It's been another long time, but I'm back, with 100% more Broadband, and 100% less meaning in life. Oh, and Firefox. <3

Facet 1: MCAS. MCAS week was a week of total relaxation here. Free Chem. Second period was destroyed, but with it Jerry and AE History. An excellent tradeoff in my opinion. Along with it, Trig was half-avoidable, and AE Bio was spent... playing Spades? Apparently Minkoff wanted to learn, and learn he did.

Facet 2: Seventh period Pres. The table is a place of survival of the fittest - an intense competition involving Maksim, Minkoff, Jay Selig, DiRe, Andrew, Viktor, and Brett. Now tell me that's not a party.

Facet 3: Spades. Me and Sofac. The Team . The Legend.

Facet 4: Finals.

Well Max has dragged me out of my idle state in effort to make me update this site. Now I don't want you do get the idea that Max controls any of my life. No, that's not true at all. I'm posting this because I want to.

As you may have heard, I've finished finals, and seniors are finally gone. I'm pretty sure that I'm screwed in French, and I managed a B for the year in Jerry despite "collapsing" in the fourth term. I considered ranting regarding Jerry... But I am finished with that class for life. And with French III H. And with Trig... but I digress. The point is that I'm trying to let go of sophomore English forever.

The last piece of the school year? We never got the act back together after MCAS week. Chem consisted solely of "organic chemistry" - in essence, more nomenclature and no depth whatsoever. The final for chem had a similarly shallow nature; little content, much logic. That's how I prefer it, though.

AE History and AE Bio went by in a blur. I didn't pay much attention, got A-minuses, etc. I picked up some summer reading for AP History next year... pfft, yeah right. As if I'm gonna do anything else this summer anyway. Trig was an indepth study of conic sections, which didn't turn out as horribly Veley-like as I'd feared; its final was surprisingly intuitive and extremely long. French continued as a strictly straightforward and boring-ish class. Its final managed to suck though...

A final academic note: SAT IIs, and though I did horribly, I managed some nice scores with 770/780/800 split on Bio/Chem/Math 2-C. Yay me ^_^

The GameFAQs Villain Battle happened this May. Robert tied 1st in 22000 or more while I tied at around 40th. Congratulations! And Master Hand sucks ass. Next up is Character Battle Summer 2005. My champion: Link. Odds of getting a perfect bracket: 2:1. That's right.

Piano recital was on 6/18. I did pretty poorly with my dual Chopin etudes. It was sadly followed by an unforeseen Asian party, which didn't reek horribly, but still qualified as an Asian party. Back to piano, I'm sticking with the two unused Chopin ones and picking up the "Tempest" sonata by Beethoven. Ooh, intimidatnig name.

Anime: Rurouni Kenshin and Cowboy Bebop, mostly. I wrapped up a full Kyoto Arc in Kenshin; Himura Kenshin is now one of my favorite fictional characters ever. I've barely started Bebop, but Albert hypes it up, and it does show considerable potential to be a respectable series. The art isn't my favorite, but the animation quality is extremely high. Speaking of which, Kenshin's OVAs are the finest Japanese animation around.

Finally, it looks like I'm back to RPGs in gaming. FFX, Chrono Cross, here we go.

Dan's party tomorrow, wot.

And this is how the school year ends. To me, this year was an academic failure in comparison with freshman year. I leave for summer with a slightly bitter feeling, as if time has passed too fast, and as if I have much unfinished business in school with my peers and with my classes. Overall, there was nothing extremely memorable this year; my sparse free periods had terrible attendees, seventh period lunch sucking, overexposure to Indian in Jerry and in Chem. A lapse of mediocrity, with a short-lived jolt of MCAS fun.

But next year.

Next year... blades will bleed. Shields will shatter. Will the hero rise again?

Or will darkness reign?

The Legend of Zelda, coming Q4, 2005

SD