6/23/09 (I should have made this blog entry earlier, but I never got around to it)
Yesterday we went to my Grandad's house, which is about an hour from my Grandma's house and right next to lake Michigon. My Grandad has two small black dogs named Scarpa and Ladoux. They like to bark, eat, and play fetch. (Not much else) I played hide and seek with Ben, and then we went to the lake. If you wade out a couple yards into the water there is sort of a sandbar that is underwater but shallower than the water right next to the bank. Ruth and I found some nice big peices of driftwood that we played with for a long time. We pretended that mine was an aircraft carrier and Ruth's was a cruise ship. We also found a rubber dog toy that looked like a baby fish and pretended it was a monster.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Improv Play
6/20/09 (I should have made this blog entry earlier, but I never got around to it)
Nick and Muriel are improv actors, which is like being an actor, but you make up the play as you go along. We didn't get to go to one of their shows, but we went to one, and it was fun. The one we went to was a kids show that had "audience perticipation". At the beginning of the play, the narrator asked the audience what their favorite place was, and one kid shouted "Navy Peir!". We got to dress up the actors, and sometimes they would call kids out of the audience to be a character in the play. It ended up being about a indian boy who went to Navy Peir and had to follow his destiny which was to become a ballerina. At one point one of the main characters in the play, a tourist from Shomberg said somthing like "Chicago ain't no place like Shomberg" and Ben shouted out "That's a double negative!". So later the actors called Ben up to the stage to be the ghost of rules. Ben did a good job of it and Mom cracked up.
Nick and Muriel are improv actors, which is like being an actor, but you make up the play as you go along. We didn't get to go to one of their shows, but we went to one, and it was fun. The one we went to was a kids show that had "audience perticipation". At the beginning of the play, the narrator asked the audience what their favorite place was, and one kid shouted "Navy Peir!". We got to dress up the actors, and sometimes they would call kids out of the audience to be a character in the play. It ended up being about a indian boy who went to Navy Peir and had to follow his destiny which was to become a ballerina. At one point one of the main characters in the play, a tourist from Shomberg said somthing like "Chicago ain't no place like Shomberg" and Ben shouted out "That's a double negative!". So later the actors called Ben up to the stage to be the ghost of rules. Ben did a good job of it and Mom cracked up.
Ben
6/19/09 (I should have made this blog entry earlier, but I never got around to it)
Did I mention that I'm one of ten guests at my grandma's house? Let's see, there's my 26-year old cousin Muriel, her boyfriend Nick, my 8-year old cousin Ben, my mom, dad, and sister (Ruth), Ben's parents (Aunt Lora and Uncle Tom), Aunt Liz (Muriel's mom), and Me. 11 guests if you count Uncle Craig, who doesn't sleep at Grandma's house. Nick, Muriel, and Aunt Liz sleep in the basement, Ben sleeps in the studio (Grandma's an artist), Mom and Dad sleep in the front room upstairs, Ruth sleeps in the attic on a cool day, and on a hot day waits for Ben to fall asleep in the hallway and then sleeps in the studio. (Ben says I'M BOERD loudly until he falls asleep, preferably with the light on.) Aunt Lora and Uncle Tom sleep in the guest bedroom (Lucky!), and I sleep in Grandma's bedroom. It is a very lively house. My cousin Ben, as I mentioned eirlier, is only 8 years old, but he's already even more of a nerd than me in some ways. Right when Ben got here he told us that he figured out the fibinocci numbers in base 8. (Don't ask me to explain the fibonacci numbers to you) Then he went upstairs to "Check out the book situation". He sounded just like his dad when he said that. He can also be annoying at times. If you interrupt him in one of his "speeches", he jumps up and down screaming EXCUSE ME EXCUSE ME EXCUSE ME I'M TRYING TO TALK TO YOU!! It seems like he can't raise his voice without yelling. He's a nice kid, though. He really likes playing a game we call "Weakneses" in the basement. I got the idea for it when we found to old broken phones in the basement, the kind with the spinning dials. The game had lots of levels, and on each level Ben had to deafeat an evil Andy. The evil Andy would always had a weakness, and Ben could dial "operator" to get hints on what the weakness was. Then, useing that weakness, Ben would try to deafeat me. For example, on one level Andy's weakness was that he loved Ice Cream, so Ben put a small beach ball on top of a cup and gave it to me. I pretended to think it was Ice Cream, so while I was distracted, Ben hit me on the head and deafeated me.
Did I mention that I'm one of ten guests at my grandma's house? Let's see, there's my 26-year old cousin Muriel, her boyfriend Nick, my 8-year old cousin Ben, my mom, dad, and sister (Ruth), Ben's parents (Aunt Lora and Uncle Tom), Aunt Liz (Muriel's mom), and Me. 11 guests if you count Uncle Craig, who doesn't sleep at Grandma's house. Nick, Muriel, and Aunt Liz sleep in the basement, Ben sleeps in the studio (Grandma's an artist), Mom and Dad sleep in the front room upstairs, Ruth sleeps in the attic on a cool day, and on a hot day waits for Ben to fall asleep in the hallway and then sleeps in the studio. (Ben says I'M BOERD loudly until he falls asleep, preferably with the light on.) Aunt Lora and Uncle Tom sleep in the guest bedroom (Lucky!), and I sleep in Grandma's bedroom. It is a very lively house. My cousin Ben, as I mentioned eirlier, is only 8 years old, but he's already even more of a nerd than me in some ways. Right when Ben got here he told us that he figured out the fibinocci numbers in base 8. (Don't ask me to explain the fibonacci numbers to you) Then he went upstairs to "Check out the book situation". He sounded just like his dad when he said that. He can also be annoying at times. If you interrupt him in one of his "speeches", he jumps up and down screaming EXCUSE ME EXCUSE ME EXCUSE ME I'M TRYING TO TALK TO YOU!! It seems like he can't raise his voice without yelling. He's a nice kid, though. He really likes playing a game we call "Weakneses" in the basement. I got the idea for it when we found to old broken phones in the basement, the kind with the spinning dials. The game had lots of levels, and on each level Ben had to deafeat an evil Andy. The evil Andy would always had a weakness, and Ben could dial "operator" to get hints on what the weakness was. Then, useing that weakness, Ben would try to deafeat me. For example, on one level Andy's weakness was that he loved Ice Cream, so Ben put a small beach ball on top of a cup and gave it to me. I pretended to think it was Ice Cream, so while I was distracted, Ben hit me on the head and deafeated me.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Making Masks
Well, this is our second day in Chicago, unless you count the half day at the beginning. It's sort of a tradition to make clay masks at my grandma's house, and so she has a whole bunch of neat homemade masks made by my relatives hanging on her dining room wall. Ruth and I each made one last year, but we didn't like them that much, so this year we're making new ones. I just finished making mine, but I haven't painted it yet. I was going to make a evil guy, but it just turned out to be a chubby guy with a mustache. Grandma's house is way more interesting then ours. She's an artist, and she makes lots of great paintings and hangs them on every inch of wall she can find. She has been living here for a long time, and if you dig around in the basement you can find all sorts of cool stuff. I found an old-fashioned shock ring that vibrates when you shake someone's hand, the change machine my dad used when he ran an ice cream truck, and treasure like that. I've been petting Grandma's dog Zoey a lot, as usual, we went to the art institute yesterday, and we ate lunch at at a little park next to the art institute form the same place we ate at last year (the same park, even!), Max's takeout. Here is a link to the blog entry I made last year when we ate at Max's Takeout: LINK
Friday, June 12, 2009
John's Lab
One of my Sunday School teachers has a lab at UCSB. We got to go there today. He is working on developing a cheap way to make semi-conductors. We got to see lots of interesting liquids and microscopes and fancy equipment. He even made a piece of silicon (which just looks like black metal) to change into different colors. I got to go in the clean room with him and we made a microscopic pattern on a piece of silicon. It was very interesting.
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