​It all started with a New Year's Resolution.
One night, I was sitting awake in bed. Usually, I would be asleep, but tonight, our neighbor had generously decided to leave on his porch lights, which are approximately, in a study performed by college scientists, a million bajillion units of brightness. Unexpectedly, I was unable to sleep, leaving me no option but to think. If my train of thought that night was a real train, it would be a bullet train going at 300 miles an hour, not necessarily on the tracks, possibly barreling through New York.
But as the train went, it developed. And all the scraps from the thoughts it visited slowly collected and evolved into an idea... and then it hit me. i jumped out of bed, determined not to lose this idea, grabbed a pen and paper, and and jotted it down, produced in its entirety here.
Allow me to introduce myself. As it says on the resolution, my name is Colin O'Donnell. I'm fourteen years old.

Now, you'll see me like this:
That second character is a cartoon character I made up named Zach. I'm not sure what he is. But which one you see probably depends on the context. And yes, I still have brown hair. I might return to that, I don't know.
Now, about me.
I'm an aspiring inventor, I love (almost) all things tech. I often work on several projects. As a matter of fact, I'm working on a hoverboard design right now. Only problem is, I need parts, and as soon as I mention that I'm building a hoverboard, people cease to take me seriously. Well, when I'm speeding to school on a hoverboard, I'll be the one laughing.
See, yeah, I think I'll stick with brown hair. Not to mention, I'm also a rather serious gamer. Ask me a question about Sonic the Hedgehog, or challenge me to beat a platformer, and I will blow your MIND. In addition, I AM a pretty huge fan of Sonic the Hedgehog. I also have an iPod, which I use to play a truly impressive amount of games. For more about that, check out my Gaming Blog.
There's another thing I'd like to just put out there. I have Aspergers Syndrome. It's not a disease, it's not a hindrance, it's an equal difference that makes me unique, and I have certain skills and high mental capacities that would not have been noticed or I might not even HAVE if it weren't for it, and I like to be as open with it as possible. It has played a big role in my life, and will play a big role in this blog, but it will not dominate the content.
Because this is not a self-help book.
This is a blog.
This blog might bomb, or might not even ever get off the ground, but I resolved to do it, and WITH GOD AS MY WITNESS, that is what I am going to do.
I'd like to thank my friends and family, for their continued support with this blog, and, last but not least, I'd like to thank our neighbor, without whom none of this would be possible.

From 2002 to 2005, my family lived in Peru, a third-world South American country. My dad's work required travel, and we weren't about to be left behind. One day, for whatever reason, they decided to hand out baby chicks at my preschool. Obviously, the animal ownership laws were a little different there. Now,  normally I might think about just taking one of these home, but when a four-year-old is holding a baby chick in their hands, it pretty much crowds out all other thought.
 
Naturally, I decided to adopt it, and name it-- of all things-- Donald DUCK. Apparently my grasp of the animal world was so flawed that I could not tell a duck from a freaking chicken.
Anyhow, I expected it to grow up to be a hen, I guess because I thought that roosters were immortal and didn't come from eggs or something. Behold, the prodigious mind of a four-year-old. Unfortunately, against my wishes, it grew up to be a rooster. Quite an aggressive chicken, too. I know this because every time I came into the backyard, it chased me around pecking me like a rabid maniac.
 
And not only that, but it CROWED. Ohhhhh, how it crowed. Every day, as soon as a sliver of light hit his cage, everyone in every part of the house would be instantly awoken by a cackling scream. This pretty much got us annoyed and grumpy for the rest of the day. Eventually, we had to cover its cage so he wouldn't see the sunlight. 
 
Eventually, when our gardener was on the verge of quitting, Donald Duck the rooster became too much for us to handle, and we gave him to a farm, where he lived happily, with three wives, for the rest of his life. If you listen really hard, you can still hear his maniacal cock-a-doodle-doo at five and then my dad loudly cursing.

Today was the second day of intersession at my school. It's a small private school, and they give us a sort of two 2-week break in between semesters, after the winter break. We do one "class" for those two weeks that's not really a class. There's no homework, and we don't get graded. I'm in "Classroom DC", which is where we trudge around Washington, DC looking at museums until our feet have been killing us for at least an hour. The problem with that, as well, is that... Well, we often split up in the museums, and when I don't receive specific instructions on where to go, I shut down. It's like being in the middle of the woods and the camp leader hands out GPSs just before you get there, and everyone else has one but you. Everyone else knows where to go, but you have no idea what to do, or where to go, and you know that a step any one direction could get you more lost then you already are.
 
You would have two choices: stand there and hope someone remembers you, or wait till someone else passes by and follow them. I usually just sat at where we split up, knowing it was that last known location where it had been safe to be, or followed some small group of students that seemed to have some semblance of an idea of where they were going. But today, the teacher decided that is was too darn cold to walk around outside, so instead it was decided that we would go out and eat lunch at different places downtown, then go to the movie theater and see Mandela so that we would at least be learning something. This first part was a shock to me. I mean, a museum is one thing, but an entire downtown? This time there would be no one to follow, everyone would be everywhere, and I'm quite the picky eater, so it'd be hard to explain to someone why I went to an Ethiopian restaurant with them and wasn't eating anything. And I had no idea where this movie theater was. Often, I try to ask, but every time I do, people act as though it were obvious but it sounds confusing to me. Then when I get started going there and see the path I'm like what is this and everything seems different. Luckily, we ended up going in a group for a while, and immediately after that it was decided that we would be going to Chik-fil-a. This was a relief. However, I usually don't feel comfortable ordering myself, and here I was, starving. After a while of mooching off other people's waffle fries, I decided that I wanted some of my own, and that meant ordering. I walked up to the counter and ordered a medium waffle fries and a lemonade. I stayed completely cool and at the end I felt victorious. This may not seem like much to you, but I had never endured that manner of independence and responsibility before, and I had completely accomplished it. I felt like an adult. As I sat down, I discovered that they have REALLY good lemonade, and I renamed the fries, at least for myself, "victory fries."

Today, as part of  Classroom DC at my school, my class went to the National Air and Space Museum.  I've been there several times before, living so near to the nation's capital, but today I was looking for something in particular. The Williams WR19 turbofan jet engine. It's the world's smallest jet engine to date, but that's not why I was so eager to see it. It's been used in several early jetpacks and flying platforms, and right now, it's the best candidate for a fan for my hoverboard.
 
Unfortunately, just because it's the best candidate right now, that doesn't mean it's good. For one thing, it has 70 pounds of thrust. The motors I'm looking for would be 250 pounds of thrust apiece. I'd have to drastically change the design just for it to fit roughly.
 
 
Plus, gas jet engines are noisy and generate fumes, and speeding to school wearing headphones and a gas mask just isn't quite as cool.
 
No, what I need is definitely an electric fan. Apparently, though, according to my strenuous and meticulate web-surfing, this could be quite a hard fan to find. To learn more about my search and to assist me in my quest, you can find my question on Quora here. I do have an idea for a non-motor-based electromagnet fan, but I don't even know if it's viable. I'd tell you, but for all I know, Lockheed Martin or Williams might be listening. And if they are...
TO LOCKHEED MARTIN PEOPLE: Please consider me for any think tank you may have. With my unique ability to think creatively, among other things, I think I would make a great addition to any intellectual collaborative.
As long as you have a giant bowl of Sour Skittles in the middle of the table.
Oh yeah, and gummy bears. This guy looooves his gummy bears.

Today my sister, Claire, my dad and I went for a skiing lesson. Well-- actually, it was more like Claire went for a skiing lesson, and I just tagged along.
The entire reason we went was basically because of the last time Claire went skiing, and she hadn't taken lessons.
 
It wasn't.
 
So now, she has a skiing trip coming up, and she wants to at least know the basics of skiing before then. I just decided to go with them, wanting to try something new and seeing as it would be better than sitting in the house all day.
The first issue arose as I put on my gear. Having arrived wearing four layers of clothing, I then had to put on snow pants and a coat that doubled the thickness of it all. Then I had to stick on a helmet and boots that felt clumsy to walk in. I felt like the Abominable freaking Snowman, walking around like that.
 
Then came the actual skiing part.
It turns out my sister and I got a lesson. Our instructor started us off on the really basic stuff, really low on the mountain.
 
 
I ended up spending half the day falling down. Eventually the only way I got down the mountain was by holding on to my dad's ski pole like a sidecar on a motorcycle.
As it turns out, the gloves that my dad gave me were not waterproof, so by the end my fingers had turned into fingersicles, and the idea of free hot cocoa to beginners was extremely appealing. We left the trip cold and exhausted, but we learned something new.
I've already signed up for another trip.

Hey there, fans. Sorry I haven't blogged in a while, but school can be quite tyrannous, as can the allure of the Wii and Minecraft. And sorry I haven't done a Colin Show in a bit, but I use an 8 gigabyte iPod, and I don't have enough space on it for iMovie anymore.  But not to worry, I've got something extra-special today. I give you: Colin's Guide to Outwitting your Parents!(Results may vary.) If you're a kid, these are some major tips. and if you're an adult, well... I don't know.
Tip 1: If you're doing something you shouldn't, and you have a cover story, and they get suspicious, bring attention to another issue related to your cover. They'll forget about you and your cover will seem much more genuine.
Tip 2: Parents will notice if a part of something is missing, because the rest of it is there to remind them. Believe it or not, if you take the rest of it, there's a much lower chance of them noticing, because you can't see what's not there.
 
Tip 3: Believe it or not, your parents probably don't know that much more about parenting than you do, aside from those smarmy parenting books written by oh-so-entitled parents who got through it once and think they're telepathic with kids or something. The point is, they are most likely trying to wing it, and they're pretty open to suggestion.
Tip 4: Remember, as Bill Watterson once said, if you do a job bad enough, sometimes you don't get asked to do it again.
 
I’m a big Calvin & Hobbes fan.
Tip 5: If you say that something's educational, it monumentally increases the chances of them going along with it.
Tip 6: They can't blame you for what they aren't there to see.
Tip 7: They can punish you, but they can't punish the dog.
 
Tip 8: Kids are usually better with technology than their parents. You can use this advantage as a bargaining chip or something. Because they will need you as tech support. They can try to threaten you, but in that situation, you have the power. They punish you and they lose your assistance.
Tip 9: Kids are always more clever than their parents think. Use this to your advantage! Let them think they've won, and then... Bam!
Tip 10: Take my word for this. Saying, "The pie just jumped off by itself," will never work.

Let me just say something.
I love mozzarella cheese.
It is, by far, the greatest of all of the cheeses I have ever experienced. That must be why pizza uses it as the prime cheese. Its quality. I mean, you don't see (shudder) AMERICAN CHEESE sticks served at Arby's! They don't have that delicious melted consistency. If I ever order a dish that has cheese at a restaurant, I always request to substitute mozzarella. And I always get it as a pizza topping.
 
 
And yes, I wear a Bluetooth sometimes.
Talk about YOUR favorite cheese in the comments below! But if it's American... well, I can't help you there.

Disclaimer: If you do not know what Minecraft is, this may be a bit hard to follow. I've tried to explain the concepts as best I can in this post, but if you really don't understand, I suggest you just skip this post. Sorry about that. I promise you, this will not become a regular thing on my blog.
In case I haven't mentioned it yet, I'm a Minecrafter. Like, a pretty big Minecrafter.
 
For those of you who don't know, Minecraft is a massively popular computer game consisting entirely of squares. These squares are called "blocks" and each one represents a material. You build a home, fight monsters, craft tools, and mine.
Initially tree punching for materials, I grew to experience and understand this new and amazing world. Creative mode became my game mode of choice, and I slayed many a zombie. I created a mine cart roller coaster that spanned a continent, explored and protected villages alongside the Iron Golems, and tamed my own dog, named Iron Hero. 
Then I discovered Minecraft commands.
I discovered that with Minecraft commands, I could do things quite extraordinary. It was a programming language in and of itself. It began with the simple /give commands, which I used to get impossible and awesome items, like the block for fire, water, and portals, unaware that I had only scratched the surface of the possibilities of commands. Soon I began doing extensive research on commands. I discovered that no, my abilities were not limited to just collecting fire and water. I could summon great beasts with the flick of a keyboard. Then, I discovered that I could add attributes to these creatures, effectively customizing them. I discovered that you could ride zombies and make skeletons wear TNT on their heads. Then a thought came to me. The Ender Dragon.
The Ender Dragon is the big boss of the game. It's known for its destructive ability to raze forests and pillage villages. It can destroy nearly any block just by flying through it.

If you destroy it, you effectively win the game. Until recently it was held in the End, its home. But now thanks to the magic of commands, you can summon one in the "Overworld," sort of the main world of Minecraft. And what I'm thinking is... summon an Ender Dragon, with attributes so that it can be ridden. I mean, imagine the destructive power you would be able to control. I've made some progress, and so far, thanks to the idea of putting a minecart on its back, the "riding" part has been mastered. The only problem?
Steering.

and the perfect way to end a Minecraft post...

It's the end of March, and while there is still snow on the ground, spring is here. And April is right around the corner. And where there's April, There's April Fool's Day. What started as a time to ridicule the fools has become a day where everyone, regardless of age, race or gender, can dump buckets of paint over each other's heads.
In past years, I've been mostly passive when it comes to this holiday. I would make big, elaborate schemes, and not follow through on them. But this year will be different. I've got a bunch of plans laid out, and I'm teaming up with my good friend Zachary, who's in the 11th grade (not to be confused with Zach the Impossibility), to pull these pranks.
 
Zachary is one of my best friends at my new school. Until the 8th grade, I went to the local public school system, but because of my social unawareness, I got picked on. So I left and went to this private school. It's tiny, like fifty people. It only made sense that, in such a small school, with our shared love of Coldplay music, we would become friends. We also both have Aspergers, and I guess that that was also a factor.
Now then. The pranks. I've got some very elaborate stuff planned out, and more thoughts are coming by the truckload. I'm planning to wear my Bluetooth earpiece the entire time to communicate with Zachary and coordinate on the pranks. And I thought that thing would never come in handy.
 
I've got a scary mask, a slingshot, a whoopee cushion, and a friend, and together, we'll be the most powerful force of pranks our school has ever seen. I'll be sure to tell you, the readers, how it turns out.

So. April 1st has come and gone. Safe to say, it... didn't go exactly as I'd hoped. Most of the pranks bombed. My friend forgot to bring his scary mask, and I made a fatal error with my whoopee cushion.
 
But most of it was just that the pranks weren't too well thought out. Here's the thing; my whoopee cushion is bright green, and all the chairs in the school are red.
 
And as it turns out, I'm not that good at April Fool's pranks. So basically, I bombed. It was kind of a bummer. But I did find one prank that worked. I got this little toy bug that vibrated, held it in my hands, and told people I had caught a bug. It worked pretty well.
That being said, this wasn't the best April Fool's day ever. If this seems short, it's because it's mostly to finish a two-part post, and I wish I had a better outcome to tell you. But not to worry. Better things will come.

So, I'm in Canada for the week. I flew in last Saturday, and I'm staying with my mom at her friend's house with her kids. All in all, Canada's a really cool country, with really nice people. Some will undoubtedly argue that the same country produced Justin Beiber and Carly Rae Jepsen, but I think the Canadians can be forgiven for that.
 
The great thing about Canada is that, while several things are in French, It's a lot like the States. Just colder. Everyone seems so sick of snow, but to me, the more snowmen, the more snowball fights, the better.
The first time I was here, I was also with my mom's friend's family, and one day we went snow tubing. For those of you who don't know, snow tubing is where you sit in an inner tube and slide down a snow-covered hill. So anyway, we were all waiting in line, when the youngest daughter, Isabel, slipped and fell into her snow tube. the entire thing would have ended there, but the thing was, the entire top of the hill was sloped. Which meant she went sliding into her older sister, Elizabeth, who was right in front of her, and who fell into the tube with Isabel. So then they started to pick up speed, and slid down into a lane that was taped off. And then when they got onto the slope, they really started going fast, and started screaming their heads off.
 
They eventually got to the "speed bump" at the bottom, were launched into the air, and came to a stop in a snowdrift. I henceforth dubbed the episode "The Lizzy and Izzy Incident." And when I heard it was an option to go to Canada again for spring break, I said, "What the heck, let's do it!"
And then spent the first two hours of the trip crushed in an extremely narrow airplane seat.
 
We landed in Chicago, I tried some famous Chicago deep-dish pizza for the first time (delicious!), and I learned that Chicago has some impressive dinosaur bones.
In the airport.
 
Luckily, I brought Max.
Max is the name of my stuffed lion. I got him when I was ten or so, and since then, I've taken him on every trip. Call me immature, but I still consider him a good friend.
 
I made it to Calgary, Canada, and I'll be here for the rest of the week! And while there's not that much snow on the ground, there's a lot of cool stuff, and I'm planning to see it all!
Writer's note: Sorry for the bad image quality, but I don't have a scanner on hand, and I need to go to Staples to get the images digitized. I hope this doesn't ruin your ability to enjoy the content of the pictures. Especially the one about the Lizzy and Izzy Incident!

On Monday, as part of my time in Canada, I went to the world heritage site Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. It's this deserty prairie place, with a cliff where buffalo would jump off, in Alberta, Canada. I guess it's not all snowy and arctic after all. And the first question I asked myself as I walked inside the museum was: Did only buffalo with their heads smashed in jump off the cliff? Or did they get their heads smashed in when they jumped off the cliff?
 
It turns out that it was where lots of Native Americans lived, and the buffalo was a pretty big staple in their diet. So what they would do is get all the buffalo herd going one way, and then rile up the herd and get them running, and eventually the herd would run off the cliff and the fall would kill them. Apparently, the Native American tribes thought they could fool the buffalo into thinking that they, the humans, were buffalo as well by wearing buffalo skins. This just seems ridiculous to me. I mean, I know buffalo have bad eyesight, so maybe if they were around the same shape and size they could pull it off. But I think there's a pretty big difference between the hulking beast that is the buffalo and a guy wearing a bison skin.
 
Turns out that the place got its name from when a guy tried to watch the buffalo from under the ledge, like a waterfall of buffalo, and got his skull cracked under the sheer weight of all the buffalo carcasses. Yeesh.
Later, I saw this one exhibit where you could see Native American tools under a video microscope. It was interesting, but it got a lot more fun when I realized that I could put other stuff under there, too.
 
That's my arm, up close.
Oh yeah, and the people in some of the Native American art looked like Zach's ancestors.
 
Writer's note: Sorry for the bad image quality, but while I'm in Canada, I don't have a scanner on hand, and I need to go to Staples to get the images digitized. I hope this doesn't ruin your ability to enjoy the content of the pictures.

So. Here I am back in the United S of A. I left Canada on Saturday.It was good in Canada. I got home last Saturday, and it was an interesting two flights back. I could tell you on and on about my adventures in Canada, but if I listed all the stuff I did up there, it could probably fill a thick hardcover book.
 
OK, maybe not an entire book, but at least a few good double-sided pages. And let's be honest, on a blog like this, you'd probably lose interest by then and google some images of string to entertain you. I know I would.
 
Now, where was I? Oh, yeah, the string-- I mean return.
The trip started off nicely, and I got one of my bags checked for free, courtesy of the airline. Well, I guess I wouldn't have paid anyway, but my mom would have made me carry it all the way through. The first plane was... surprise surprise... another tiny cramped plane, just like the first plane to Canada. It was pretty uncomfortable, but my mom consoled me by telling me that it wouldn't be a very long flight. But as fate would have it, when we got to the Chicago airport for our next flight, there was a freaking Boeing 777 blocking our plane's path to the gate. And if you don't know a lot about planes, that's a pretty honking big plane.
 
That made us like ten or twenty minutes late, and we had to really run to get to our gate. And the Chicago airport is REALLY big, so we ran like heck. I tried to increase my speed by sliding my feet on the floor without lifting them.
 
By the time we got there, they were already boarding. As it turns out, it was another small plane. But this time I made the most of it. I got out my neck pillow, got a can of ginger ale from the flight attendant, reclined my seat, put on my hood, took my backpack out from under the seat in front so I'd have more legroom, and listened to an audio book that my mom brought. It was like do-it-yourself first class! At the end, we finally got to BWI, met up with Claire and my dad, and went home. I'd say that it was a sucessful week, all the way up to the end!
Ooh! String!

Yesterday was prom at my high school. I'm a freshman, but it's a really small school, and if they only let seniors in, there'd be a really bad turnout. But as it is, they let in everyone in the school, so like half the school was there, including me.
It's a "formal occasion," though, so I had to wear a suit. I actually look pretty good in a suit, but everyone there seemed so surprised.
 
The prom was held in the ballroom of an old park that was reasonably close to where I live. The theme was carnival, but there wasn't a lot of carnival stuff there. They did, though have a cotton candy machine AND a popcorn machine. But what really got me was the GINGER ALE. I love that stuff. My friend Zachary also came, but he doesn't like carbonated drinks, so he had a bottle of water.
 
The last party I'd been to like this had been my middle school graduation party, which hadn't turned out too well. This one was a bit smaller, but no less loud. And I'm not very good with loud noises, given my super-hearing. 
Later, I went to the carousel in the park. I hadn't been on one of those things since I was a little kid, and it really took me back. Zachary and I were going to argue over who got the lion, but another student beat us to it.
 
Then I went to the playground! I may be 14 years old, but I still very much enjoy swinging on the swings. After that, I went back to the ballroom and started to dance. Well, actually, I don't know how to dance, so it was more like moving my limbs to the beat. But that was the best part. You didn't need to. It was pretty fun all the same. Although I might've gotten a few funny looks when I started doing the Funky Chicken to pop music.
 
I did that for a long time, just enjoying myself, before walking around, eating cotton candy, and regaining my energy. Then I signed the graduation card for Zachary and mine's mutual friend, Adam. I then saw people using the signing Sharpies to draw smiley faces on the balloons, so I decided to make my own.
 
I was very proud of my work, so I asked if I could take it home. They said I could. I was very happy as I walked to the car with my balloon, although it might have freaked out some bystanders. I got home around 11:00 and got to watch the end of a Scottish movie with my dad. I'd have to call that one of the best parties I've ever been to.

Dangit, I forgot to make it funny.
Well, two guys walked into a bar. Neither one thought to duck.

Okay.
Today, please, let me rant.
Until a little while ago, I had remained blissfully unaware of the changes that SEGA had made to Sonic the Hedgehog. 
 
I drew this picture of Sonic myself. Just look at it. I'm so proud I could weep.
Allow me to clarify.
I grew up with Sonic Unleashed. It was the first Sonic game I ever played. Well; first official Sonic game. I also played a bit of Ultimate Flash Sonic. I loved Unleashed from the first level. I was impressed by the storyline, and they really gave the game some depth. the cutscenes were CGI-grade awesome, and they somehow created an entire world. It was a truly epic game. Not only that, but the gameplay was phenomenal. With a flick of the wrist, you could boost, attack enemies, and the like.
 
And I don't see why everyone was hating on Sonic the Werehog's battle-based levels. I actually thought it was kinda fun.
I still remember the sheer excitement I felt when I finally battled the final boss!
 
Then, last year, I got Sonic Colors. And boy, what a shock. there was a 4-year gap between the games, and apparently, somewhere in those four years, they decided to change the voice actor for Sonic. This is more than a minor tweak. The voice actor for Unleashed, Jason Griffith, perfectly depicted Sonic's free-spiritedness and sense of adventure, making him sound older, yet still like a teenager. While I didn't realize it before then, Jason Griffith perfectly portrayed Sonic the Hedgehog. But the new guy... butchered it. He sounds like a 30-year-old trying to sound like a teenager. I just can't match that voice to the mouth emitting it. They have to bring back Griffith!
 
And now even the dialogue is worse. Sonic doesn't sound like himself anymore, and for whatever reason, the creators seem more intent on comedy than actual plot. They have so many cheap gags I'm starting to wonder if they even take themselves seriously anymore. They've trivialized and undignified Eggman so much that it's not even fun to beat him anymore. he's gone from evil genius to bumbling fool. For more on that, check this out: Tvtropes Sonic Colors fails. In Unleashed he was intent on summoning an ancient creature in order to establish a global empire. In Colors he steals one planet for its aliens, four others for no apparent reason, and makes a freaking amusement park out of it, calling it an evil plot. Not only is that silly, it's really kiddy, too, along with the rest of the game. 
Now, I don't deny that Sonic Colors definitely has some merit, and it did introduce the Color Powers, which are like powerups for Sonic. But while this might've been a fun game mechanic for just one game, it's become a dumb gimmick, and one of the things that's always seperated the Mario and Sonic series in Sonic's lack of powerups, making the gameplay more dependent on the player than on the level. And what's worse, in Colors, they totally eliminated the Spindash, a classic move that's been a vital part of the series since Sonic 2!
In effect, what SEGA, the video game company responsible for Sonic, did was redo Sonic the Hedgehog, making the plots less interesting and making Sonic much more silly. In my view, they kind of ruined him.
I apologize if I lapsed into gamer-speak at any point in this rant. Thank you for sitting through all of my seemingly endless yapping. If you disagree, whatever, It's my opinion. If you agree or support my view, then please, post the "Sonic Unleashed fan" picture on your major social networking site, with a subtitle about your thoughts about the old Sonic, the tag #BringBackSonic, and this link: http://www.colinsroom.net/raucous-endeavors/a-sonic-rant. You can also help by Tweeting, Facebook liking, or +1'ing this post, using their respective buttons on the blog. Or not. You know, if you want to... this is a rant, after all. The +1 button can be found at the top of this page. And if you share my Sonic drawing, just mention who made it. Colin out! ß:^)

On Saturday my family and I went to an afternoon party at a neighbors' house in the country, for the wife's fiftieth birthday. Well, my sister didn't come. She had a concussion, and already had plans to go to a friend's sleepover party in a hotel. But believe me, had the sleepover been at my house, I would have been the one checking into a hotel.
They invited what seemed like the whole neighborhood. All my old neighborhood chums from elementary and middle school were there with there parents. And if you don't thing the word "chums" is funny, check your watch. there may be a mealworm living inside of it.
That has nothing to do with this blog post, I just felt like saying that.
I ended up spending most of the time there sitting and reading. If I haven't mentioned it earlier, I'm a very avid reader, a bibliophile. I read whenever possible. My love of reading has granted me a very wide vocabulary, a literary talent for writing stories, and half of the stuff I know I learned from books. and I'm not really very good at being social, so, I guess that could have contributed as well. But for four hours...
 
I was reading an anthology of time-travel stories. I'm very interested in that kind of science fiction. One of my best stories is in that genre. thanks to my avid reading, I've found I can write stories very well. You can read it here: Collision Course. Please do read it, it's really good, at least I think so. I'd post it here as its own blog post, but it's already on the Internet, and besides, I'm making a comic book version exclusively for the site. it's a secret, though, so don't tell anyone!
So anyway, after some H. G. Wells, some Issac Asimov, and a whole lot of party ginger ale, we left the party and embarked on another two-hour drive back home, which I inexplicably spent not reading, but using my plush official Sonic the Hedgehog gloves as pillows. When we got home, it was 8:30, and aware that tomorrow would be a weekend as well, I plopped myself in front of the TV and watched some Big Bang Theory and some Twilight Zone. And by some, I mean I stayed up till four in the morning watching them. I love those two shows, and I know that Twilight Zone is from the fifties, but it's a pretty awesome show. Of course neither of those shows are as great as the original Ben 10. That TV show was by far the greatest TV show to ever hit the planet.
OK, wow, well, that was a tangent the size of North Dakota. Let's get back on track. Except I'm not on a train anyway, so let's just get off this tangent. If you're feeling confused right now, it's probably because cheese makes awesome cacti.
So anyway the next morning my dad took me out to the Original Pancake House, and I got a big breakfast. I don't just mean lots of sides of extra bacon. I mean a full-size chocolate chip Belgian waffle, three sugar-dusted pigs-in-a-blankets, some thick-sliced bacon, and a lemonade. I'm usually pretty full after this meal.
 
If there's one thing to take away from this, it's this: Read and read often. It's the best thing you can do.
So I'd say it was a pretty good half of a weekend. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some Twilight Zone to watch.

Last Friday was the last day of school! Now, for most of you, you're probably not getting out yet. But thanks to my school being a small private school, we get to have a slightly different calendar, which allows us to do stuff like this. Now, if you're a kid, or can remember some shred of what it was like to be a kid, the last day of school holds special significance to you. It represents the end of tedious tests and homework, and heralds a season of freedom. A season for which I have made big plans, and will definitely tell you about when they happen.
So this day was pretty fun. As soon as school let out, Zachary and I celebrated by singing the rock song "School's Out."
 
Zachary thinks he's Bon Jovi.
After that, my circle of friends and I talked about the end of the year. My immediate circle of friends, whom I eat lunch with, are Zachary, Adam, who's graduating this year (see a previous post), and Rachel. They were all there before I joined the school, and I count myself lucky to have been able to join this ragtag group. As it turns out, Adam and Rachel had plans to go see two different movies in a row after school with other friends, but the people they were going with changed their plans, so they were just left sitting there in the main hall of the school with nowhere to go.
We heard about a cocktail party that the school was throwing for the parents to celebrate the school's anniversary, and we started theorizing what some of the teachers would be like drunk.
After leaving the school, I went over to Zachary's house and went to the pool. After that, we went down to the basement and played video games. I mean, we played a lot of video games. All the parents were at the party, so I didn't get picked up from Zachary's house until 9:30. Unfortunately, nobody was inebriated at the party.
 
My weapon of choice is a Wii Remote and Nunchuk.
And then, the next day, I met Dan Weingarten. You may not have heard of him, but he does a comic strip in my paper called Barney and Clyde, along with artist Mr. Clark, and his father, famed humor columnist, Gene Weingarten. It was pretty cool.
I hope you all have a good summer!

I spent the past week at my family's beach house in New Jersey. My dad co-owns it with his brother, and the neighborhood has some pretty big, fancy beach houses with balconies and stuff.
And then there's our house.
 
It's a wooden house, and apparently it was made out of some wood that doesn't stick to paint, so the paint is always peeling. It also doesn't have any WiFi, so whenever I want to use the Internet, I have to stand next to a window and hope to connect to the neighbor's WiFi.
It's a nice place, though. there's an ice cream shop at the end of the block, two breakfast places reasonably close, and an arcade on the pier. Sometimes I go there and marvel at the magical claw machine. I say magical because you put your quarter in, and, lo and behold-- it disappears. Some people, as I learned, are so amazed by this that they will put quarters in several times just to revel in the mystery. Some will even go as far as to vocally express their amazement. ("Where the HELL is my quarter?!?")
But, amazingly, even better than the arcade, is the extensive library. Being a bibliophile, this is the place I visit most. They've got an enormous collection of books, couches to read on, and best of all, free high-speed internet.
Usually, when I go there, I pull out a comic book and read through it in ten minutes. Did I forget to mention that? Yeah, I'm a bit of a comic book geek. Not a total one, but at least enough to know what space sector Green Lantern patrols (2814), and to know who the Phantom Stranger is. 
I know what you're thinking. It's a beach house, so where's the beach? Well, here's the thing. I can't stand sand. It's just the feeling of it, and having to walk home with sand in my shoes. Also, there's the matter of having to shower after sitting in water for the past few hours.
 
It's just so... grainy.
On Thursday, with the help of a few Redbox movies, we got back home. 

I've been staying in Massachusetts for the past week. It's this program called the National Youth Leadership Forum, where I stay at a college for a week and learn about engineering. As I've mentioned, I want to be an inventor, so it's pretty important that I learn this stuff. Most of it has just been sitting in lectures, sleeping in a dorm, and designing a wheelchair. A few days ago, we went to MIT, so that was pretty cool. I'd already been there once before, though, on a road trip with my dad. But, man, their wifi is amazing.
Massachusetts is by far my favorite state. The weather's great for snow, and it's practically the intellectual center of the world. My second favorite state is Maine, because of the tap water.
So on Thursday we went on an outing to Boston. It was a lot of fun. I went with my friends at the program, John and Preston, because we had to stay in groups.

 
From left to right: Preston, Me, John.
We walked around looking at the food shops for a bit, and then sat down to eat. And that was when John saw a guy wearing a horse head. Not a real one, a rubber one. John walked up to him and excitedly asked where he got the hat. He directed him to the comics store, aka the land of miscellaneous weird stuff. They had everything. Everything besides important stuff, that is. The place was filled with little trinkets, like a "Stupid stuff" button, a sonic screwdriver from "Doctor Who," and two rows of Minecraft merchandise.
I got a Minecraft Diamond Sword.
Preston got a soda-can drinking hat.
I was extremely excited about my diamond sword. Still am, actually!
 
Needless to say, John's horse head attracted a lot of attention. People were walking up to him asking for a picture with him. A few times I'd pop in the picture.
Not to say that my diamond sword didn't draw any attention. But not nearly as much. After a while, I got some fried dough that comprised my dinner. At the end of the day, we were all pretty happy.
So it was a pretty good day.
Then on Saturday I went home from Massachusetts. I went to Massachusetts with my dad, but going back was my first time flying alone. My cousin Karuna walked with me to the gate, and that's where I discovered that "Horse-head" John, as he came to be known, was on the same flight! Apparently we live very close to each other! When I had come to the Conference, I had thought that I would not make any lasting friends.
Obviously, I was very wrong.

Hello again readers. Sorry I haven't posted anything lately, but luckily, I have a good excuse.
For the past four weeks, I've been going to a camp. It's a camp that's supposed to teach social things for kids like me, with Aspergers and similar differences. I'd been there twice before, in elementary school. Now, years later, they asked me to come back, saying that they had made a new part of the camp for older kids like me.
Every day, the camp would go on excursions to different places in DC, and they would teach us more stuff about how to act in society. By now, I'd had quite a bit of experience in society, and there really wasn't anything that they could teach me that I didn't already know.

But then my dad said that if I didn't have anything to do for a week in the summer, that I wouldn't get to play video games or watch Netflix. I found this a persuasive and compelling argument, and decided to give it a shot.
When they said it was for older kids, I thought there would be other high schoolers there. But when I got there...
 
Sorry if my drawing is a little rusty, it's been a bit.
Turns out, it wasn't high schoolers, it was MIDDLE SCHOOLERS. I was pretty shocked, and proceeded to ask the counselors what the heck was going on.
They hurriedly explained that I was there so that the kids would have a role model to look up to. Since I was like them, yet had learned to be very good in society, they could learn from my example. I still wasn't convinced, but then the counselors offered to get me a video game if I stayed. So that pretty much convinced me.
So every day I took the subway to camp, and then we took the subway to all sorts of cool places in DC. We went bowling, saw the Air and Space Museum (again), all sort of places. I made some friend with the kids, who were actually pretty cool. After all, I'm still mentally a ten year old. I asked the supervisor if I could blog about the experiences at camp, but she said she'd have to ask her supervisor. She eventually said yes, as long as I didn't name any campers or counselors. But I didn't get the answer till the last Friday.
 
Near the end, we went to one of my favorite places ever. The United States Patent and Trademark Office. Specifically, the National Inventors' Hall of Fame and Museum! Even the HALL has its own patent. I was like a kid in a candy shop. Although I guess if I were in a candy shop, I'd also be like a kid in a candy shop. But this was amazing. I played Star Trek on a pre-Internet computer, played on one of the first synthesizers, and found one of my personal heroes, Thomas Alva Edison, on the Hall of Fame. I had a great time. My dream is to someday be on that wall.
 
And at the end, instead of a video game, I got a gaming case for my iPod. I also got a dart gun, and if this one "mysteriously disappears," my parents owe me thirteen bucks.
What did I do the rest of the time? Well…
I was playing video games.

Well, as some of you may already know, this week marks the first week of the school year. And now, I'm a sophomore. And I don't know if it's the transition after summer vacation, but it is way harder than freshman year.
 
The first week has been a lot to handle, and if you ask me, teachers should not be allowed to give homework on the first week. The way it goes is, no teacher wants to give homework on the first day, and appear mean. But then what happens is, all the teachers give out homework on the second day, all at once.
There's also been a new development in my house. For as long as I can remember, We've been using a really old box TV that's older than I am. It's a giant capacitor, its color screws up periodically, and still makes that weird noise when it turns on.
 
But yesterday I walked in and I saw a HUMONGOUS HDTV sitting there.
 
This is pretty awesome. Now I can play my games much better, and I was amazed to discover that you can't see the individual pixels.
But getting back, on the first Friday of every school year, my school has a tradition of taking a charter bus to go hiking on the Billy Goat Trail. I remember last year, the bus was making a turn, and sideswiped a car that was coming out the way we were going in.
 
The ironic thing is, I was asking Zachary if any memorable things had happened at Nora while he was there.
This year, my mom gave me a waist strap with a place for a water bottle, which I guess is better than carrying around my entire backpack.
The Billy Goat Trail is especially arduous for me, because I'm not exactly what you'd call athletic. I prefer to think of myself as an intellectual. 
I was out of breath in the first fifteen minutes of the hike. I was following Zachary, or trying to, but it was pretty hard.
 
Somehow, with the help of frequent rest stops, I crawled my way through the rest of the Trail, after which I promptly flopped onto the ground. then my dad drove me home, and I emphatically hooked up my Wii to the new HDTV.
And oh yeah.
My birthday party's tomorrow.

Last Saturday was a Saturday to end all Saturdays. In a nutshell, it was awesome. I invited all of my best friends. And all of my friends are a little crazy. I was also going to invite John too, from the engineering conference in Massachusetts, but he never replied to my email.
The guys who did show up were Zachary, Adam, Alex, and Graham. Alex and Graham are my two buds from the middle school Aspergers program. I can tell you firsthand, the public school Aspergers program really falls short in middle school. Were it not for my friends I probably wouldn't have survived. So I owe them a lot for that.
 
I've usually been the short one of the group, but I'd grown a few inches over the summer, so I thought that that would change.
 
And for those of you who don't remember from my Freshman at Prom post, Adam is Zachary's friend who's now in college.
The party began with an intense Nerf battle, but pretty soon everyone decided to start shooting at me. It didn't make it any less fun, but it did make it a whole lot harder.
 
After everyone got tired out, we moved on to the video game tournament. We played a lot of rounds of Super Smash Bros. Brawl on my Wii. For those of you who don't know what that is, Super Smash Bros. Brawl is a fighting game that's a crossover of all the major Nintendo franchises. It's really big in gamer circles, and it was awesome to play with friends.
Adam and Zachary are total masters, Graham is reasonably good, but Alex, my sister and I were just barely surviving for most of it, and flopping around on the screen for a lot of it. I don't actually own the game, so I haven't had as much practice, but I'm asking for it for my birthday, so hopefully I'll be able to get some hours in before my school's unofficial Thanksgiving tournament.
 
This is what it looked like when Claire, Alex and I were playing.
After that, we had a Back to the Future marathon. I'd never seen it before, and Adam just couldn't believe it. He said that we had to have a marathon some time, and it was my idea to have it with my birthday party.
After the first one, we went out to the dining room and ate pizza. We conversed a bit, and then we had cake. not just any cake, but ice cream cake with angel food cake on the bottom, my two favorite types of cake. Most of us ate one piece, but Adam ate three.
During the second movie, Alex and Graham left, but Adam and Zachary asked to stay and watch the third. But as soon as the second one ended, we realized we didn't actually have the third one. So after a lot of brainstorming, we decided to watch it on demand.
But then the cable box started acting all wonky, and Zachary did what anyone who didn't know my parents well would do.
He asked my parents for help.
 
Luckily, I was able to get through the ordeal, and watch the third Back to the Future movie. By the time it was all done, it was 11:00. It was the longest party I've ever had.
and one of the best.
...that was AWESOME!!!

On this day, at some point, everyone is asked, "Where were you on 9/11?"
I was living in Trinidad-- and I probably had just turned 2. My parents knew about it, but they agreed that I was too young for them to let me know. I actually didn't find out until a while after when we moved back to the States. 
If only I could go back and see myself back then, mindlessly dragging my toy trash truck across the floor, blissfully unaware of the horrible tragedy that had just taken place.
But since then, we've had time to heal. We've built a new World Trade Center, and our bond as a nation is stronger than ever. And we've made it clear that America will not stand for anything or anyone that tries to destroy us. So yeah, in your face, terrorists.
I know I'm usually funny in these posts, but it just doesn't feel right today. I thought the best way to commemorate this day is with a little something I wrote in middle school. 

If you've seen any of my blog, you've probably noticed that I do a lot of drawing in my posts. But you what you may not know is that I've actually been drawing my entire life! And I've collected it all; suddenly occurring thoughts, concept designs, and doodles while the teacher was talking, in one binder I like to call my "sketchbook" of sorts. What I've done here is pull selections from the binder and display them. Enjoy!
Drawing #1
This is one of several designs I had for a superhero I came up with named Cyberman. I'll save all the details for another day, but the basic story is that he's me, a few years in the future, and in a lab accident, I mentally bond with these little symbiotic robotic cells called technomorphs. Cyberman can control the technomorphs and shape them into any machine, and his suit.
Why this design looks so much like Sonic the Hedgehog, I have no idea. I didn't even notice it until someone pointed it out.
 
 
Drawing #2
Sweet saucy molasses I love this drawing of Super Sonic. I shall give myself and my enormously inflated ego a pat on the back.
Drawing #3
This is an unpublished Turtle Marathon cartoon from the original batch I made. I didn't actually make them originally for my site, but for my middle school newspaper. When I saw that the paper was continuously refraining from publishing my cartoons, in the place of which lay a horrendously underdrawn hippo in Microsoft Paint, I decided to color and repurpose the comics. I give you: the lost Turtle Marathon.
 
Drawing #4
This drawing stems from one of my deeper moments. Convinced I was a professional artist because I bought a calligraphy pen from an art supplies store, I went into a serious artistic imaginative state, which produced this. It's a running lion that becomes fire. Pretty deep, huh?
 
Drawing #5
This page was the genesis of Zach the Impossibility. It started out as just me making bored, random arcs with my pencil, and then I was like, whoa, wait a minute. The first drawing ever of Zach the Impossibility is in the top left of the picture. After that, I tried to imagine all the different possibilities for this new character, his facial expressions, what he'd look like from the side... I even made him an evil twin. The reason he's called an impossibility is because either those lines are his legs, or the outline of his head. He is literally a physical impossibility. The reason he's called Zach is because I thought the name sounded cool. I created him long before I met my friend Zachary.
...and I still haven't put him in my blog drawings! Dang! I've been meaning to do that!
 
Drawing #6
Oh man, I love this one. I call it "Ginormous Gastropod." It's a colossal slug. It's just so funny and weird, I think I'd have to say it's one of my faves.
 
Drawing #7
I don't have a lot to say about this drawing. I just think it looks really cool.
 
 
Drawing #8
This drawing started out much like Zach the Impossibility. I got bored and started making an arc back and forth on the page. Then I looked at it and realized I could make a pretty good head out of it. I think it came out well.
Drawing #9
Oh man, this takes me back. This is a design for a wrist computer I drew up when I was, what, seven years old? This was around the time when I realized I wanted to become an inventor. this is one of the first inventions I ever came up with. I just can't believe that Samsung and Apple beat me to it.
 
Drawing #10
Say, that Shadow the Hedgehog is almost as good as that Super Sonic drawing from earlier. Not bad, if I do say so myself.
He's even holding a Chaos Emerald.
 
Drawing #11
Check it. A battle between a modern teenage wizard and a classic staff-wielding wizard.
Seems like a good note on which to conclude this.
 
Well, I hope you've enjoyed this walk through my drawing career. I know I have.
And I've gotta remember to try to use Zach the Impossibility in one of my upcoming posts.

On October 4th, Nintendo will be having a nationwide tournament to celebrate the release of their new game, Super Smash Bros. for 3DS. I have decided to enter. I'm pretty good at the Smash Bros. games, but this will be some pretty fierce competition.This is just a small announcement, the blog post will come after. Wish me luck. I'll need all I can get.

Well...
The tournament didn't go as well as I'd hoped.
I'd like to tell you that I did well and made it far, but in reality, I didn't even make it in the front door.
I went there with my friend Adam. We left my house early in the morning and went to the Gamestop, which was, like, fifty miles away, but when we got there, half an hour before the rules said we could start lining up, there was already a line stretching five stores down.
 
Even so, being the hopeful gamers that we are, Adam and I took our places in line, hoping that there were less than 63 people in front of us, as only the first 64 would be allowed to enter. Adam and I both felt strongly that the people who lined up early should be disqualified, but someone pointed out that there was really no way to enforce it, and people were bound to get excited about something like this. Something I noticed was that everyone had brought their own 3DS's, which meant they had probably been practicing a lot. We were hoping that most of the people there would be people who just wanted to play the game. I don't even have a 3DS.
After a while, my dad brought in a couple of lawn chairs from the car, but Adam opted to stay standing. He also offered some doughnuts, but I was too disappointed to eat. We tried to pass the time by practicing our skills on Adam's 3DS. I heard that closer to the front, people had started challenging each other to Smash Bros. matches for each others' spots in line.
At one point, I saw my dad talking up at the front of the line, and I thought he was negotiating to get us into the tournament. As it turns out, he was just talking to the people in the front of the line.
Eventually, the Gamestop employees went and handed out numbers to the first 64 people. We were ten spots away from the 64th person. Dejected and cheated, we went back to the car. We went over to Adam's house and played some Brawl over there.
Maybe they'll have another tournament when the Wii U version comes out. I'm much better with a Wii Remote.
And now I have to explain that to all my classmates who I told I would be in New York this week for the national tournament. Hoo boy.

I hugely apologize for the lateness, I was working through a big patch of writer's block.
Back in October, I went on a trip with my school to Markov's Haunted Forest. The school also went last year, but I was too scared to come. And to be honest, at first, I was pretty scared this year too.
Fifteen minutes before the group left for the Haunted Forest, my friend Rachel and I made a mad dash to Chipotle. We were really hungry, and we had agreed earlier to go together.
When we got there though, there was a really long line for Chipotle, so we just went to Noodles & Company. There was nothing there I really liked, though, so Rachel got her meal and we got back just in time, and met up with Zachary and the rest of the group.
By the time we got to the Haunted Forest, I was pretty freaked out, and I was having second thoughts about going. At the ticketing booth, the ticket taker was wearing a monster mask, and he grabbed my shirt as I walked through. 
That pretty much freaked me out, but I reluctantly continued the the entrance of the haunted forest. I came up with an idea and asked Rachel to borrow her earbuds. As we walked in, I started playing music on my iPod, which took away half of the scariness. You'd be surprised how not-scary skeletons and chainsaw-wielding maniacs are when you hear "Gangnam Style" or "It's the End of the World As We Know It" playing in the background.
For most of the time, a classmate, Maya, was clinging to the back of my sweater. She's usually the one targeted the most by the people in costume, because she reacts the most. Having her nearer to me sort of diverted most of the attention away from me, so that's what you'd call "symbiotic". 
Soon, I started to talk to the people in costume like they were normal people, about the stock market and stuff, partly to get rid of some of the scariness, and partly to weird them out.
After it was finally over, I realized that I hadn't screamed once, and I punched a fist in the air. I went around the fair part of the haunted forest with Rachel, and then we started the long bus ride home.
My computer is broken, so I could not get pictures in.

A week ago, my school held their annual Thanksgiving feast. That's where the whole school comes, brings in food, and eats together. Before that, though, there's some student-held events. the most major one being the Super Smash Bros. tournament. It was started five years ago by Adam, and since he had graduated last year, Zachary held it this year. This was also the first year we played the new game, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, which let me say is an awesome game.
I came in early to help set up, but when we found an issue with the AV cable, I realized I had no idea what to do. We got it running in time, and we had an impressive 14 entrants. I'd been training on the previous installment in the series, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and I'd gone from a level 6 player to a level 9.
I felt really confident.
 
I armed myself with my Wii Remote and Nunchuk, and my favorite fighter Samus. In the first round, I fought a challenging fighter, but I won and advanced to the next round, then watched Adam and Zachary do the same. 
 
 
I didn't do so well in the second round though. I would have won, but my opponent used a Pokemon. And when I thought the attack pattern was over, right when I thought I was in the clear, I got blasted with a Genesect beam.
 
The guy I fought ended up going to the final round, where he was promptly beaten by Adam. All in all, though, it was an interesting and fun tournament. Afterwards, Everyone was called to the main hall, where we ate a big Thanksgiving meal. I tried fried tofu for the first time and found I liked it. I'm quite the picky eater, so this is a rare occurrence. Usually I just get a bunch of cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving dinner with my family and sit quietly until it ends. 
 
Then some students wend back to the game room and we all played an 8-player smash, which I won. After a couple more games, I took the bus to my bus stop, from which my sister drove me home (congrats to Claire for getting her license). When I got home, I finally got to play a game that I'd been holding off on in favor of Smash Bros. training-- Sonic Adventure 2: Battle! It's a GameCube game from 2003, but it's still great, and definitely a classic. It also has a "Chao Garden", where you can raise your own Chao! (Little blue… things.) I'm currently raising a dragon Chao named Atom. Plus, if you'll look closely in-game, you can see a poster that says, "Playing Sonic Adventure 2 is habit forming. Don't turn off!"
I'm looking forward to next year's Smash Bros. tournament. I'll be hosting, and I aim to WIN!

A few years ago, I was taking Spanish 1 in middle school. Having lived in Peru for a few years in my youth, I was pretty fluent and the stuff there was pretty basic. Then one day, during our unit on adjectives, we had an activity where students would get called up to the board to complete a sentence with an adjective in Spanish. I got called up, and the sentence was "Selena Gomez es..." (Selena Gomez is...)
I couldn't pass up that opportunity to crack a joke. 
 
For those of you who don't know, gaseosa means "gassy" in Spanish.
Well, the teacher's aide didn't think it was that funny, and he wrote an email to my dad about it. Now, my dad's not the most in the loop on pop culture and this kind of stuff. 
That night, my dad came looking grim-faced into my room and proceeded to give me the most loud and indignant chewing-out of my life. The entire time, I had absolutely no idea what the heck he was talking about, but I just stayed silent with fear and auditory overload. when he was through, I was close to tears, and as confused as I had ever been in my life.
He then went to compose an email to the school in apology for my behavior. I believe it went something like:
"I am very sorry about this. This kind of behavior is totally out of character for Colin. This will not happen again, and I will make sure Colin apologizes to Selena Gomez."
Turns out, my dad had no idea who Selena Gomez was, and he thought it was another student. Eventually, my mom explained it to him, and he had a pretty good laugh with the rest of us.

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.

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.
 
On the way there, we passed a really quaint town, with real wells and everything. There were a bunch of stores you'd never find in more urban areas, and half the houses were falling apart. Of course, they still had Pizza Hut.
After a few hours, we made it to the campsite, with Dave driving at a consistent 15 miles over the speed limit. We set up our tents, and made a fire. That was fun, because, as the other campers said it, "Colin's a pyromaniac." I found some sticks, and I would light them on fire and then take it out and let it burn. When the flame went out, the end of the stick would smoke a thick, narrow stream of smoke that looked really cool.  That was pretty entertaining, at least until Riche, a fellow student, started stealing my sticks, and the rest of us started making "holding your wood" jokes. Yep. Teenagers.
As the day began to turn into night, we cooked up the tin foil dinners we had prepared for the trip. I had ground beef with mozzarella cheese, with a pita chip shell. In theory, it sounded pretty good. In reality, though, it cooked for too long, and the pita chips became a blackened husk. The cheese stuck to the tin foil like superglue, and I had to hold the thing above me, trying to eat around the char and pieces of tin foil, while beef fell out the side.
Later on, Christina led us to the bathroom, where the girls rejoiced when they found outlets to charge their phones.
When the stars came out, and we were all sitting around the campfire, we exchanged a couple scary stories. I shared a true story of my youth, which, if you'll listen, I'll recount for you now...
When I was a kid, about five or so, my family and I had just moved back to the States from Peru. After like a month of living in the new house, one night, I was sitting sleeplessly in my bed, as usual, and suddenly, I hear a voice that seemed to come from the air of the room.
"Colin."
Let me clarify. I was alone in the room, and everyone else was asleep, and the voice didn't belong to anyone I knew. It was just there. As a five-year-old, I was pretty open-minded, and I was more curious than scared.
"Who is it?" I called out.
There was a slight pause.
"This is God."
I thought, Oh, well that makes sense. Okay. I just assumed the voice was telling the truth, and I never questioned it, even though I should have.
This happened off and on again for a while, The voice would call my name, and I would say hi, and then it would stop. And then one night, it wasn't just one voice. It felt like there was a whole big group of people, huddled around my bed, muttering amongst themselves... about me.
"He's so young."
"Look at his face."
"Who will he become?"
As a child, I decided that it was a lot of angels,  and I was totally chill with that. I don't know how I got to sleep that night, as I don't remember the voices ceasing.
Then, one night, a few weeks later, I heard the lone voice again. I had had a pretty rough day, I was real tired, and I just wanted to go to sleep.
"Colin."
As I said, I was tired.
"Listen, God..." I said. "Can I just, not do this? Can we do this some other night? I just really just want to sleep right now."
I never heard the voice again after that night. And nine years later, I found out that the best way to get rid of a ghost is to ask it to leave. Freaked out and a little excited, I told my sister that we used to have a ghost, and told her all about the voice. She had a look of surprise.
"You heard it too?" she said.
So after we finished telling ghost stories, we all went to bed in our tents. After a while, and I'm not sure exactly how it transpired, we all decided to pile into the big tent and cuddle. At some point we saw a flashlight outside we couldn't identify, since everyone was either asleep or in the tent with us. So Jordan had the bright idea of calling out, "Don't murder us!"
The movement stopped and then left, and we all went back to our own tents, though it wasn't very easy to sleep, considering that the people in the next campsite over seemed to be inebriated and partying around a bonfire.
 
The next morning, we revived the fire from a bunch of burning embers, and munched on Bennett's granola bars. Then we left to go whitewater rafting. On the way there, I asked who they thought would fall out, and they unanimously said, "Colin."
Before we got to rafting, we went to the town center of Ohiopyle and walked around there a bit. I went with Amanda and Bennett to the cafe, and then we just sat a while, before leaving again for rafting.
The rafting was awesome. I'd been rafting before a couple times, so I knew what to expect. Even so, it was really exciting. I got out to swim a couple times, but I never fell out. We had a guide with us, and he seemed to be full of jokes such as:
"Always swim on your belly. We have catfish in these waters, and they are notorious bottom feeders."
"Which is faster, hot or cold? I assume hot, I can catch a cold."
"If you hear silence back here, just reach down and pull me back in."
At the halfway point, we stopped and had lunch on the rocks.
Later on, we came upon a really tall rock on one side of the river, and the guide said that anyone willing could go up and jump off. So of course I did that.
 
After we were through rafting, we went back to the town center of Ohiopyle, and I just stayed in the bus with Marcelus. And while we're sitting there, what should come down Main Street but a car with a dog, sticking its head out the window, and hanging its arm over the side like a human!
 
Marcelus was kicking himself for not having his phone.
When we got back to the campsite, I dove into my cozy tent and my comfy sleeping bag.
 
 
 
There's a little space between the fly of my tent and the ceiling, and it was covered with bugs. I promptly freaked out, and tried to squish them, succeeding only in making a hole in my tent. I ended up running out of there and spraying the entire thing with bug spray.
While I waited for the fumes to die down, Bennett, Amanda, and I played a game of "Throw rocks at a tree." Then he showed us this cool amphitheater in the woods. we found a couple really cool sticks, and broke stuff with them.
Later that night, we had another tin foil dinner, which turned out about as well as the first. Then, I got to show off my wizardly marshmallow-roasting skills. After that, I lit the end of a stick on fire, and applied it to the end of my big stick from before to give it a cool char-y effect.
I feel like... well, socially speaking, it was less risky on the trip than at school, so I could be a bit more, well, free.
The next day, we packed up and headed back home. I took the stick with me, and when we got home, I got it varnished and all that stuff, and now it's a really cool staff. The next day at school, people said that I was the coolest one on the trip, which was pretty nice to hear.
If one thing's for sure, this was a great trip!

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.
I was dressed up all snazzy for it, and people seemed to be so surprised that I look good in a tux, again. But it was also kind of nice.
 
Yes, I reused this from my Freshman at Prom post. But it's practically the same thing.
We got on the boat, and it turns out it's actually a dinner cruise. It had fancy tablecloths and everything. They had an open bar, and I was getting a lot of Shirley Temples, which is basically ginger ale with grenadine. It's pretty boss.
After dinner, the DJ went up to his podium, and people went up to dance. I just stayed in my seat, and did a little dancing with my hands. But people encouraged me, so I ended up dancing. I'm not a very good dancer, I danced badly, but I had fun.
For the rest of the night, I danced, had some more Shirley Temples, and said hi to passing boats. A lot of my friends were there, and it was a lot of fun. On the way out, they handed out fresh-baked cookies, and the guy gave me two because I was dancing so much. It was a great night.

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.
The next day, we went over to where the wedding would be, where most of the family was staying, on a lake called Sebago Lake. We walked around, and I went on a boat ride with my Uncle Rome. 
 
When we got back to shore, they started something called the "Wedding Olympics." I have no idea what happened in them, because I just spent that time playing Minecraft on my iPod.
At one point, we went back home, but only to get dressed up fancy for the wedding. 
In the ceremony, they had the bride arrive by boat, and they had Andy's dog, Murphy, as the ringbearer. The dog was even wearing a bowtie. That was pretty cool.
After that was cocktail hour, during which I ordered at least four Shirley Temples. I had some conversation with some of my cousins, and then the reception started, and they had a receiving line, which is where the bride and groom hug everyone as they enter the dining hall.
They had a lot of stuff for dinner, and naturally I filled my plate. My sister keeps telling me that my metabolism is going to catch up with me one day, and I'll develop a serious potbelly. But considering how skeletal I am, I'm not really worried.
Instead of cake, they had what seemed like hundreds of whoopee pies. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's like cake buns with icing in between. If you haven't had one, you should.
Then came the real party. The music started, everyone started dancing, and a rather inebriated bridesmaid pulled me onto the dance floor. Now, I've seen parties before, but this was INSANE. At one point, a guy drank various liquor out of his cowboy boot. 
I was doing my usual dancing, which is to say I was dancing really badly, just making it up as I went along. But people seemed to like it, and Vivica, my cousin Alex's girlfriend, kept cheering me on.
 
At one point, I somehow got to the front of the party, and a few people started clapping for me. Then Andy joined in, and before I knew it, I was surrounded by a circle of people cheering me on.
I was the life of the party.
Having lots of fun, I danced furiously, and people kept cheering me on. I felt great. And then when  "Shut Up and Dance" came on, I was tightly surrounded by a crowd of bridesmaids, which, I'll admit, was pretty nice.
 
It continued on that way for most of the rest of the night, and I had great fun all the way through. When the party was over, Andy came over, gave me a bear hug, and said, "That was effin' awesome, dude!" I was thoroughly pooped, and satisfied with how the night had turned out. If this wasn't the best night of my life, it's definitely in the top tens. I can't remember a time when I've been more social.
Good luck Andy & Nicole!

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.
After we left Maine, my family went down to our beach house in Avalon. Because I'm a humongous nerd, I brought my Wii U with me, and hooked it up to the television so I could play there. This was also the first week of my first job, over at a local five-and-ten near the beach, which my dad pretty much made me get.
 
Don't get me wrong, though. It wasn't miserable. It's just I haven't really had a lot of experience with that kind of work, except for the community service my school does every month. Even that's just two and a half hours, but at the end, I always feel bored out of my skull and physically spent from all that standing up. I've just always considered myself more of an intellectual than am manual labor kind of person, not to mention I'm as thin as a twig.
I had like a 5-hour shift from noon to five, so I could chill and play video games all morning and be back in time for dinner. For a normal person, it was pretty simple stuff, pretty easy, but it still burned me out entirely. I got into the habit of taking naps after work, so I always came to dinner looking kind of scruffy.
My coworkers were very friendly and helpful, and the manager was always willing to answer any questions I had. Mostly what I was doing was sorting shelves and putting price tags on items, and sometimes I would direct lost customers. I made pretty good money, but honestly, I've never cared much for money unless I have a specific purchase in mind.
I think my favorite part was this sign they had in the back room, with funny customer questions and comments. I liked it so much, I took a picture of it. Check it out!
 
After we got back from that first week in Avalon, I started going to this cool camp called Catylator. It's an engineering camp, and coincidentally it was located at my school, so I was sort of the experienced guy. It was advertised as engineering for teens, but as it turns out, everyone else there was a middle schooler. They were still pretty cool people though.
I was hoping to spend my time there working on my Game Boy Player project (which I'll elaborate more on once I get the Kickstarter up), but I didn't really get the chance. But they had a few 3D printers there, which was AWESOME. For those of you who don't know what a 3D printer is, it's a machine that can take digital 3D models and turn them into physical objects. For the first week I was there, I focused mainly on making a case for my iPod, which didn't turn out too well, because the plastic kept deforming. But it was fun.
After that week, I went off to a 3-week engineering program in Rhode Island. It was organized by Johns Hopkins, and it was held at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island. It was really fun. I got to sleep in a dorm, and I made a lot of friends in my dorm, all who were taking engineering. For the most part, I hung out with these two, Nathaniel and Jackie. They were dating, and friends at the same time, which I thought was pretty impressive. They were really cool people, and we had a lot of fun. At the beginning of the program, they jumped into all of this physics stuff, and I was totally and completely lost, not having taken physics yet. Once we got into the structural engineering part, I got the hang of the whole "Newton's Third Law" thing, but I still have no idea what an "ohm" is.
In the program, I got to build a BATTLING ROBOT with Popsicle sticks, string, and hot glue, using pressurized syringes to move it. I teamed up with my friend, David, who as of now is one of the only people taller than me. We built this AWESOME robot which I named Marcus, and I had the great idea to add grip by covering the bottom in hot glue. It worked really well, but we never actually finished it by the time the battles came around. I took it home so I could complete it, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.
At the end of the first week, they held a dance. Though I'm not the most outgoing person, I usually like dances, but I knew that after Maine, I was really pushing my dance quota. Nonetheless, I went out there, and I had a lot of fun. I danced all night.
One day the following week, my RA Josh, who's pretty cool, signed me and a bunch of the most unlikely people to the Rap Battles activity. Before it was my turn to go up and rap, I planned something out real swiftly. I'm in the habit of saying "potato" a lot, something I picked up from my teacher Robin and my classmate John back at school. So I decided to make a rap around that. The effects were unexpected and very satisfying.

So that got me some street cred with the homies. Later in the week, we made a plan to reenact it and have me do it to Josh, and that went pretty well. In the colloquial, I "rekt everything."
At the end of the week, though, I started to not feel too great. By the middle of the day I didn't even have the energy to get out of bed, where I had gone to rest. Eventually, I got taken to the nurse's office, where I stayed for the duration of my stay. On the second day in the infirmary, I got taken to an urgent care to get looked at, and they said I might have some sort of a stomach flu. And then I puked. So they called an ambulance, and I got to go to the hospital, which would be fine, but they tried to stick a needle in me. I know it was for my own good, but I absolutely hate needles. I can't stand them. I finally got through it when they did it while I was looking for Waldo. I never did find him. While I watched the third Jurassic Park movie, they ran some tests, which I can only assume were inconclusive, as I continued to be sick when we left. The next day, I got really sick, so they took me back to the ER. They didn't stick a needle in me this time, but they figured out I had pneumonia, and while I wasn't going to die or anything, I couldn't stay at Roger Williams. So the next day was my last there, and all the guys from my dorm pitched in and made me a really big goodbye card. It was really sweet.
 
They even put in my emblem.
 
 
After that, my dad came and picked me up, and we went back home. It was at the airport that I discovered the only thing better than my favorite brand of gummy bears-- a sour version of my favorite brand of gummy bears.
 
The next week, I went back to the Catylator camp for another week, and I had a great idea. Every year, my school has a Super Smash Bros tournament (see 
The 5th Annual School Smash Bros. Thanksgiving Tournament), and since I'm hosting it this year, I decided to make a trophy for it. and might I say, it turned out pretty awesome.
 
The same week, I got a DRONE!!! It was a quadracopter, and I could control it with my iPod. It was really awesome to fly it around, at least until it broke. But hey, it was fun while it lasted.
After that, I went back to Avalon for a few days, and then it was school.
 
 I've always been better at socializing with younger kids or people older than me, rather than kids my age. And it didn't really hit me until then how many of my friends had left with the rest of the senior class. Zachary, Rachel, Eva, and Danielle, to name a few.
To put it lightly, it really bummed me out. The senior class was really the heart and soul of the school. There are more people there now, but it feels a whole lot emptier without them. And I think that sort of affected my schoolwork at the beginning of the year. but I know they'll be back for Thanksgiving at the...
 
My birthday also passed soon after the start of the year. It wasn't all that big a deal as it used to be. I threw a party, but only Alex came and it was really hard to have a big party with only two people. But at the end, I got a large Fanta Icee, and it was delicious, so I've got that going for me, which is nice. I'm sixteen now, but a wise man once said, "The truth is we never really grow up. We just masquerade as adults because that's what we're expected to do." I think that's very true, and I've always live by this philosophy-- "Age is mandatory, but maturity is optional." Life can age me all it wants, but on the inside, I'll still be the ten-year-old I always have been. And that's a good thing.
Also, these have no relevance to anything whatsoever, but here's some pictures of my dog trying to stick her head out the car window.

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.
 
Having thought we would be sleeping on the ground, I had opted for an air mattress rather than a pillow. However, we were not sleeping on the ground, we were sleeping in bunk beds, so I folded up my air mattress to use as a makeshift pillow.
After we unpacked, we did some "team-building exercises," and then we went over to a climbing tower, with a bunch of challenges to get to the top. Having done a reasonable amount of rock climbing in the past, I was the first to climb the rock-climbing wall. After that, I helped cheer everyone on as they took on one of the climbs.
After everyone had a chance to climb the tower, we were handed over to Farmer Josh, who maintained the farm on the ranch. He had us pick vegetables from his garden, and I found the hot peppers. After we were done, we were treated to some fresh roasted peppers, from the batch we picked. Well, all except me. I'm not really much of a vegetable person.
Jordan convinced Patrick and Christina to eat pieces of hot peppers, and Patrick couldn't get enough water after that. Then, I picked up an orange one, and wondered if it would be less spicy because it was less red. I didn't really realize I had said so out loud until Jordan said I should try a bit and find out. I was reluctant to do so, but David convinced me with the compelling argument of "do it for the Vine."
 
 
Unthinkingly, I ate the WHOLE PEPPER. And as it turned out, it was not less spicy. My mouth was on FIRE, but I played it off pretty cool.
 
I stuffed my face full of crackers, cheese, and water, and that seemed to help with the burning.
Once we were done there, and my mouth cooled to a gentle sizzle, we went off to our next activity, the zip line. It was a pretty cool, albeit short, ride. If you've never been on a zip line, I highly recommend it. It's a great experience.
After those willing went on the zip line, we got to hang out in our yurts for a bit before dinner. We had a pretty good dinner, and afterwards, we played a high-stakes game of Rock-Paper-Scissors. Then, we all gathered around in a circle and talked about our favorite parts of the day.
After we left the barn, we went over to an adjoining campfire to roast marshmallows, and I got to show off my mad marshmallow-roasting skills once again. 
After we were done there, we went to our yurts, got in our bunks, and went to sleep without any chatter.
Ha ha! No, seriously, what really happened was, the girls invited us all into their yurt, and despite their yurt being more full, we all fit in there. We talked and talked, which was fun, we played a game of Never Have I Ever, and we shared a lot of secrets. I can't reveal a lot of it due to yurt confidentiality, but I have a new respect for my classmates.
​I thought it was a great experience.
After a long while, the talking ceased, and I ended up sleeping there.
The next morning, we went to the barn for breakfast, and I tried in vain to heat up my biscuit. We went outside and said hi to the two local dogs. Maggie, a big galumph of a dog, was a new mother, and not really in the mood for people, except to give her belly rubs. Zeus, on the other hand, was very friendly, a little too​ friendly in fact.
After breakfast, we went back to the climbing tower, and did some new climbs. I did the Tarzan Swing, which was basically a rope climb where you swung to platforms. Then we went to the Giant Swing, where you get harnessed in with a buddy, and everyone else pulls you up. Then you swing forward at an alarming speed. It was pretty awesome.
Then we got to go chill in our yurts for a bit, and then we went over to the zip line again, going through an obstacle course this time. After I went, I sat with Aki and watched everyone else zip by. After that, I did the Leap of Faith, which is where you jump from a telephone pole and try to catch a bar. I failed, but luckily I had a harness on.
After that, we ate some pizza, and then went to our yurts for the night. Well, not exactly. After an hour, we went over to the communal yurt and talked about the day. Then some of us stayed back and played this fun game called "Teeth," where you are given a phrase to say, and everyone goes around asking the person a question, and they have to respond with that phrase. It was pretty fun.
Then we went to bed.
The next day, we got ready to leave. I tried again to heat my biscuit, and again failed. We got together, and talked about what we learned during the trip. Then, we got our stuff together, and headed back to school. I tried to use the trip to quietly contemplate on life, which, to be honest, was kind of hard with Marcelus blaring rap music through the bus.
 
We got back to school, where everyone was watching Futurama, and I had a little time to say hi to everyone before I left.
After I left school, I went to this really cool thing I've been doing lately. It's called a "makerspace," and I can go there after school and build stuff, which is just awesome for me as an engineer. They have multiple 3D printers, and I've 3D printed a lot of really cool stuff. It's really fun to go to. More on that later.
If there's one thing I've learned over this trip, it's that sometimes, there's stuff that can be done-- should be done, but sometimes it's really scary to do. And the thing is, it's easy to do the scary stuff. You just have to sort of stop thinking, and unthinkingly just throw yourself onto it, and not realize what's happening until it's already happened. And then, look back and say, "I'm glad I did that."

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.
 
However, setup didn't really go as planned. I should have gotten there around 7:00, but instead I ended up getting there around 8:10. I was rushing, freaking out, trying to get everything set up. Turns out we didn't have the right cable for the projector, so instead of using my idea of keeping the Wii U GamePad outside for spectators to watch, we had to hook it up to the speaker system to use for sound.
​We ended up starting at 9:20 instead of 8:45.
When we finally did get started, I went into the fray with my favorite character, Samus.
 
And boy, did that training pay off. I was a powerhouse. I barreled through the first few rounds, and my expertise brought me to the final round.
In the final round, I faced off against Luis, another seasoned Smasher.
 
The battle was furious, and we both fought expertly. When it looked neck-and-neck, the time ran out, and we were put to a sudden death, where a single hit will KO. Luis dashed in, and hit me with an agile aerial attack before I could dodge, and that was the end of that. He won the trophy, which he complimented my handiwork on, and the gift card, but I'm very proud with how well I did. And next year, it's going to be even more awesome!

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!
This year, what with my newfound access to multiple 3D printers, I decided to 3D-print presents for everyone except my immediate family. It made it all really fun, because I really enjoy 3D-printing things, and people seemed to like the stuff I made. Also on the 3D printing front, I found a cool place where I could get 3D models directly from video games, and another website that turns images into 3D models. So that's really fun to use.
On Christmas, I got the parts necessary to fix my drone, so now I've got a FRIGGIN' QUADRICOPTER.
 
There's this new FAA rule that you have to register your drone, so I went ahead and did that, and it felt kind of cool to have a federal legal document verifying that I have a FRIGGIN' QUADRICOPTER.
I'm still trying to decide on a name for it, though, so if any of you guys have any ideas, suggestions are welcome in the comments! I'm going for, say, a "fighter jet" kind of name, like "The Crimson Blur" or something.
Later that day, we went over to my Uncle Rome's and Aunt Amy's for Christmas dinner, and what was there but a FRIGGIN' QUADRICOPTER.
No, sorry, it was a little black lab puppy, named Cameron. I kind of adore dogs, so I was around her for a lot of the evening. She has the dog mindset of "the world is my chew toy," but I was all right with her gnawing on my hand as long as she didn't bite. I found I could call her by wiggling my fingers near the ground, and she would scamper towards them with her quirky little skip-walk.
 
The next morning, my family and I got up at the ungodly hour of two o'clock to go catch a plane to Miami, where we planned to stay for the remainder of the holidays. My mother's friend let us use her beach house there for our stay. On the first day we were there, despite the fact that I'm not much of an outdoorsy person, my mother convinced me to go out and walk around town with the rest of the family.
I was told there would be pizza.
What really happened was that after walking around, we ended up eating at some place that served really cruddy burgers. Then, instead of immediately returning to the safety and comfort of our friend's beach house, my mom decided we should see more of the city. I was already drained from all of this excursioning, but my mother would not be appeased. So we walked. We ended up at some old mansion on the shore, and thankfully, soon after we went back to our abode.
The next day, my family went to the famed "King Mango Strut," which is a Florida parade held in parody of the year's politics. After how miserable I had been yesterday, my parents let me stay in while they went. Predictably, there were a lot of Donald Trump impersonators this year, and everyone had a good laugh, according to my sister Claire.
 
After they got back though, we got ready to go see... (wait for it...)
 
Yes, the new STAR WARS movie! And yes, it lives up to the hype. It surpasses the hype, it's amazing! Admittedly, I'm a rather large fan of Star Wars, as is my mother, so we were both geeking out over the movie. It was nostalgic and brand-new at the same time, and all-around awesome. 
 
​One thing I'd like to clear up for everyone: Kylo Ren's lightsaber looks weird because its lightsaber crystal is unstable.
The next day, we went to this neat little bookstore called Books & Books. This is a place where I'm really in my element, when I'm surrounded by books and quiet. It has a really nice environment, with these walls of books, and this cafe in the middle, where we had dinner.
I ordered one of their sandwiches, but I get really serious about my sandwiches. By the time I had finished customizing it, it was a completely different sandwich. Nevertheless, it was really good. Afterwards, I had this crazy awesome cupcake. I know, I didn't think it was possible for cupcakes to be crazy awesome either, until I tried this one. It was a vanilla cupcake with cream cheese frosting...
With OREOS.
IN THE FROSTING.
Tell me that isn't the craziest awesomest cupcake you've ever heard of.
 
After we finished eating, we browsed a bit, my browsing mainly concentrated in the humor section. I got a Dave Barry book, Dave Barry Slept Here. I'm a big Dave Barry fan, and his books are among the funniest I've ever read. I recommend them to anybody, whether you read frequently or not that much.
The next morning, we went to South Beach, one of the few places in the world that my dad hasn't been to. After we got breakfast, Claire and our parents went off to the beach while I sat and read, after a fruitless search for a green apple slushie. Later that day, my mother and I went on to the Miami Metro Mover just to ride and look around, which was fun.
Late the next day on New Year's Eve, we decided to get dinner at a popular outdoor park part of town called Bayside, which really did not sound like my cup of tea.
We were going to take the train, but we saw a trolley at the station going where we were headed. It seemed much nicer, plus it was free. So we hopped on, not knowing that the trolley went at a constant speed of about 7.5 miles per hour. We went 50 minutes on the trolley before we got on the train. When we finally got to Bayside, the park was very crowded, and there seemed to be some sort of event going on.
As it turned out, this rapper called Pitbull was having this big New Year's Eve concert with a bunch of other artists, including Claire's favorite singer, Shawn Mendes. Claire freaked out, and wanted to stay for this concert, which was the opposite of what I wanted to do. I just wanted to go home and lie down with a good book, but we had gone there to get dinner. We ended up at a noisy, grimy restaurant that I didn't like at all. Eventually, my dad went with me back home, and my mom stayed with Claire to see the concert. When Mom and Claire got back from the concert, we went out and watched a hotel's New Year fireworks, drinking some sparkling apple cider. 
Two years ago, I started this blog. And the resolution that started it all, the idea I had, all happened right there in that house in Florida. I didn't tell you guys back in the beginning because I thought it would be a lot to explain in the first post. Well, now you know.
I'd like to thank you guys, my readers, for reading the stuff I've written these past two years. Without your loyalty and support, none of this would be possible. So, thank you!!!
I know my posting has been a bit spotty this past year, so this year I resolve to post more! So, stay tuned, and have a happy new year!

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.
 
 I went back to school from Winter Break this week, which is a bummer. But I seem to be adapting to it better that I used to, which is nice. Plus I get to see all my friends again. We're reading the Sherlock Holmes story, The Red-Headed League, which is lucky, because I've already read it. I dabble in Sherlock Holmes every now and then, and I've found them to be pretty good, if a little dry. One thing to note, though, is that he never actually wore that funny hat. That was an embellishment of the illustrator.
After watching the new Star Wars movie, I developed a strong desire for a toy lightsaber, and my family and I decided to watch all the Star Wars movies in order. So far, we've seen the first two episodes, The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, which is pretty cool, since they're the only two I haven't seen. They're not as good as the originals, though.
We saw Attack of the Clones on Friday night, after having dinner at this new restaurant around where we live. I got a burger, but they were out of mozzarella, which I usually have on my burger, so I got Parmesan instead, which I soon discovered, while a cool cheese, was not the thing to put on a hamburger.
 
Then today, my dad took me out to a parking lot for my first driving practice. I got my permit over the summer, but I've never really used it. Mostly, I just got it for its use as a government-issued ID. I'm not a big fan of driving, and the skill will be obsolete in five years thanks to self-driving cars. The whole process is confusing and complicated, with all the traffic laws and regulations and etiquette and driving techniques and rearview mirrors and Tusken Raiders. But for the most part, I don't like the whole "gasoline engine" thing. It's complex and has a list of possible maladies rivaling only the human body itself. Not to mention that gas is EXPENSIVE. When I was a kid, I thought the price on the signs was a flat rate, and I couldn't understand why adults made such a fuss about it. But if you multiply it by 18 gallons, it really gets up there. And you have to refill constantly. The only other industry with that kind of a racket going is the food industry, because no matter what, you have to eat three times a day. Or, in my case, two. After three years of bad middle school lunches, I've learned to subsist on two meals a day, which should serve me well when I have to buy my own food. In another time, this may have been considered "unhealthy," but in this economy, it's frugal.
Not to mention, the horrible environmental impact it has on our environment. I'm no enviro nut, but there's billions of cars every day spewing out carbon fumes and killing our atmosphere. And we pay people to be able to do this.
Though hybrids have helped, I still don't like the whole "gasoline" thing. Electric motors would be a lot simpler and easier. When they develop a sustainable all-electric car that can go more than 2 miles before recharging, I'll get a car. Self-driving, hopefully.
Ranting aside, the driving practice. It all felt very weird. I hardly went any faster than 5 mph, because I was not confident in my driving abilities. I mainly did a lot of turning. I suppose I didn't do too terribly, for my first time. But it's going to be a long time before I'm actually qualified to get out on the road.
Also on the technology front, I'm afraid I have some bad news. Remember how I was planning to invent a hoverboard?
 
Well, it appears that somebody has already beaten me to the punch. A company in New Mexico called ARCA Space has created the ArcaBoard. I mean, sure, there have been sort of hoverboards before now, like the Lexus hoverboard, but they all work on magnetism, so they need a track to work, which really limits where you can go with it. But this is the first one that uses electric ducted fans, using air to keep it aloft, the way mine was designed to. But that doesn't mean I'm throwing in the towel. My friend Adam reminded me that I can still improve it. I mean, it is by all means a hoverboard, but let's be honest, it's an awkward shape, it only runs for 6 minutes, and it costs $20,000 dollars. There's a lot of room for improvement in the field of hoverboards, and when I'm done with them, they're going to be awesome.
*I just realized that I didn't blog about that trip, so I'll give you a bit of an overview: last winter, soon after we got back to school, my Biology class went on a trip to New York to see this Body Works exhibit thing. It's basically where they have all these bodies on display, with all their muscles and organs showing, propped up with formaldehyde or whatever. You've really got to have a strong stomach for it. But what I was really looking forward to was that Nintendo's store and "base" of sorts in America, Nintendo World, is up there, and our Biology teacher, Patrick, said we could stop over there. My friend, Michael, who's also a big gamer, went with me. As it turns out, it's really not as big as the name would suggest, but it's still an exhilarating experience, being surrounded by all that Nintendo stuff. I got this really cool shirt, and a Pikachu amiibo, which is a little statue with a chip in it that communicates with the Wii U system. All in all, it was a really fun trip, especially the bus rides, chilling with my peeps.

A couple Fridays ago, the first snow of the season hit! Personally, I prefer the winter weather, so I was quite pleased by this development. I mean, in cold weather, you can just put on a sweater, or snuggle in a blanket, or even GET IN A SLEEPING BAG if you feel like it. But in the hot, you basically just have to sit around in the uncomfortable heat, or, what, rip your skin off? I mean, sure, you could get air conditioning, but you can also get heating for cold places.
This is one of the many reasons I plan to live in Massachusetts. Not to mention it seems like a pretty intellectual place. You always hear about "new studies at MIT" or "scientists at Harvard found" or stuff like that. That sounds like a prefect place for an aspiring inventor like me.
Anyway, it was still snowing the next day, and so we decided to continue our Star Wars movie marathon thing. Over the course of the weekend, we watched Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope.
The snow finally let up around Sunday, at around three feet. When the next Monday rolled around, we had an announcement cancelling school. Then the same for Tuesday. Anticipating being housebound for a while, I collected a bunch of books I wanted to re-read. At one point, I got the idea to try to build the Roman Collosseum out of LEGOs. Before I did that, though, I went to check if anyone else had made such a design. There were a couple, but they weren't very accurate.
For context's sake, let me explain that, when I was younger, I was really into LEGOs. But that was before they started hiking up the prices of sets, making the hobby rather unsustainable.
I couldn't realistically get all the exact pieces I needed from my personal stores, but among other advantages, LEGO's digital design software provides unlimited LEGOs of any kind. I downloaded the Google Earth 3D models of the Collosseum, Stonehenge, and the Titanic for building reference. I also found the instructions for a couple five-hundred-dollar sets, so I can build those on the computer for free, but for those I can't order the parts after I build them digitally. After I finish my designs, you'll be able to see them on the Stuff I've Made page. You can already see some cool stuff I've made on there.
After I started the first Artemis Fowl book in my pile, I remembered how awesome that series was, and proceeded to buy all the books I had originally gotten from the library.
I'd like to take this moment to say, the Artemis Fowl series is hands down one of the greatest, if not the greatest book series I've ever read. I recommend it to anyone and everyone who likes to read. Plus, the main character's Irish, like me! Well, I'm a second-generation American, but I'm very proud of my Irish heritage.
On Friday, the snow started to melt, which was disappointing. Back during Snowmageddon in 2010, my area got around four feet, and it didn't melt for two and a half weeks. This is the first time I've felt betrayed by a weather element.
The next week, we were back in school, and on Tuesday I was back at my Makerspace. I spent a fair amount of time brainstorming new ideas for mechanisms. The idea I went with is this: a box with a long arm protruding from it, with an outstretched palm. But when you put something in the hand, it snatches it up, and the arm retreats quickly back into the box. Then it just holds it in the box until you take it out again. Another idea I had, that I'm planning to do later, is a crawling octopus, with a really fun walking mechanism involving floppy tentacles and suction cups.
 
 Then yesterday I uploaded my first level in a game I play called Super Mario Maker, where you create your own Super Mario levels. My level is based on an area from a classic game called Super Metroid, and I think it's pretty good. However, if it isn't popular enough within a week, it'll get deleted from the server ,so I'm understandably nervous. You can check it out and help me out here and here. If you play the game, check it out, and if not, help spread the word! Thanks, you guys, you're the best!

Update: I've uploaded an improved version of the course, which you can check out here and here. Thanks again!

When I left school last week, I wasn't feeling very good. I had forgotten my Physics textbook at home, and everyone had given me crap about it. Almost immediately after I left school, I went and bought myself a dozen doughnuts, most of which I angrily consumed.
 
Halfway through the box, I noticed that we weren't driving towards our house. I asked my mom where we were going, and she told me that over a month ago I had agreed to sign up for this digital design workshop over at the Smithsonian, and had promptly forgotten all about it. I was a bit reluctant at first, but I had nothing better to do, and after a while I decided to stay. For most of the time, I was hanging out with this cool girl named Ren.
The first thing we did was go to the Sackler gallery and check out this statue called the Cosmic Buddha. It's a statue of a guy in robes with no head or hands, with a bunch of pictures of the Buddha engraved on it. Around the statue there was an exhibit about how the Smithsonian used 3D scanning technology to create a 3D model of the statue. all I could think was, it must be a pretty big file.
Then we left the gallery, and I noticed with slight uneasiness that we were headed toward the Hirshhorn. Don't get me wrong, modern art is cool and all, but some of that stuff is weird. Like, one time I went there, and there was this exhibit which was just a video of these two dudes having a staring contest, and then their heads explode, and then there's just some guy drumming. And then there was this one time I thought something was a table, but it was actually an exhibit. And if you're anything like me, you'll find plenty of stuff to go "What the (expletive of your choice)?" at. 
Suddenly, we went down into a garden, and to this one place that's like a hidden area in a video game. There were these doors inside the lower garden, under the Hirshhorn. It's this place called ArtLab+, and my first thought when I got inside was, This place is cool. 
It's all shwanky, with bright colors, and comfy couches, and stuff. It's a pretty cool setup, they've got 3D printers, a sound stage, all sorts of design software, all sorts of free workshops, including a video game design thingy using Super Mario Maker! I made a mental note to come back there and share my Mario Maker levels with them. Plus, they hold a FRIGGIN SUPER SMASH BROS. TOURNAMENT and if you know me, you know I'm getting in on that.
So when we got there, the resident mentors gave us a quick overview of this 3D design software, Sculptris, and they set us up at Macs and we got started.
But as it turned out, it was more difficult for me to think of a good idea for something than I thought it would.
 
 
I messed around on the software for a bit, but everything I made turned out looking creepy or just plain weird. And while I'm a big fan of being weird, plain weird just doesn't appeal to me, and creepy just isn't my style. So I ended up with just a sphere, which wasn't too fulfilling.
Then we were given 3D models of the Cosmic Buddha statue without any carvings on it, and we were to put our own stories on it and mess around with it in general. I thought that with this base model to work from, I could really make something cool.
Nope.
The same problem happened, and I ended up with nothing. It was pretty cool to see what everyone else made, though. One person turned it into a teddy bear, and another turned it into an embodiment of the internet.
Overall, it was a pretty cool experience. I found this cool place, and I met some cool people. It was a good evening.
​Plus I got to eat, like, seven doughnuts in one sitting. BOOM.

Hey guys!
So I liked ArtLab so much that a few Thursdays ago, I decided to go back there.
I set it up so that after school, instead of taking the RideOn bus home, I went to the Metro. Then I took a transfer and walked to ArtLab. Everyone was like, "Hey, welcome back." I had heard that they had a Wii U, and Super Mario Maker, which they used for video game design workshops and whatnot, and so I was excited to show them the levels I had made. But as it turns out, the whole time they'd had this Wii U, they hadn't been able to hook it up to the Internet (where the Mario Maker course world is), because connecting to the Smithsonian internet required going through a Web portal, which didn't seem to agree well with the Wii U's network protocols. So we tried to connect and all that, and of course it said it couldn't connect to the actual Internet. On a hunch, I opened up the Wii U's Internet Browser, and lo and behold, the Smithsonian's Web portal appeared. As I suspected, despite what it said, it was connected to the network device. So we got them hooked up to the internet, and then, I helped them set up their Nintendo Network account. Then we went to Super Mario Maker, and I showed them my levels.
They liked them, and they starred all of my levels, which should help their popularity.
​After that, I had to leave, and I took the Metro back home.
Then last Friday, I went back. When I got there, they were having a game of Super Smash Bros! I grabbed the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, and joined the battle with Samus!
 
Unfortunately, I was out of practice, so I wasn't on my best game, and anyway, I'm best in one-on-one, and they were playing with seven people at a time. Even so, I did pretty good.
The only thing, though, is it was loud. I have sensitive ears, which in some situations can be a superpower, because I can hear stuff better. In this case, though, it just hurt my ears, so I don't know if this can be a regular thing.
By the time I was done, it was nearing time for me to leave, but I really wanted to 3D-print this model I found of Samus's gunship. One of the mentors there said he would print it for me, and they had this cool nylon filament. I'll pick it up later this week, and you can check it out on the Stuff I've Made page.

Hey guys!
So last Friday was the last day of my school's quarter, ushering in Spring Break! I haven't really started my spring break, but the last day was pretty interesting.
All the grades had been due the day prior, so we really weren't doing anything that day.
In first period, Spanish, we read this really freaky story called I Only Came to Use the Phone by this Colombian guy we're studying, Mr. Garcia Marques. After watching Double Indemnity in second period, I was looking forward to continue watching Lilo & Stitch, which my Anthropology teacher kept coming up with excuses for watching. But then we noticed that another class was watching The Office in the computer lab, so we decided to crash their class. One by one we just snuck in there and sat down until the entire Anthropology class was there along with the class that was originally there in the first place; and then our Anthropology teacher started showing us videos of animals doing adorable things.
Then, in Calculus, our teacher took us out for Slurpees, which was awesome, and sort of surprising, as he usually isn't the give-the-kids-candy type. It was fun, my classmates got blueberry and Coca-Cola, and I got wild cherry. After we got back, the teacher taught us how to play this game called Dots.
How to play Dots
Players: 2
Materials: A sheet of grid paper, two differently colored pencils/pens
Each player will choose a distinctive writing color. The first person to go will draw a dot on the paper, at one of the corners of one of the grid squares. The other player will then draw a dot at a different place, then the first person again, etc. The object of the game is to completely surround an opponent's dot or group of dots with an enclosure of the player's own dots. In order to capture an opponent's dots, the player's dots must all connect around the opponent's dots, and must all be adjacent. You can connect dots horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, but they must be in adjacent rows/columns. In order to mark an area of captured dots, a player must draw a line through all of their capturing dots around the opponent's dots. Once a dot or group of dots is captured, the captured dots, as well as the dots used to capture them, become territory of the captor, and the capturing player is awarded as many points as captured dots. Players can not capture an opponent's dots using dots already captured by the other player. Players may, however, "one-up" the capture by encircling an area of captured dots, awarding them points from both the original capturing dots and the dots inside.
I hope that explains it well. Anyway, after that, we watched Coraline in my Animation class, and an episode of Cosmos in my Physics class.
After that, we had a ceremonial groundbreaking ceremony, as my school is getting a second story. There's going to be some construction, so for the remainder of the year my school will be moving to a church while construction happens.
Then today, my family drove over to Philly to celebrate Easter with the rest of the O'Donnell clan. It was a long drive there, and most of the time I just sat on the couch, where this tiny dog was continually licking my face. Later we watched Jurassic World.
The real big part of my spring break is starting tomorrow. I'm going on my school's spring break trip again! And if it's anything like last year's, it's going to be awesome. But right now, it's nearly midnight because it took so long to get home, so I should probably get to bed. See you guys next week, and Happy Easter!

Last week was my school's spring break trip. I had a lot of fun on it last year, so I decided to go again this year.
Early Monday morning, my mom drove me over to the school's temporary location, where the students going on the trip were to meet up. There, we got on the clunky old school bus and started the long drive.
A very special guest tagging along on the trip was Domino, a Boston Terrier belonging to our science teacher, Patrick. She seemed very happy to be there, and there were doting teenagers fawning over her the whole trip.
The first place we visited was Rehoboth Beach.  Everyone wanted to go on the beachy part, but as you probably know, I don't like sand. In the words of Anakin Skywalker, "I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and it gets everywhere." So while the others went out on the beach, I sat on the boardwalk and read.
We walked around a while, exploring the shops on the street near the beach, including a weird ice cream place, a skate shop, and one of those weird shady shops that sells bootleg Bob-Marley-esque t-shirts, all sorts of plastic body jewelry, and bongs for smoking tobacco. Not really my kind of place, you can imagine, but it seems these places are pretty common around the beaches. For the novelty of it, my friend Caleb bought a garment called a baja poncho, more commonly known as a "drug rug" because of a certain lifestyle they are associated with. Apparently, they're actually pretty comfy.
After we left the shady shop, we came across a hugely oversized chess set laid out on the ground. Meloney, who was on the trip too, and I, played a game, but we bored quickly of it, and quit at the first sign of check. We walked over to a toy store, where I marveled at a selection of NES, SNES, and N64 game cartridges.
 
After that, we walked back to the bus, and made the last bit of drive to our campsite. We started to set up our tents, which was difficult for me, because I had brought a cozy one-person pup tent, and the wind was blowing at a bajillion miles per hour.
 
After we finally got the tents set up, Christina, who's now a teacher, got us all to go on a walk to a nearby beach. And by "got us to," I mean "made it mandatory." But most of us were just walking as a directionless group, and we soon took a wrong turn. We realized soon enough that we were going towards not the beach, but towards an overlook. And, my compatriots being teenagers as they were, they dared me to hit on one of the girls sitting down at the overlook. Now, this isn't something I just usually go around doing, but let it not be said that I was one to back away from a challenge.
 
 
I didn't get her number, but it was a fun experience. Not one I'd repeat regularly, of course.
​We went back, and found the right way to the beach. I decided not to go on the actual beach part, for the same reason of my revulsion towards sand. I sat on the path for a bit, listening to the sounds of the shore-forest and the ocean, and then walked back to the campsite with a couple of underclassmen, Maggie and Jasmine.
When I got back to the campsite, I probably spent most of the time trying to replace my tent, which had become dislodged from the ground for the bajillionth time and landed in the thankfully unlit fire pit. Then I just snuggled in there in my sleeping bag. A bit later, some friends and I went on the hunt to find some power outlets to charge our phones. We saw a long-defunct vending machine, and I thought, If there was a vending machine there, there mush have been a power source. So we pushed aside the vending machine, and lo and behold, there was a working outlet. I left my battery pack there to charge, and when I got back, it was full. Later on, we started a fire and cooked some hot dogs and hamburgers for dinner. After we finished dinner, we got out some marshmallows, and I got to show off my awesome marshmallow-roasting skills again. None of the marshmallows turned out exactly right, I'm not sure why, but it was still pretty good.
At some point, we got to talking about what our theme songs would be if our lives were a TV show and... well, this song is basically the theme song for my life. It just is, and it's great. Check it out.

I know it's from a video game, but video games are​ a major source of music for me. After all, I am a gamer.
That far away from cities, you can really see the stars. The night sky was beautiful to look at. Soon, though, I went to bed.
And then I woke up at, like, five in the morning and couldn't get back to sleep because it was really cold. It wasn't just me either, one camper wore three layers and was still cold.
The next morning, I woke to apple pastries and chocolate croissants that Patrick had brought, next to a crackling fire. I decided to warm up some of the cold food by holding it over the fire with a spatula, which I think worked out well. Pretty soon Caleb and I realized how much fun it was to throw brush on the fire and watch it momentarily ignite, and in that way we started to kill the fire. Then we decided pour out all of our lighter fluid on the fire; I mean, we weren't using it anyway.
 
I then began to take down my tent, which was slightly less frustrating than taking it down. I couldn't find the bag it all went in, so I just dumped it all in my duffel.
Then we hopped back on the bus, headed towards our final destination of Chincoteague Island.
We stopped at Ocean City, for lunch and exploring. Jordan, a friend of mine on the trip, met up with an old friend in the area, and he tagged along while we walked down the boardwalk. We explored a bunch of more shady shops, where a couple more kids got baja ponchos.
As we walked, I got to pet a bunch of dogs, which was awesome. Petting dogs increases your happiness level; it's been proven by this science dog.
 
We also stopped at this place called the Candy Kitchen, which was basically a candy paradise. Whether I'm 6, 16, or 60, eating candy will always be awesome. I got a pound of miscellaneous candies, including sour gummy poppers, gummy frogs, and Pixy Stix. I didn't eat any of it right away, though, because I was hungry and looking forward to eating lunch.
​We went to a place called the Dough Roller for lunch. This place combines two of my favorite things: pizza and pancakes! I got delicious mozzarella sticks and pigs in blankets, which I ate as I exchanged bad jokes with my friends. And then, we went back to the bus, and took the last leg of our journey.
When we got to the house, I took my luggage straight to my room and laid claim to the biggest bed. Then I played Cards Against Humanity for the first time with a bunch of other kids. A little later, I decided to take a walk around the small downtown of the island. The first thing I saw on my way out was this house; in the front yard, there were a bunch of ducks, and this one kooky duck. It was bigger than all the other ducks, its face was covered in gibletty skin, and the way it walked, it thrust its head forward, and then walked its body up to where its head was. In all honesty, it seemed more chicken than duck.
 
Everything was closed by the time I got there, but I made a list of places to check out later, including the library, the bakery, and a cool dog bakery. I was looking forward to maybe taking Domino there at some point.
Then I ran into some friends on the trip who were also out on a walk, and hung out with them on the dock. Meloney was standing on a bench, with her arms outstretched, facing towards the wind; and I walked up to her and asked her what she was doing. She said she was imagining being a bird, flying through the sky. I decided to try it myself. And it's really cool. Just closing your eyes, imagining yourself soaring miles above the ocean, it's a feeling unlike anything else... it's like... like...
 
Uh... never mind.
Later, we left the dock  and went and looked at a bit more of the downtown. We found this taco alley-- to explain, it had a taco truck on the other side of the alley, and along the alley there were tables and chairs. It was closed, but I added it to my mental list of places to go. At that point, we headed back to the house for dinner.
For dinner that night, we had pasta. I wasn't especially hungry, having eaten a sizable portion of my candy. Even so, I ate a good bit of dinner, and I enjoyed having dinner conversation with my compatriots. After dinner, I called up Zachary, and we talked for a while. Since he graduated and went to college, we don't get to talk as often, so it's nice when we can.
After I got off the phone, Kyra, another student, had made cookies. Chocolate chip. They were some of the most delicious cookies I had ever had. Kyra put them on a plate and we ate them as several of us played Apples to Apples. By the time the game ended, it was somewhere around ten or eleven o'clock.
A while after we finished playing Apples to Apples, we decided to have another game of Cards Against Humanity, with more people. It was a long, fun game, full of laughs. And when it was all done, I went to bed.
The next morning, I woke up around 9:30, and after struggling to gain command of my lethargic limbs, I walked downstairs to grab my sweater and book. Soon enough, I started a game of Battleship with Caleb. I don't recall who won. 
After I had thoroughly settled into the waking world, we went over in the bus to this mini-golf place, which I thought would be fun, as I enjoy mini-golf. But other people just decided that mini-golf might as well just consist of whacking balls into holes with no apparent structure or records, and darn it, they could make that happen. I ended up just playing my own round by myself to preserve some semblance of order in my mini-golf. When we got back to the house, I went out with Jordan and another kid, Wyatt, to go grocery shopping for dinner that night. I helped find a lot of stuff, and I grabbed some mozzarella cheese for the grilled cheeses we were making and a roll of Pillsbury cinnamon roll dough for desserts. When we got the groceries back to the house, I headed back out again to go check out some of the stuff around the town, specifically the library. The first thing I looked at was a statue of a horse, called "Misty of Chincoteague," in the historic center of town. The way the story goes, as best as I can recall, is this:
A children's writer came to Chincoteague to look at the horses, and saw this one filly named Misty. She liked it so much that she took it home with her and wrote a fictional children's book based on her horse called "Misty of Chincoteague." This book is one of the town's biggest claims to fame, so all around you can see commemorations of this horse. They even have a block of sidewalk cement with Misty's hoof prints in front of the theater. The whole situation reminded me vaguely of Lil Sebastian from Parks & Recreation. 
So anyway, I went into the library and found some Far Side collections to read, and sat down in a chair on the second floor, right next to a window with a great view of the water. Halfway into my second Far Side book, I saw a couple of my friends outside, so I went to go say hi. We went out onto the pier, then left the pier, then found a riskier, edgier way to sit on the pier, namely, under it. Afterwards, they recalled a fireworks place near where we had played mini-golf, and, fueled by the teenage primeval urge to make stuff blow up, decided to make an hour-long walk there to buy some fireworks. I'm far too lazy for that, so I opted to head back to the house instead.
When I got back to the house, I was greeted by Domino. I hung out with some of the underclassmen on the trip for a while, and then I saw that a bunch of people were in the hot tub. I've never really been in a hot tub with other people before, but they invited me to join, so I did. There were five or six people in the hot tub, so you were always touching someone else's feet. Even so, it was pretty nice. The water was warm, the jets were on, and we almost forgot that we were supposed to be making dinner.
So, after someone found towels, we hauled our frozen butts upstairs to change, and then we got down and started making some grilled cheeses.
I was assigned to making the salad, which may have been less than ideal, as salad is one of the things I am not good at making. I've never even eaten salad, except for those tiny slices of meat they have on the side. I ended up getting some pointers from John, who's a vegetarian.
We sat down and ate dinner, which was delicious, mainly thanks to the efforts of Jordan, who made most of the grilled cheeses. But before we could make the cinnamon buns for dessert, Patrick came back from the grocery store with all sorts of ice creamy treats. We all enjoyed it, and afterwards, we decided to go out and set off the fireworks that John and Caleb had gotten. We found a good empty field, and the first thing we did was light sparklers.
The first few fireworks we lit ignited, and they basically spun around on the ground in a fiery multicolored corona, and I couldn't help thinking, Is that all it's supposed to do?
Then Caleb produced a large, cylindrical object. It was actually a big firework. Caleb tried to light it, but knocked it over in the process, so when it was going off, it looked like it was puking sparks on the pavement.
 
After a while more of swinging sparklers around, we headed back towards the house. Caleb, Meloney, John and I broke off from the main group, and headed over to the pier.
It was really cool at night, you could see light reflecting off of things, and everything was really calm and peaceful.
And then they decided to light a spinny firework off the pier.
The plan was simple enough; set the firework on the railing, and the explosive would propel it off into the water, still lit. But when we did it, it propelled the wrong way, towards us.​ And we ran like heck.



 









It fell off the side of the pier, and it kind of spun on the surface of the water, which was really cool. We stayed there for a while more, lighting sparklers, gazing at the ocean, before we decided to head back. On the way back, Caleb did some sick parkour jump moves.
 
Caleb agreed to show me some of the basics the next day.
When we got home, I got an ice cream cone, and I showed John one of my favorite songs, a soundtrack from Sonic Generations called Boss Battle: Big Arm.

He liked it, and surprisingly enough, he recognized the artist. Apparently Cash Cash is pretty popular in electronic music circles.
We found some of the other kids sitting in the living room, nearly napping, but soon after we got there, it became an area of buzzing conversation. I wrapped myself in part of this really soft blanket, and made several analogies as to its comfiness. I also found the WiFi, which we hadn't had before then, which was a miracle to us kids with iPhones and stuff. We stayed down there talking for a long time before we went to bed.
The next morning, I awoke to find that Patrick had found a better use for the cinnamon buns than eating them for dessert-- eating them for breakfast.
I spent some time looking on my iPod after breakfast, and then we drove out to this NASA military base around there. Obviously, we couldn't go in the actual base; we just looked in the museum they had. It was all neat stuff, but nothing I hadn't seen before.
When we got back, I sat and chilled for a bit in the living room, and then suddenly I heard we were going to bike to the beach. I freaked out, because I was in no way prepared to go to the beach. I grabbed a couple of things, stuffed them in my backpack, and ran to the bus.
 
We got to the bike rental shop, and each of us got a bike. Those of us who couldn't ride a bike took the bus or a tricycle. Being an experienced bike rider myself, I took a bike. But for some reason, it felt very difficult and strenuous.
 
I fell behind the others quickly, completely clueless as to what was hindering me so. I tried adjusting my seat, but it didn't help. What did help was when I started going downhill and got an extra boost of speed. Eventually, I made it to the beach, where everyone else was, and we started walking... on the sand. I had to take careful steps to keep sand out of my shoes. We didn't actually sit down, or go in the water, but just walked across the beach. As we walked, I picked up cool shells, and gave them to Christina for safekeeping. My favorite ones were the swirly ones. When we got to a certain point in the walk, Caleb produced a firework which apparently he had been carrying with him the whole time. We planted it into the sand, and Caleb lit it. It fell over, and the casing went flying. We found it on the way back, very far from the launch site.
We got back on our bikes, and somehow this time I was the first one back. It probably had something to do with the race I was having with another kid on the trip. 
When we got back from the beach, we dropped some people off at the grocery store to go shopping for dinner that night. My team wasn't in charge of making dinner that night, but I tagged along to grab some different types of chocolate chips to make my special chocolate. After I found that, I left, and pet a very friendly German Shepherd named Ellie, who had just turned one and a half. As I left, I told Jordan about the dog, and she was equally excited. I hung out with some of the underclassmen, and eventually the others came back-- without the chocolate chips. They didn't know what they were for. Around that time a bunch of us went back into the hot tub. Eventually, I was the last one out of the hot tub, and I sat down to dinner, John having tried to trick me into thinking I had held everybody up. We had steak, fried chicken, and fries, all of which were delicious. After dinner, we went to visit Patrick's sister-in-law's shop, as she was opening up late for us. We got to meet her and her little kid. While we were there, I saw this neat wire-and-beads giraffe sculpture. And the first thing I thought was, My mom loves giraffes. So I bought it for my mom. 
Later I left the shop, and we walked over to a field, where we were going to set off some more fireworks. Before we got started with that, Caleb showed me the basics of a couple of parkour moves, a kind of jumping over things, and a roll. I'm just starting, but it seems like a really fun thing. I don't do a lot of exercise, but this seems like a physical activity I could really enjoy.
Then they started lighting the fireworks. The first few were obviously supposed to launch, but we kept burying them too deep in the ground, and they just showered sparks at the ground. They weren't labeled as bottle rockets, but they sure seemed like ones, so we put one in a glass bottle, and boy, it flew!​ 
We launched a couple more of them, marveling at the golden trail it left, and then tried a different type of firework. This one shot shards of light into the sky before exploding them with a piercing pop! We set off a couple of these, then we noticed a guy by the parking lot, talking shadily into his cell phone.
The first thing we thought was, he's calling the cops. Of course, what we were doing was perfectly legal, but a run-in with the police is never pleasant, especially for me, because I'm deathly afraid of cops. I mean, I have no reason to, I've done nothing wrong. Because I'm deathly afraid of cops.
Eventually, Caleb and John decided to approach him, and asked him if he was calling the cops, and he started laughing. He wasn't.
When they got back, they pulled out this big, cylindrical firework, twice the size of the big firework from before, and lit the fuse. And boy, it was a heck of a show. It shot fireworks super high, and there were three phases too it, and the whole thing lasted quite a while. We launched off the rest of our fireworks with gusto, and then one kid lost her nose stud, so we were all searching for it for a while. but it was really dark, and it became clear that we weren't going to find it that night. So we started to walk home, and then Patrick's car stopped right next to us. He told us he was going to go find ingredients for the next day's breakfast, and so we hopped in to tag along. On the way there, John played some music by this band called 3OH!3, which I hadn't heard of since 2008, but actually had some pretty catchy tunes, most notably Don't Trust Me. When we got there, Jordan and I picked out some fruits for the fruit salad, while Meloney tried to find the "cubes of dough" (misspelled "tubes"). When we got to the checkout, Patrick bought Jordan a plush hedgehog, just for the heck of it. On the way back, we stopped at Royal Farms, and got some slushies and some of their amazing potatoes. I'm not kidding. The slushies were delicious, but the potatoes were out of this world. 
We got back to the house, and we sat around for a bit. We talked for a bit, Caleb went out to get a Monster energy drink, and I went to bed.
The next morning, I got up, and the food we had bought had been put to great use. I filled my plate laden with egg & cheese casserole, cinnamon biscuit cake, delicious and flavorful fruit salad, and pieces of potato. I ate a whole lot of it, and it was all delicious. 
After that, the morning was a bit rushed, as we had to pack up to leave. I found the bag for my tent, and folded it up properly. The rest of the packing was a bit of a blur. We hopped in the bus and started off, so of course, we needed some music. I had prepared a playlist, but all I could think of was all the Sonic soundtracks I owned, and how obnoxious everyone would find them. But Christina, being the great person she is, engouraged me to give it a shot. So I plugged in my iPod. And as it turned out, people loved my music. Focusing on all the Sonic music I had, I had forgotten all about the Coldplay and the Final Countdown and Holding on to You I had. I have a philosophy, in which I don't buy a song unless I'm completely positive that I love it. And that served me well.
We stopped at Denny's to eat, but I was mistrustful of the quality of the food, so I just got some fries. I am kicking myself for not having gotten an Oreo milkshake while I had the chance, because I LOOOVE Oreo milkshakes.
And then, before I knew it... I was home.
It was a great trip, and I loved every second of it. I loved the food, the activities, but what made all that great was the people I got to share them with. I made some new friends on this trip, and I'm looking forward to saying hi to them tomorrow, when school starts again.
​P.S. Sorry for the insanely long post, guys.

A couple weekends ago was the National Science and Engineering Festival. It's the biggest convention of science and engineering in the country, at least as far as I know. It happens every other year, and I go every time they have it. It's really great, being surrounded by all that science, it's just really awesome.
My mom and I took the Metro there. For those of you who don't live around D.C., the Metro is our subway system. I've ridden on it countless times, and I've got a pretty good idea of how to get around on it. This time, when we went, we caught one of the cool new Metro trains. It was all high-tech and shiny, and it was really fun for me.
This year, I focused my visit to the engineering section, because that's the field I'm really interested in. A lot of it seemed like a blur, jumping from one booth to the next, grabbing swag as I went. I saw a lot of cool things as I went around, including some robots that do tai chi, some tiny robots that follow colored lines, and this one dude stuck a bunch of pencils through a plastic bag without breaking it, through the magic of polymer structures. There were a lot of colleges there, showing off. MIT had a booth, and a balloon that reminded me of a famous MIT prank, when they inflated a giant balloon in the middle of a college football stadium during halftime of the big Harvard-Yale game. There were companies like SketchUp, a CAD design software company, and lots of startups showing off cool and innovative products.
​We walked around for hours, and after a while we went to get food. Most of the places were too crowded, so we walked over to a Mexican place and got burritos. I used to dislike burritos, but recently I've started going out for lunch at school. Most days, I walk over to the Chipotle over in the pedestrian mall about a half-mile away. A pretty big improvement since the times when I was freaked out to order from Chik-fil-a. It's gotten a bit more difficult to do that since my school relocated for renovations, though.
After we ate, we went to the second floor, and went to see SpaceX's booth. In case you haven't heard, SpaceX recently managed to land a rocket. Like a whole rocket. None of that jettisoning two-thirds of the craft and making a water landing. It's an actual reusable rocket. A little while after, my feet started screaming from all the walking, and so we left.
The following Tuesday, I didn't have most of my morning classes, because my Fiction class went to see Psycho. We met up at the theater, which meant I got to sleep in an extra twenty minutes. Twenty minutes.​ 
My school was able to see Psycho in the nearby theater because of an educational program the theater has for schools. 
Before the movie started, a guy came in and talked a bit about Hitchcock. Then we began the movie. 
It was pretty cool, but I think I might prefer the book. I know, I know; Psycho was a book?!? Well yup, it was, by a guy named Robert Bloch.
After we finished the movie, I went with some classmates to go get lunch, and then we went back to school.
The next day, my school had its talent show. I performed in it, playing the Super Smash Bros. main theme on the piano, but I didn't do very well. I messed up a bunch of it. But it's fine, not a big deal.
I suppose now is a good a time as any to tell you guys. I'm building this really cool thing. I'm calling it the C-Bit. It's a handheld gaming console/mini computer. 
 
I'm really excited about it. It's the first thing I've ever done like this. I'm giving it a retro, pixel-y LCD screen, using a 3DS Circle Pad for a joystick,  and I'm running it on a Raspberry Pi. I'm going to port some essential games to it, but most of the games will be original, designed by yours truly, using micro SD cards as cartridges. I've found a bunch of 8-bit versions of great songs that I plan to use as soundtracks. I'm going design my own user interface, and give it an accelerometer-gyroscope for some interesting gameplay mechanics. (That's the tilt sensor in your iPhone.) It's going to be really cool. 
I'm also going to be 3D-printing a frame such that I can take a picture of it at every stage of assembly, and you guys can follow my progress on a new blog I'm creating just for it. I hope you guys are as excited about this as I am.
Also, check out this animated GIF image I made of Shadow the Hedgehog from one of my drawings. I think it's pretty cool.