a bunch of cars a trucks to recreate that scene as well as making up our own scene. This was very really fun. I can't wait to do it again!

[Aside: A little inside baseball about the connection between the chase scene and Mythbusters courtesy of the source of all knowledge--Wikipedia:

"The freeway chase scene was filmed at the decommissioned Naval Air Station Alameda in Alameda, California. Producers constructed a 1.5-mile freeway on the old runways just for the movie (Which was later used by the Mythbusters in testing several myths). Portions of the chase were also filmed in Oakland, California, and the tunnel shown briefly is the Webster Tube connecting Oakland and Alameda. Some post-production editing was done in old aircraft hangars on the base as well.

The city of Akron was willing to give full access to Route 59, the stretch of freeway known as the "Innerbelt", for filming of the freeway chase when it was under consideration. However, producers decided against this as "the time to reset all the cars in their start position would take too long".MythBusters would later reuse the Alameda location in order to explore the effects of a head-on collision between two semi trucks."]

Happy Halloween

 

Happy Halloween everyone. This year, I was a tiger. Mommy did the cool makeup. I got to hold the sing for the class in the Halloween parade at my school. I also got a whole bunch of Kit Kat bars in my Halloween basket. Afterwards, we went to a paty at my friend Katie's house. Hooray for Halloween!

Trefethen Photo Shoot

On Saturday, we went to Trefethen winery. Mommy and Daddy said I was perfectly behaved while I was there. I spent the bulk of my time taking pictures of the weird Halloween stuff as well as the usual wine stuff.



I discovered that I loved the reflections made by my flash off the glassware. Above is a nice reflection shot.

Check out the latest Aidan photos here:

http://flickr.com/photos/aodhanmorgan/

Ninja

by sabbiesab

Inspired by the Mythbusters ninja special, Daddy and I have been playing ninja warriors in the living room lately. Because a ninja's hands are so lethal, we each carry a couple of big soft pillows to protect against any accidental deadly blows. We then battle around the living room jumping and making ninja poses in between brutal strikes.

There's also a sumo variant of this game. In the sumo version, some pillows mark the outer edges of the "circle" in the living room. Each of us grabs a giant pillow and tries to push the other person out of the circle using the pillow.

Gotta love Asian martial arts.

Mom's Birthday

 

While Mom's birthday was a while ago, I just got this picture off my camera. Mom was away back east for her birthday, but Dad and I made her this nice chocolate cake. Happy Birthday Mommy!

Church Concert

 

I gave my first church choir concert today. We sang the "kick-off" song for the service. Because there were so many of us--kid choir, church choir, a 5 piece church band, and so on, they had to move the location to the Wesley Center, which has a stage. As usual, Daddy was on hand to act as paparazzi. Naturally, I mugged for the camera.

CNN Graph

 

I was fascinated by the graphs they had of people's reactions ot the debates on CNN. In fact, I was so fascinated that I started making my own reaction graph. Just like CNN, I divide the sample into men and women and monitor their reactions. Daddy is the man in the sample and Mommy the woman. As you can see from the graph, Mommy is more volatile in her reactions--just like the women on CNN.

tiger

 

Yesterday, we went out an hit golf balls in the back yard. I pulled out my trusty 3 wood, which I used to good effect last time we were out on the course. Initially, we were trying to hit Daddy's chipping target, but this soon gave way to something much more fun--hammering away at the ball. I hit some of my longest shots ever (with wiffle balls). I managed to whack a couple of them out of the yard, and put one on the ROOF of my play structure. When I would really hit a ball hard, it would make a cool zooming noise as it came off the club and zinged through the air. Daddy, who does not like to hit his 3 wood, said that I can now hit mine further than he can hit his!

Fore!

Proposition 8: No!

We've been battling some annoying yard sign guys the last few days. They put up signs on the corner of our property (without our permission) indicating that folks should vote yes on Proposition 8. Every time they put up a sign, Daddy goes and takes it down (he voted no on Prop 8 by mail). So far, we've hauled down 2 signs. Who knows how many of these things they're going to put up.

Voting is kind of interesting. Since Daddy votes by mail, I helped him fill out his ballot. Mostly, we agree on what to vote for. He picked Obama, which I thought was good. He also voted for himself for a Walnut Creek City Council seat. I don't think he'll win though.

Pigskin Pick 'Em

Over the last bunch of weeks, the whole family has been competing in Pigskin Pick 'Em. On Thursday, there is a guy who writes a "crystal ball" column who predicts the NFL games. All of us make picks too to see if we can beat the "expert." I like to do a bit of research for my picks. I ask who is home and who is away. I also ask about the records of each of the teams. The research is paying off. I won by a mile last week and I'm in a position (with a Denver win) to win again this week. The crystal ball guy seems not to be all that good. He's in last place this week.

No Joy in Mudville

As you know, I adopted the Red Sox as my favorite team in the playoffs. They have a lot of cool players including former Oakland Athletic Mark Kotsay. They also have Jonathan Papelbon, who I like to pretend to be when I'm pitching. I was really hoping that they would get to the World Series. Things looked good when the Sox led 1-0 early yesterday. But the Rays pitched too well and the Sox missed too many bases loaded situations. The 8th inning was especially disappointing. Daddy and I were jumping up and down and cheering for the Sox to get the key hit they needed with 2 outs. But that hit never came.

Go Fightin' Phils!

Remembrance: Tadpole

Last week "Tadpole," who turned into a frog after about a year, died. It made me very sad. He didn't have a very long life. I wondered why he died. Too many crickets? Too few crickets? The wrong kind of crickets? Too hot? Too cold? It's impossible to know.

But I sure will miss him.

Comeback!

Last night may have been the most exciting baseball game I've ever seen. The Sox, who I am now rooting for with the elimination of the A's, themselves faced elimination. Down 7-0 in the 7th, things looked bleak. Amazingly, they came all the way back and won it in the 9th to pull out an improbably 8-7 victory. There was lots of cheering and high-fiving and jumping around. What a game!

Debate Analysis

As you know, I've been watching the debates with my Daddy. Tonight, we decided to make a graph of McCain buzzwords. I listened carefully for the following: maverick, my friends, earmark, and reform. In fact, I was so interested that I timed bathroom breaks for when Obama was speaking so as not to miss any.

Here are the results:

maverick: 0
my friends: 11
earmark: 6
reform: 0

Conclusions: 1. Clearly, we are all McCain's friends. 2. Debates are more interesting than you might think.

Guesstimation Jar 2