Last Monday, I went to Trader Joe's to get some of these great deep dish pizzas. I was wearing this cool t-shirt I got back at Nintendo World in New York last year*. It has Mario stomping on a Goomba, straight out of Super Mario Bros. While I was in there, three employees told me they liked my shirt, and I got into a deep conversation with the cashier about retro gaming. It was a good day.

Merry  Christmas and Happy New Year! Sorry I haven't posted in a bit, but I was in Florida all last week. But before we get to that, let's talk about Christmas!

Last Wednesday was my school's Thanksgiving feast. Every year we have this event where the students, teachers, and alumni get together, play some games, and eat a lot of great food (If you've been reading a while, you probably remember last year's). The most prominent part for me, though, is the Annual Super Smash Bros. Tournament! It was started by Adam in his freshman year, and when he went off to college, Zachary took over the role of host. They still come back to play, but now that they've both graduated, this year was my first year as the host. I think I did a pretty good job organizing it, if I do say so myself. I decided that this year, I was going to kick it up a notch. I printed out a big poster for the bracket, and put on Velcro, so people would be represented by their fighters' icons, which I thought was pretty cool. I made a trophy, and I got a $20 Nintendo eShop gift card for the prize. I made a few announcements about the tournament in the week prior, and people applauded, they were really excited about it. The sign-up sheet was completely full when the day finally came around. A lot of experienced competitors and new faces were there, but I'd been training for months. I was really excited, and really confident.

A couple weeks ago, my school's junior class went on our retreat to Bar-T Ranch over in Gaithersburg. 
When we got there, we went to a barn, ate lunch, and went to yurts, where we would be sleeping. The girls took one yurt, us boys took another yurt, and Patrick and Christina, the teachers who came with us, each got their own yurts. An important thing to note here is that "yurt" is an exceptionally fun word to say. Yurt. Yurt. Yurt.
For  those of you who don't know, a yurt is like a big, structured tent. In our yurt, there were several bunk beds, and like any sane person, I took the top bunk.

Hey everyone, sorry I haven't posted in a while. By now, I'm around a month into the school year, and man, junior year is difficult.
Buuuut before I get into that, I gotta tell you about the totally rad stuff that happened over the summer. I meant to make individual posts, but I'm too good at procrastinating, so I'll give you a big recap now.

This weekend was the first weekend of SUMMER VACATION!!!

As it turned out, I was done with school, but Claire wasn't, and my parents had managed to set up an appointment at some random school in Maine for Claire to take her SATs. So as we drove to the lodge where we were staying, Claire was adamant that we get there early so that she could go to sleep and get up early tomorrow for her test. We got Chipotle burritos on the way there for dinner, which I had never had before. It was pretty good.
We got to the lodge, got set up in our cottage, and almost immediately went to bed.

Last Friday, my school had our prom. As usual, the entire school could go, because if they only allowed the seniors to go there wouldn't be enough people. This year, though was a bit different, because they held it on a boat.

Last week, my school's sophomore class was invited to go on a camping and whitewater rafting trip in a little town in Pennsylvania called Ohiopyle. Only eight students signed up, and so on Wednesday morning we came to first period packed up and ready to go. We left on the rickety old school bus. Dave, our principal, or as he likes to be called, "headmaster," was taking us on the trip. There was a teacher who was going to come with us as the second adult, but he cancelled at the last minute, so on the way, Dave stopped at his house and picked up his daughter, Christina, who came with us. This turned out to be a really good call, because Dave's driving skills are less than commendable, and Christina was giving him driving advice, tempering his borderline recklessness.

Last week was my school's talent show. I'm pretty good at the piano, so I decided to enter. 
There weren't as many performances as there usually are, but the people that performed were still great, and the talent show was a good one overall. 
I played a couple songs, in my first performance in over a year, and people seemed to really like it.
But enough talking. I think it's best if you see it for yourself.