I recently aquired a copy of The Sims 2, and let me tell you, its just as addicting as the first. Remember back in the day of the original sims when you'd waste away many an hour sitting in front of your computer living the life of your beloved sim? Okay, maybe you didn't do that, but I sure did. I can't recall another game that has hooked me into its gameplay as much as the first Sims did. I would spend hours building a house, more hours furnishing it, and an even greater amount of time living in it through my sims. That was about 4 years ago, and now the publishers have come out with a sequel to the original that delivers the same fun and more (how the hell is that possible? I don't know, but Maxis pulled it off). And if you're wondering, no, they didn't pay me to say that.

Now back to life. I haven't updated in so long that I have honestly forgotten the majority of the stuff I promise myself to write in here. Whenever something significant happens, I always say to myself, "Ooh! That's a good blog topic!" Then I procrastinate in typing the blog, and therefore the event slips my mind. Let's see what I do remember though.

This whole week the Grimshaw twin's older brother was supposed to come to waterpolo practice and show us the tape he made of recent JV games and analysis them and stuff. Everyday of the week novice would plead coach Anthony if we could watch it too, and everytime Anthony would say now. The tape didn't come in until Friday's practice, and with one more plead, Anthony just told us to shutup, get in the pool, and start the warmup. So we all jump in and I finish 25 meters out of our 200 meter warmup when Anthony's like, "Okay, get out, we're gonna go watch the tape." o.O. Yeah, thanks for letting us watch the tape right after we jump into the pool.

Saturday was the novice waterpolo tournment at Valhalla. To sum the day up, we lost 2 and won once. We lost the first game against Santana, but I don't think we should have lost that one. We play better than that, but we were making stupid mistakes. Second game against Hilltop we won. The score was almost even with Hilltop down one and only 2 seconds left. Trying to bring the game into overtime, a Hilltop player flings the ball from across the pool at our goal right as the buzzer ends the last quarter, and Nick, our goalie, leaps out of the water to block the shot. Damn good block. Also in that game, Mike got kicked out for being "too aggressive." The ref didn't say anything else but that. How the hell does one get kicked out for being too aggressive? It's waterpolo, dammit. That pissed Anthony off and he said quite audibly, "Yeah, the ref we have SUCKS." Then then ref took his wallet out and gave him the yellow card. Right before the game starts up again, I hear the Hilltop coach yelling at someone in the water, saying stuff like, "Stop pushing my guy under water! Do that again, and I'm gonna jump in and kill you! These guys can't swim, they're freshman team!" I didn't know who he was takling to, but God, we're a freshman team, too. It's not like we have much of an advantage over him. Later, I found out that the other coach was yelling at Scott because Scott had his hands up and was pressing out against the guy, not even using his hands, but the guy he was guarding was going under or something cause he couldn't damn swim. We our third game against Coronado, but then again, Coronado's supposed to be like elite, so oh well. I forget in which game, but in one of them while MC was on defense Scott yelled for a switch with me on the guy's we were defending. Since the guy Scott was defending was behind him, I couldn't see him at first and asked, "with who??" The guy I was currently defending took this oppertunity of confusion to try to get away, and as he tried to swim away, Scott apparently grabbed him by the throat to pull him back. Then the guy yelled "GET THE FUCK OFF OF ME!" The ref blew her whistle to stop the game, and asked who it was, and the guy who had cussed got ejected. Heh. It was a pretty fun day. I was there from 8:15 AM to 5:30 PM. Since only about 3 of those hours were used for playing waterpolo, we just hung out the rest of the time. Nick's mom went several times to buy us stuff like a deck of cards and food from 7-11, so that was pretty cool of her. I missed CYO for it, and so I'm kinda screwed for the seating auditions we have next week, but oh well, I think it was worth it.

Then today I went to Chinese school, and Chinese school is always fun ( ... ). Then I came home, played some sims, celebrated my Grandpa's birthday, played some more sims, and here I am. I should go. Goodnight.

I'll keep this entry short. Not because I want to, but because I have to, seeing as its 9:24 PM and I still have a lot of homework to finish. This whole week has been busy as hell. Way to busy, in my oppinion. Last Friday we played Granite Hills in waterpolo and we (Freshmen team, cause I'm on the freshmen team since this is my first year playing) lost 10 - 5 or something like that. They never keep score of freshmen goals, so I don't know for sure. Saturday was my audition into Civiv Youth Orchestra, and got in easily. It also helped that the directer, Mr. Gilsen, was lenient on me because he kinda somewhat knows me. Then on Sunday the first day of Chinese school came. Chinese school is such a bitch, but atleast the other kids there are cool. Monday after waterpolo practice I came home and worked on homework until 10:30 PM when my dad told me to go to sleep. That's 5 and a half straight hours with only a dinner and shower break. Tuesday I left school early to get my physcial done, and I got a tetnus shot. Then I came back to school and we played Westview in waterpolo and we killed them something like 20 - 2, and I'm not even exaggerating the score. I thought I did pretty good considering I had gotten a tetnus shot an hour before and my left arm felt like someone had punched it 3 of 4 times as hard as they could. Our team sucks, so that means that WV must suck a hell of a lot more. After the game we had a waterpolo barbecue. It was good. Then I came home and did homework till 10 PM. Today during waterpolo practice Anthony got pissed and made us do 10 sets 50 meters, butterfly. Fun. Actually, no, more like hell. Then I came home and worked on homework and now I'm taking a break to right in this so I don't go over my limit of one week without updating.
No waterpolo practice tomorrow or Friday so I have some more time to catch up on homework. Man, I'm doing all this work and guess what? I'm still behind. Saturday is my first day at CYO. CYO last 9 to noon, but I have to be at the pool deck noon to 3 to work the clocks for the waterpolo tournament, so that's a bit of bad planning there. Bye.

This past weekend I went airsofting with Chris at Mr. Paintball. There's not much to say about that except it was hot as hell but still fun. And for you people that'll ask, "you spent a whole day airsofting and don't have anything to write about it?" I'll write a little summary of it. It was my first time ever at Mr. Paintball, even though I've heard a lot about it from airsoft and paintballing friends alike. Entrance fee was $20 dollars and an extra $5 for lunch; not too bad of a deal. Sodas from their fridge were a dollar, but powerades were $2 (?!). So expensive, yet I still bought one cause I was stupid and dehydrated. As far as my performance for the day went, it was pretty average. I got shot some, killed some, on some occasions killed multiple baddies in a game, etc. One of my most memorables shots of the day happened near the end of the day when most of the players had already left and there were only like 7 people left. We were playing in a place with bunkers clustered extremely close together and open building here and there. It was an extremely scary place to be cause it was basically CQB (close quarters battles), and considering its the most feared environment in real life combat, it wasn't much different in airsoft, especially when everyone playing had an upgraded gun. I was peeking out the doorway of a building I was in when I saw a person on my team and an enemy literally run into each other. They stopped and stood there, debating on what to do cause they were too close (5 feet apart?) for them to fire at each other with upgraded weapons. And the the on the other team was standing right there. Right in the open. No more than 15 in front of me. I was wondering if I should take advantage of the situation, even though it probably should have been time out for those 2 cause they were having a conversation. But the chance was too good to pass up, so I switched my gun to semi-auto and fired a single BB at his general direction. General direction as in not aiming because he was too close to miss. But somehow, my BB found its way to his crotch. When it made contact, he instantly keeled over and started moaning (with laughs mixed in). I was deeply apologetic, but he was really cool about it. More so since he was like a 40 year old guy, and was buff and 2 heads taller than me.

Later that night, I went to Jessica's house for her surprise birthday party, but missed the surprised because I was half an hour late due to a late carpool home from airsofting. Besides Jessie, Donald, and Danielle, I really didn't know anyone else at the party because they were from WV. But hey, that means an oppertunity to make friends :P. And thats an oppertunity that I usually pick up on. By the end of the night I was dying with a stuffy/runny nose, red, itchy, eyes, and I could barely keep my eyes open cause I'm allergic to cats, and Jessie has a cat. lol. So the next time I go to her house I'll have to remember to take allergy medicine before hand :P.

Today, we took a test in both math and humanities. And in both tests, I'm unsure about my grade because I thought both were kidna hard. Then in orchestra we sight read stuff, and strangely, I was able to sight read it pretty well. That means my fears of the orchestra not being as good as last year have been confirmed :P (for me, anyways). First off, I jump nearly a whole section in one summer, and second, I can sight read the 1st violin stuff with only a little bit of difficulty. Last year when I was in seconds, I could barely play the stuff when we were sight reading. Now, a whole section later, I can do it. Even my standpartner, Vladik, commented that the music this year is a hell of a lot easier than last years. The orhcestra has always had a reputation for being difficult, but a hell of a lot better than other schools. I'm afraid that its starting to slip beginning with this year. I'm still not pleased with the seating chart. Orchestra has turned into politics.

I had more to say, but I forget. Oh yeah, my audition for CYO is this saturday and we have a waterpolo game on Friday against Granite Hills at MC. I've come to the conclusion that waterpolo is a kickass fun game after you've trained for it long enough so that you don't get tired so easily from sprinting back and forth the pool.

That's all I can remember.

Man, too many things happened today so that it just wouldn't be right if I didn't post. It was a lab day, so second period AP art history was first on my schedule. As it stand, we are still screwed in that class; our normal teacher is out on maternity leave for the next couple weeks and we have a substitute who doesn't know how to run the class and has trouble even getting the slide projector working right. For the past 2 days when we had to use the projector, she had to call Mr. Currie over to help, who always called the school technician who looks like the fat guy from Office Space. The guy with the glasses and talks funny about his stapler. Heh. It'll be interesting to see how we fare on the AP test near the end of the year. During break I had a cinnamon roll, which I've seem to taking a liking to and have bought everyday for the past week.

Ahh, APEC. So much crap happens in this class that it deserves a paragraph all to its own. I think that its safe to say that this is my favorite class of all this year, even more than humanities. The only reason why humanities ranks second is because Mr. Currie is almost exactly like Mr. Pacilio from last year, so I'm used to it, unlike many of the other people in my class who are like "YEEAAHH HUMANITES FAVORITE WHOOO!!" That's why humanities ranks second. What makes APEC my favorite is because of the people in that class, the things that happen, and the teacher. Mr. Raskin does somewhat come out like a jackass, and I'm sure he tries to make it that way, but there's something I can't explain about him that attracts people to him and makes him pretty cool. For example, on the first day when he was explaining "current events," he said something along the lines of "And if you have an event to share that you know someone else also has, please don't hesitate to fight to be the first to share it. It's always fun to see the other people in the class with the same current even all moan at the same cause you've taken their event. Free entertainment for the rest of the class." Or just the other day when the recycling collector walked in and Raskin told him he didn't have anything to recycle, that sparked a whole discussion about recycling. Mr. Raskin talked about "I don't recycle because we're lying to ourselves when we do. We put up ad's that say 'Recycle to save the planet' and such, but what we really want to do is save ourselves. You see, even after we're long gone, the planet will heal itself. I doesn't need us to help it. We just use 'save the planet' cause it looks better than 'save ourselves.' If it actually told the truth, then maybe I'd recycle. *chuckle* No, actually, I don't recycle because I just don't care =)." He's sadistic, but funny. Today in that class, Ambrose and Katie were talking, and apparently Ambrose started getting on Katie's nerves cause she turned around and swung her fist at him. It missed by like 2 cm cause Ambrose turned his head, but I sat there for a few seconds, and then realized "whoa! that was really close!" That made my day. A little while later while giving me current event, "Hurricane Fran-" and like 3 people in different part of the room go "Nooooo!! That was my event!" Even later, Mr. Raskin went into another room to kick some ass, but he closed the door and all of us were like "damn! somebody open the door!" So Ambrose crouched down and tiptoed over to the door and cracked it open just slightly, when somebody shrieked "He's coming back!" Ambrose was still crouched down at the foot of the door, so he ran his way, still crouched, back towards his seat and sat down just before Mr. Raskin walked through the door. It was done so proffessionaly that I didn't think that Ambrose would have been caught. And Ambrose was just sitting there with a straight face looking foward like nothing had happend. Man, I'd never be able to do that. But when Mr. Raskin came through, he took his good 'ol time going to his desk, picking up his pool noodle, walking over to Ambrose, and gave him a good whap with it. That was the second thing that made my day. Oh yeah, we were voting for our class's senate representative, and 4 girls went up to do it. Then George went up just as a joke, knowing he'd never win. But ironically, he won. Oh yeah, he won by a landslide with like 80 percent of the class's votes. That was interesting.

Then at lunch, nothing new. Everything's always crazy during lunch with the people I sit with. There was a fight, first one of the year, I believe. Its good to know that people still keep up the tradition.

During PE, when everyone else had to run a mile, me, Chris, Mikey, Wes, and Peter only had to run half a mile cause we had a waterpolo game later. Then we went down to play raquetball and me and Ravi totally kicked ass. lol. After school, we all and visited Coach J for a while and then headed to the pool deck. I watched JV and Varsity play while I finished my math homework, and got changed to play later for novice. I wasn't the only sophmore on novice cause Peter was playing, too. We lost, but not by much, and I thought it was pretty good considering it was our first scrimmage against another school and it was our novice vs. their JV. There was one point during the game where I was defending a guy, I did my job when the ball came by, prevented him from shooting the ball into the goal, but then I led my guard off and I somehow let him drift a few feet away from me towards the goal -_-. No more than 5 seconds later, only a few meters away from the goal and with no one defending him, he got the ball and fired it in for a point for his team. Right as he caught the ball I was like "FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!!" At that point the coach was like "Michael, do you need a break?" and I meekly nodded my head. I came out extremely pissed off that I had let him get away with that. When I went back in, I gave all my effort to defend my guy, and I guess I hell of a lot more aggressive that I was than in the last quarter, cause the guy I was defending was surprised, and got more aggressive on me, too, to the point where we were literally drowning each other. Just then the ball landed by my head and I picked it up, almost with 2 hands. Actually, I think I did with 2 hands, but it was for so little a time that I'm pretty certain its safe to say both my hands made contact on the ball for less thatn a 5th of a second. But a fraction of a second or not, I shouldn't have done that, and it was lucky that the ref didn't call me out. Then as this guy's defending me and I'm struggling to stay up with the ball, I decide to draw a foul, but then he acutally fouls me. How convenient.

When I came home, I studdied for Hon. Humanities vocab test tomorrow, APEC vocab test tomorrow, and AP art history test tomorrow. I gotta go. Bye.