After what felt like the longest school year ever, today marks the end of my Sophomore year! I'm pretty damn excited to finally be on vacation. And so, I figured I'd do a proper blog. :D

I want to start on my grades for this semester, since I'm really proud of how I did.

As a kind of back story to how I've done in school, I will first say this:

In my school district, you start getting letter grades at the third grade level. From third grade to sixth grade I never got anything lower than a B. In 7th grade I got a 92 in Art, marking my first ever B (the cut off from an A to a B is 93=A/92=B). I got two other B's in middle school, another one in Art (fun fact: I had art 4 times in three years of middle school, and it was my least favorite class) and one in Reading, both in 8th grade.

And then came high school. My Freshman year found me struggling with personal problems (which some of you may remember). Well, I also struggled with grades. I got my first ever C in my Global Studies/Civics class. It was really disheartening because I was always proud to be on the Honor Roll (all A's and B's on all report cards). And then this year, first semester, I got a C in Biology, tying my lowest ever grade in a class at an 84%.

At the end of the first semester this year I finally came to peace with some things that happened, and I finally moved on from the emotional distress that had been plaguing me for almost two years. I missed a couple of weeks sick from school and came back determined to succeed once more.

And so now we're at the grades I got during the second semester. Take a peek:

Art 1 - 96%
English 2 Honors - 94%
Spanish - 99%
Intro to Foods - 99%
Intro to HTML - 98%

That's right, straight A's.

Here is my GPA from 3 of the 4 terms of the year (haven't gotten my last report card yet.)

Term 1 - 4.375
Term 2 - 4.0
Term 3 - 4.563

I am quite proud of myself on the increase from the 2nd to 3rd term. I'm excited to get my last report card over the summer so I can see my new GPA (which right now, cumulative is a4.087) and my cIass rank (which was something like 47 of around 350 last time).

Well, now school is done so I don't wanna talk about that anymore. :P So I guess now I'll move onto my gaming plans for the summer.

With the announcement of the 3DS, my wallet started slashing its wrists, knowing that it was going to be brutally emptied with the release of the 3D handheld. I'm already saving money for the 3DS, and I'm happy so say that so far I have around $130 saved up. I might be buying a game for the DS (possibly Dragon Quest IX) to bring with me on my trip to Maine next month, but other than that I'm planning on saving what I have.

I'm going to have a very busy summer with what I do have for games, though. I have a ton of games I need to finish. They are:

• Borderlands (hoping to platinum)
• Valkyria Chronicles
• Monster Hunter Tri
• Super Mario Galaxy 2
• inFamous (hoping to platinum)
• God of War II
• 3D Dot Game Heroes (hoping to platinum)
• Final Fantasy XIII (more trophies)

And on top of that I'll probably play a few other games for fun. Those are:

• Battlefield Bad Company 2
• Super Smash Brothers Brawl
• Mario Kart Wii

So yeah, I'm gonna be a busy person this summer. :P

And now to finish up on the gaming segment of this blog, my PS3 trophy card. (I haven't gotten many trophies lately with school finals though)

(those trophies are from 3D Dot Game Heroes)

Lately I've been using GIMP a lot more to make designs. I created my current theme and I really like it, and I made a few other sigs. I used pretty much one tutorial for all of them because I wanted to test it, so they're all similar and only the one I'm using now is any good. Here they are:

(the one I'm using)

Let's see.. I think it's time for union updates.

First and foremost, I recently got a promotion at the Toonami Union. If you didn't know, the Toonami Union is one of the biggest unions on GameSpot, and PROBABLY the biggest anime/manga/comic union (I've never seen another union get a 10,000 view day). I've been a member there for almost two years, and I've always wanted to be an officer. I'm honored to have the job and I hope that I don't disappoint. (though they may have noticed my absence the past few days, but that's only because of finals :P)

Legend of Nintendo is doing great under the leadership of kjhg53. I'm glad I gave the job to him because he's doing a great job as the leader. I kind of miss the spot, I won't lie, but I know it's in great hands.

I'm trying to get active again at All-Out Nintendo, so don't worry about me not being active over the summer. :P

http://www.last.fm/user/SoraX64

That's my last.fm account, which shows how much music I've listened to. Check it out and send me a friend request if you want to. :D

Alllllrighty, we'll end this blog off with some anime and manga updates.

http://myanimelist.net/animelist/SoraX64

http://myanimelist.net/mangalist/SoraX64

My main summer projects include:

• Re-reading Mai-HiME
• Re-reading parts of One Piece
• Starting a few new manga
• Keeping up with K-ON!!
• Watching Baccano!
• Watching Shakugan no Shana II
• Checking out Durarara!
• Finishing Girls Saurus DX
• Finding and reading the last chapter of My Balls

There may or may not be more, I'm not sure. It depends on how the above works out.

Well, I hope that wasn't too long for everyone's attention spans! I also hope that those who do have the attention span to read all of that enjoyed it!

Thanks for reading, and see you next time!
~Sora