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.