Aidan in the Rain

Another dance extravaganza with props.

Cinema

Daddy and I made a new movie this weekend--my first sequel. It's railroad crossing of doom II. This time we used stop action techniques for added realism. We also did a series of vignettes rather than a single story--sort of like episodes of Cops.

Enjoy!

Geotrax

 

Nothing new to report. This is just a better shot of Geotrax. Here we see the diesel making its early morning run for various machine tools at the plant.

Monopoly

 

This weekend I graduated up from Monopoly Junior to full-blown monopoly. I love this game--the money, the properties, the little pieces, and especially the deal making. I won the first game I played thanks to a monopoly on Boardwalk and Park Place which bankrupted everyone else. The second game was a time limit one. I thought I had won, but Mommy had great luck at the end and pulled out the victory. The third game was supposed to be a time limit one too, but we played it out. Unfortunately, I lost to Daddy and his nasty hotels on New York Avenue.

I get to put my math skills to the test in this game--figuring out the right change, reading the rates on the property cards, and so on. In fact, I've become so good that I was the banker in the most recent game. Monopoly is really fun.

Putting up the Christmas Tree

 

Yesterday, we put up our Christmas tree as well as the outside lights. At first, I was a bit skeptical about how fun this would be, but once we got into the lights and ornaments, I had a great time. In fact, I worked on ornaments longer than ever before--about 2 hours. I also was the most careful person in the family. Here's the ornament destruction count: Mommy 2, Daddy 1, Aidan 0.

My least favorite ornament is one of an evil clown that Mommy's grandfather gave her. I wanted him off the tree, but Mommy put him on anyway. Fortunately, I don't know where he is.

The tree looks totally beautiful. It's the nicest tree ever I think.

Click here for a more extensive set of putting up the tree pictures.

Rediscovering Geotrax

 

As Mommy was cleaning out my very full and messy closet, I rediscovered my many Geotrax train things. Mommy and I set up a big arrangement in the living room and have been having a lot of fun with it since. Yesterday, the Geotrax were invaded by "giant stuffies." The trains were a bit frightened but the stuffies meant no harm. In the afternoon, the Bennetts came over and Patrick and Elizabeth played with the trains. They seemed to love them. A key highlight was when a Roman soldier took a ride on one of the trains. Unfortunately, there are a number of low clearance areas on the track and the Roman suffered smoe nasty blows to the head. We all thought that was very funny! (7 year olds love black humor.)

Hooray for geotrax!

Happy Turkey Day

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Above is a photo of a turkey I made at home. I made it all by myself from constuction paper, cardboard, and Sharpie pens. I especially like how I decorated the legs. This year I'm thankful for my friend Christopher. He came over of a playdate last night and then invited me to his house for my very first sleepover. It was very cool plus it makes my longest playdate yet--more than 24 hours! Mom and Dad are coming over to Chris's house for Thanksgiving dinner. Hooray!

Turn the Beat Around

One of my favorite things to do at night is "dance party." Check out this dance I made up to "Turn the Beat Around." Shot with Daddy's new iPod Nano. Amazing that a device about as big as a pack of gum (and thinner too) can do this.

The Many Faces of Aidan

From Aidan's Weblog

Not really anything to report. Just a quick collage of my many faces over the last few months. You can find the many faces of Aidan and other recent shots of me at my Shutterfly site.

Math is Fun!

From Aidan's Weblog

While most of my homework is pretty boring, I really like math facts. I'm very quick at adding together even very large numbers. Last night, I stayed up late doing "bonus homework" with Dad. My real homework involved adding together "doubles" like 2+2 or 4+4.

For the bonus, Daddy decided to have me keep doubling the doubles. So I added 2+2, 4+4, 8+8, 16+16, 32+32, etc. We finally quit after I added together 2048+2048 (= 4096 by the way). Dad said that this sequence of numbers had a special name, 2^n, or the geometric sequence. It apparently gets big fast. Here is a crazy fact that Daddy told me: n^2/2^n = 0 as n gets arbitrarily large. How can two tings that both become infinite end up being zero?

Above is the picture of my whiteboard with many calculations.

I really like doing calculations. I know a bunch of tricks to add and subtract numbers. Some of my tricks are incomprehensible to Mom and Dad, but somehow still manage to produce the right answers. Daddy says that I do math intuitively, whatever that means.

Wine Country

On Saturday, we went to wine country, but with a very cool twist--my friend Chris and his Mom came along with us. It was very fun. We went to Trefethen and saw Shannon. She's super nice and gave me a hug. She also had a basket full of toys for us to play with and even take home. We also wandered around the vines and a lovely fall day. Finally, we went to Mumm where I gathered up a huge number of cool acorns. While we were in the car, we sang goofy songs which made us laugh and laugh but eventually annoyed our parents.

Here is a list of the top 5 annoying things we did:

1. Pretended to be sirens while Daddy was driving.
2. Repeatedly referred to the "man zone" regardless of topic of conversation.
3. Sang songs about babies falling to their death.
4. Whined
5. Said "wiener dog, wiener dog" over and over.

Actually the annoying things made the trip even more fun!

Only in California

Guess what I did on Sunday? I ran a lemonade stand on the corner of the street. It was a nice sunny day but not especially hot. Both Mommy and Daddy were skeptical about how much business I'd do selling lemonade. But business was brisk thanks to my terrific product and my enthusiastic selling technique. Here's what I would do: Any time a car or person went by, I held up my big orange sign advertising "Fresh Squeezed Lemonade 25 cents" and began my patter (modeled after Billy Mays):

Aidan Morgan here with fresh lemonade, only 25 cents. Get your fresh lemonade here. It's only 25 cents!

When bicyclists would come by, I tried a different tack:

You get awfully thirsty riding that bike. What you need is some fresh lemonade. Only 25 cents!

I ended up selling two pitchers of lemonade and made about 20 bucks (tips really help when selling for only 25 cents each.) I really love selling stuff. Maybe that's what I'll be when I grow up--a salesman.

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.