My friend Quacker and I were both planning on going, so we decided to meet up and have a bite to eat beforehand.

I showed up at her place, and I got to say hi to her very friendly dog, Mango! We chatted for a bit, and then we headed out. We both looked very snazzy!

We headed out to a french restaurant downtown. I ordered steak, and she ordered chicken. This place had some really good frites, and we spent a good amount of time just munching on those.
Then we split a creme brulee for dessert, a dish I've never had before. It was delicious, and I'm glad I got the chance to try it!

Then, we headed over to the prom, which was held in the same venue as it was my freshman year. Everyone was dressed up and looked really nice, and we went around and greeted the people there. Then we went to the photo booth and took some pictures.

After that, we went to one of the benches at the sides of the room. Crowds aren't our favorite thing in the world. Also, we'd gotten there pretty early, and the dance floor hadn't really become active yet. Aside from snacking from the refreshments, there wasn't much to do. I tried to go up on the empty dance floor and just dance by myself a couple times, but it got really awkward really quickly and I always retreated to the bench.
We spent a while just browsing the internet on our phones and just generally chilling. After a while, I remembered I'd brought my Nintendo Switch, and offered to play some Mario Kart. So we had fun doing that for a while!

After a while, people finally started dancing, but the music playing was all trap music, which I can't dance to. The intense bass became uncomfortable blasting in our ears, so we headed to a nearby outdoor covered area and resumed our having a blast in Mario Kart.

All the while, I was listening for the music to switch to something I could dance to. I had requested a specific song as well, Lone Digger by Caravan Palace. I'd made up my mind that when that song came on, regardless of whether there was anyone else dancing, I would get on the dance floor and bust out my best moves.
​After a while, we returned to the party, and wandered around a bit. There were big cards for all the seniors, and Quacker and I signed each other's.

When the event was nearing its end, I heard the opening of Lone Digger coming from the speakers, and I rushed to the dance floor and started dancing up a storm.

After that, the songs that played were reasonably danceable. Quacker and I and some other students had some fun dancing until at 11, the prom ended and we left. I returned with Quacker to her house, and we played Mario Kart for another hour before my dad picked me up and I returned home.
All in all, it was a very fun night!

Hey guys.
So for the past few months I've been obsessing over the flyest gaming company's awesome upcoming console: the Nintendo Switch.

I fell in love with it as soon as I saw the First Look announcement video in October. ​If you haven't seen it yet, you need to go see it IMMEDIATELY.

And last week, I got the chance of a lifetime. Since I'm a member of Nintendo's membership program, I was invited to an exclusive preview event for their new console. The next day, it was open to the general public, but that day they let people in in small groups-- only a couple hundred at a time.

I went with my friend Kyra, as we're both really into video games. We got to the event early, and there was already a large crowd outside. When they opened the doors, I could barely contain my excitement! Inside, we lined up in an anteroom, with a red wall separating us from the event. I could hear some music playing from the room.
I walked through the doorway into the room, and I was blown away. It was a truly majestic sight to behold. Video game demo setups in every corner, video game artwork adorning the walls, A big stage at the front with a big screen playing Switch commercials... and right before the stage, at the end of a red path through the center of the room, on a pedestal on display in a glass case, the Nintendo Switch console in all its glory.

The first game we played was the new Mario Kart game. It was tons of fun to play using the tablet, and it was clear that this is a whole new way to enjoy playing Mario Kart. 
All of the Nintendo representatives there were wearing cool Nintendo Switch shirts, and I asked one guy where I could get one. He said they weren't giving them out, but that they were giving out hats, so if they asked for volunteers I should go up there.

Next, we went to play Nintendo's totally new game, ARMS. It's a fighting game where you use the controllers-- the Joy-Cons-- with motion controls, to throw punches. Here's the twist, though-- all of the characters have extendable arms! So it combines traditional combat with projectile gameplay, and it's really fun! You might think that it would be difficult to control, but the gameplay was really dynamic, intuitive, and exciting. I played against Kyra, and we had lots of fun.

Next we lined up for another game. While we were in line, though, they started asking for volunteers up on the stage, so I ran up to volunteer.
I participated in the onstage demonstration of one of the minigames in 1-2-Switch. 1-2-Switch is basically a fun 2-player game that utilizes the unique Joy-Cons.
The Joy-Cons are Nintendo's cool controllers for the Switch. They can be used together as a single controller for some of the more intense games, or they can be split into two separate controllers, so that two can enjoy the fun. 
1-2-Switch is a game that really makes good use of the Joy-Cons, with its motion controls, rumble, and traditional controller elements. The interesting thing about the minigames in 1-2-Switch is that as you interact with the game using the Joy-Cons, you don't look at the screen-- you look at the opponent. 
I played the Quick Draw minigame, in which I held my Joy-Con at my side, until the announcer called "FIRE!" and I tried to point my Joy-Con at my opponent and press the button before the other player did on his controller. Alas, I wasn't fast enough, and I lost, but I still got a hat! I was really excited about my hat.

I returned to the line where Kyra was waiting, and together we played a fun puzzle game called Snipperclips. In Snipperclips, two people play as shapes, and each shape can overlap into the other, and cut out that bit from the other shape to solve puzzles using unique shapes. Though difficult to describe, it's quite fun!

After finishing with Snipperclips, we went to play Splatoon 2, the sequel to the very successful Splatoon. In Splatoon, you are equipped with an ink blaster that you have to use to cover as much of the ground with your team's color ink as possible. It's tons of fun!
Splatoon 2 wasn't that different; all of the basics of Splatoon still applied. But it was still very fresh.
When they called us up, we were very excited. Kyra and I play Splatoon together a lot, and we're a really dynamic team.

We and the other two gamers on our team totally crushed our opponents! High-fives were exchanged.

After our rousing victory in Splatoon 2, we went over to try a game that I was really excited about-- Sonic Mania! This is SEGA's newest installment in the Sonic franchise. As you guys might know, I'm a pretty big fan of the Sonic games, despite some... changes in recent years, none of which are present in this game. Sonic Mania is a homage to the classic 2D Sonic games, back in the nineties with hits like Sonic the Hedgehog 2. 
Conveniently enough, this is one of the games that can be played with a single Joy-Con. I played as Sonic, and Kyra joined me as Tails. We only got to play one stage, but it was a whole lot of fun. I could tell, this is going to be a great game. 
To be honest, though, I'm even more excited for Project Sonic 2017, a more modern Sonic game coming out for the Switch around the holidays. It looks like it's going to imbue the same cinematic spirit as Sonic Unleashed did.

After we finished rolling around at the speed of sound with Sonic, we went to a small display at the side, where a rep showed us how the Switch can "switch" between all the different modes, and we got the satisfaction of confirming that the Joy-Cons do indeed make the click sound when put into the Joy-Con Grip.

After we were done there, we went to play a high-speed, high-octane, futuristic racing game called Fast RMX. We played for a couple minutes until they called for people to try The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Breath of the Wild (or BotW for short) is the newest game in the Legend of Zelda series. It's the biggest, most anticipated game coming out for the system. Zelda fans and newcomers to the series alike are really excited about it. And rightly so--this game has been under development for a long time, due to the developers' dedication to putting as much in it as possible. It's got a map several times larger than any game world before it-- 136 square miles!--and all sorts of wonders of gameplay.
I'm psyched for it, in fact it's the game I'm getting with the system. But I didn't play it at the event. I'm really looking forward to exploring everything this game has to offer, and I want every inch of it to be new when I do. I'm going as far as to avoid most news about the game.
However, Kyra did play the game, and she really enjoyed it. She said it was incredible! She didn't do any of the story stuff, though-- she just rode around battling monsters.

While Kyra was playing BotW, I played some Super Bomberman R. I'm not really familiar with the Bomberman series, and some of the nuances of the game were lost on me, but I had a fair amount of fun playing it.
​I also took some cool pictures with the Master Sword.

When Kyra got back from playing BotW, we went to play Ultra Street Fighter II. The Street Fighter series is a quite well-established fighting game series, and Street Fighter II is the most well-known and celebrated of them all. And Capcom, the developers of the series, are always updating Street Fighter II for new systems. Ultra Street Fighter II offers the same great gameplay as the original, in both the classic arcade pixel display and visually stunning HD graphics.
Neither I nor Kyra had ever played Street Fighter before, but we had a tiny amount of experience when its flagship character, Ryu, appeared in Super Smash Bros.
I picked the dependable Ryu for battle, and Kyra chose M.Bison. Thanks to Ryu being in Smash Bros., I figured out Ryu's special move, the Hadouken, pretty easily. The Hadouken is a projectile attack, in which Ryu throws a fireball from his hands at the opponent. I was able to use this to keep Kyra at bay, although she still beat me most of the times. The game was a lot of fun!

After we were finished battling, we had just enough time to play another game of Mario Kart. This time, we used individual Joy-Cons. The Joy-Cons may look like they're too small to use easily, but in reality they're really comfortable and easy to use. I'll say it again; this is really going to be a whole new way to play Mario Kart.

Eventually, our session ended, and we had to go. I didn't leave empty-handed, though; I had a cool new hat to show for it. If there is one thing I can say about the whole experience, it's this:
​The Nintendo Switch is awesome.

Recently, my school had our annual Thanksgiving brunch, where students, teachers, and alumni get together, bring food, and do all sorts of activities. (If you've been keeping up with my blog for a while, you probably remember last year's.) My favorite part of the event is the Super Smash Bros. tournament! Both last year and this year, I had the honor of hosting the tournament. As always, I was really excited. 

As I did last year, I contributed my 3D-printing abilities to make a trophy for the tournament this year.

The day of the tournament, I got there at 8 am and started setting up. I got a lot of help from my good friend Kyra. I'm going to graduate after this year, and she's going to be taking up the role of hosting the tournament.

Our main building is under construction, so we were in a temporary space, and I found a great room to host it in. It was long enough to fit a lot of chairs in, so we could have a lot of audience and awaiting competitors watching.

Players started to trickle in, and the tournament began. We had a lot of skill in the roster this year, and matches were exciting. A lot of the alumni heavy-hitters came back to compete, and there were plenty of new challengers proving themselves. Needless to say, matches were heated!

​I returned to the fray as Samus. 

There was a lot of competition, but I'd been practicing for months, and I was in it to win it.
I won my way through the matches, through the quarterfinals and the semifinals, until it was the championship match, and I was fighting against Luis, the very player who had beaten me in the finals the previous year.

What followed was one of the most intense Smash Bros battles I've ever played.  Somehow I managed to eke out an advantage...

AND I WON.

Words cannot describe how excited and happy I was when I finished that battle. This has been a goal of mine for quite some time, and I could hardly believe I'd actually made it. When the winner was announced, the crowd cheered for me, and Luis did the honor of handing me the trophy. 

After all the tournament was done, the remaining players and audience got together and played a couple casual rounds of 8-player Smash. We had a lot of fun, and finally we had to pack up and head out. I left that day with my golden trophy, a $20 Nintendo eShop gift card, and an unassailable feeling of success and accomplishment.

Also, when I made a school announcement the next school day to thank people for participating, someone asked who won, and when I answered that it was me, everyone applauded. That felt pretty nice. ^-^

I managed to save some of the replays of the battles and I put them together into a playlist of the highlights from the epic tournament. You can watch it below!
I unfortunately wasn't able to capture the championship match, but I was able to capture a lot of the action that went down this year!

So this year, I actually went to two proms. I went to the first one with my sister's friend Deborah. Before we left, everyone going met up at my house, and we took some pictures. This was a bit more formal then most of my school's proms are, so I had to rent a tuxedo. After we left the house, we went to a fancy restaurant and sat at a really big table. I had a burger, truffle fries, and a big Oreo milkshake. I cannot stress enough how awesome Oreo milkshakes are. I enjoyed the dinner, and I liked talking to my date and some of the other people at the table. Overall, it was fun.

​After dinner, we went to the actual prom part. Before long we went out to the dance floor, but I wasn't really able to dance like I normally do. It was pretty much just a crowd, every inch was packed. I did get to say hi to some people I hadn't seen in a long while. Not a whole lot actually happened during the prom, but it was pretty cool.

After the prom, we went over to the high school for the after-prom. We stayed there until around four in the morning. I pretty much just sat at a table, downing Izze beverages, talking with this one guy from the group. Soon, we left and went back home.

The next weekend, I had my school's prom. It was held in a venue at a park, right next to the playground. I spent a fair amount of time swinging on the swings. I got to dress up in my suit, which was pretty cool.

I did a bit of dancing, but most of the music was trap music, so I didn't get to do as much dancing as I normally do.They had a photo booth, but the camera was too low, or maybe I was too tall, and I had to sort of squat down in order to get my face in the frame. I don't really realize how tall I've gotten lately except in times like these.

I just hung out for a while, drinking a bunch of ginger ale, and after a while I decided to go outside and swing on the swings some more. I heard voices coming from inside a tree in the playground, and I thought it was some of the students. But I approached the tree, and it was just three random kids hanging out.

I went back inside, and soon after, went back home.

The following Friday, I went to school dressed up in fancy clothes, and left around lunch to go to my sister Claire's graduation. Her school is big, and the place where they had the graduation was bigger than most basketball stadiums.
There was a bunch of deliberation and rigmarole before the actual graduation bit; they had five or six speeches, one of which was given by a Medal of Honor recipient who went there. I was reading funny stories on my iPod during some of the speeches, I would have been bored out of my skull otherwise.

Claire's really smart, and she's worked really hard to get where she is. They give the graduates fancy colored ropes to wear for each honor society they're in, and Claire had so many that, combined with the robe, she looked like a high-level wizard.

After the ceremony, we walked to a nearby restaurant and ate some dinner.

The following weekend, there were a lot of graduation parties going on. A lot of my sister's friends invited me along with Claire, so I decided to spend the day going around to some graduation parties.

The first one I went to was for Claire's friend Hayden. I said hello to everyone when I got there, and then spent the rest of the time petting one of the dogs there.

Later we went over to another party, this one for Claire's friend Moira. We played a ball game that I haven't played since elementary school, called "Dead or Alive," for a while.

Then we went over to the graduation party for Ashton, another friend of Claire's. While there, I drank a lot of soda, and met Ashton's older sister, Brigitta. She's a big Smash Bros player, so we talked a while about that. Later, I left and went back home.

The next day was Claire's graduation party. For the first bit, I stayed in my room, but after a while I went downstairs. I played some Smash Bros with my friends, and talked a bit with people, and a after while we watched a cool edited video about Claire. It was really well put-together, and I think everyone really enjoyed it.
Afterwards, I drank a bunch of soda before the party ended. It was a fun day.

The next week was the LAST WEEK OF SCHOOL! It wasn't as awesome for me, though. I mean, yeah, no more stressful homework, but to me it signified more of all my friends that I won't get to see until next year, and others that I might never see again. I had a lot of that experience last year, so the end of the year really isn't that exciting for me now.
It was also my last week at my Makerspace until the end of the summer, which is going to make it more difficult to work on my engineering projects.

On Friday, I went to my school's graduation to see all of my friends off. The ceremony was cool, and I got to see a lot of my friends who are graduating. Afterwards, we all gathered in the reception area, lots of people said goodbye, we all hugged it out, it was a good time. A lot of my friends are leaving, but I'm definitely going to keep in touch with them.

After all of that, my friend Charles, who had just graduated, invited me to go see the new Warcraft movie with him and Mike. There was a bit of confusion, but I got in soon after the movie started.  I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, considering my limited knowledge of the game it originated from. It had a lot of cool special effects and stuff. 
After the movie ended, I went and had a burrito from Chipotle, and then went back home.

The next day, I went to Charles's graduation party! The first thing I thought when I pulled up his driveway was, He has a big house. 
The party started at an enormous pond, where there were water guns, music, and a zip line. Charles and I spent a lot of time trying to commandeer his brother's large floating platform as pirates.
After a bit, some more of the graduating seniors from our school arrived. They seemed happy to see me, and I was very happy to see them. Many hugs were exchanged, despite the fact that I was wet from the pond.
After a while, we went in to eat. Charles' family is vegan, so there was a lot of food that I've never had a lot of, so I got to try some new stuff. While it wasn't something that I would eat regularly, it was cool to have that experience.
Soon after, we made some popcorn, seasoned with some delicious condiments, and we just talked around the table for a while. It was nice to have a hearty chat, and we all might not be together like this for a while. Well, not until Thanksgiving, anyway!

Afterwards, we went out to jump on the trampoline. Now, when I say trampoline, you probably think of those elevated, squeaky tent & tarp setups. This was not that. This was some next-level, turbo stuff. It was set into the ground, so there was like a pit underneath it so you could just walk on. And when you jumped on this thing, it launched you something like five feet into the air! It was wild and awesome. 
After we were done on the trampoline, Charles, Luis, and I went down to the basement, and played air hockey and foosball for a while. Then we played some Super Smash Bros until Luis had to leave.

After a while, we went upstairs to the library, and for a while we sat in recliners as we watched videos, talked about deep stuff like life and the universe, and exchanged spooky stories. After he told his, I'm pretty sure he's got a ghost. 
He also has a lot of dogs. There's one enormous Great Dane, a feisty black lab, and something like three others.

I spent the next week taking the ACT, and after that I went to Avalon and worked at the five and dime for a few days. From there, I went over to Hood College for a college engineering program, where I'll be for the next few weeks!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!