martinzoo

Yesterday, for Language Arts we learned about Haiku. This is the Japanese form of poetry. Each poem has three lines. The first line has a total of 5 syllables, the second line has 7 syllables, and the third line has 5 syllables, for a total of 17 syllables.

I thought it would be easier to teach if I showed Godzilla Boy some examples of my Haiku. So here they are:

From within our home

Love pulses from floor to roof

And we are happy.

***

The rich, umber smell

Of ground and perked coffee beans

Wafts throughout the room.

***

Deep from slumber past

I arise all warm and snug

Thinking of my dream.

***

A window darkened

No hues of red or purple

It was time to sleep.

***

And this is what Godzilla Boy created:

***

Alien come here

From your cool flying saucer

And come live with me.

***

Grey, white headed dog

Cute and runs around with me

I really love him.

***

Big, fierce, destructive

Blows up military trucks

Monster from the sea.

***

Dropping lots of time

Makes me feel good, really fast

When I swim today.

Since I just had my surgery, and am now in better health ( ha-ha ), I decided to go on the Realage website to calculate my physical age, as opposed to my year age.

I was very truthful, because I really wanted to know how bad I was. I felt that my allergies, and my lack of strenuous exersise, the auto-immune disease, yada, yada, would put me at OLDER than my actual age ~43.

But, guess what? It didn’t. I came in at 38.7 years old! They send you an e-mail with your “real age”, and then you click on the link to find out what their recommendations are for making your age lower. It’s just a good thing I live such a basic life…. I never have smoked, never drink, don’t overeat, and since I’m a stay-at-home mom who homeschools (and loves it), adore my husband and have a good family life, and don’t worry about money too much, I have very little stress. That all worked in my favor. Oh yeah, and I also buckle my seat belt EVERY time (doesn’t everybody?).

They told me that I needed to take a vitamin every day (I’m often anemic), especially vitamins E and C, plus iron. I also needed more Potassium. Of course, they wanted me to get more strenuous exercise and stretching exercises, such as yoga or Tai Chi.

So, all in all, I was pretty happy with that. I was worried it would say I was like a 60 year old lady… he-he

Today, for my fantasy travel, I decided to stay “in country”. My husband has always wanted to go on a great ski trip. I’m a big hold-out on this one, because I absolutely HATE to be cold. So, my fantasy trip this weekend is for him.

I decided to go to Aspen. Since this would be a family trip, my prices would include the 5 of us plus friends for the older two kids (we aren’t interesting enough for them, so they must have friends along).

Airfare to Colorado came in at $3,486. for the seven of us.

This is where I would want to stay. To me, it looks very “Aspen”. And if we were going to spend the money, I would want the true experience…. it is just a fantasy after all The cost for this house at the heart of Aspen was $3,000. for 5 nights.

Lift tickets, ski rentals, and one 4-hour lesson for each of us ran about $3,657. ::whew!::

And just for fun (I could never afford to do this, but I’ve always wanted to), a hot air balloon ride! At $250. per person, this added $1,750…. but SO cool!

So, the tally for this way-too-expensive-for-us vacation came up to….da, da, da, daa….. $11,893.75

Guess this one’s out… oh, well, we’ll just fantasize.

For the last couple of weeks Godzilla Boy has been bugging me. He wanted to send an email to the big honchos of the movie and video-game producing companies. He had a big idea!! So, we did. We sent his email to Viacom, Sony, Microsoft and a couple of others that I can’t remember because they actually had “contact us” screens that sent his email directly to it’s recipient.

S o far, he has gotten responses from all of them. Everybody sent a form letter response, which was ok, I mean he’s only an eight year old kid. Except for the Vice President of Viacom. His email was obviously NOT a form letter. We could tell he had actually read it. So, I’m passing the letters on for you to read. Because I was proud of his “big” idea, and the fact that he wanted to go so far as to send it off in emails to very important people. As you can see, he’s not very intimidated by importance.. LOL

January 16, 2007

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am an eight year old homeschooled boy who lives in Virginia. I have an
idea that I would like you to try when you are making movies or video
games. There are many games that I want to play, but they have blood and
gore, and I can’t play them because my Mom won’t let me and it grosses
me out. I thought that you could make an option on the menu screen of
the movies and video games that allow a clean version or a bloody
version of the movie or game to be watched or played.
It wouldn’t be too hard for you to do if you just knew you were going to
do it from the beginning. You would just have to shoot a scene twice,
once with blood and once without.
I think this option screen would be good for cutting out cussing too.
Some people don’t mind cussing, but I think you could sell more movies
if there was an option for parents to control what their kids see and
hear.
I am hoping you could remake some of the movies or games that I can’t
see now, like Halo and Turk and Dawn of War. I also like alien and war
movies, but don’t like to see gross things.

Thank you for reading my letter,

Here is the response he got from the Vice President at Viacom:

Thanks for your email - it’s always nice to hear ideas from gaming and
movie fans.  It’s great that you’re so interested in how entertainment
is produced, and we genuinely appreciate your thoughts.

I have passed your email along to our Vice President of Gaming, and will
share it with our movie group.

Keep in touch.

-Jeremy
——————–
Jeremy Zweig
Vice President, Viacom Corporate Communications
1515 Broadway
New York NY 10036
jeremy.zweig@viacom.com

Isn’t that cool?!