As of Thursday, I am now on summer break. I would have posted this sooner, but I haven't really had a moment of free time since I got out. I spent the two days immediately following my last finals nonstop with Olivia, so I didn't have time to stop and say anything here. Now that I have some free time, I'll throw something together for you guys to read. My struggle with grades pretty much came to an end over the past few weeks; my GPA this quarter rose back up to where it should be, a 4.188, which makes my cumulative a 4.197. I also found out that my class rank is 31 out of 321, which means I am in the top 10% of the cIass. I want to get into the 20's next year, so I'll be working even harder. My biggest disappointment with my grades was my Advanced Math Honors grade. I had done poorly in the first half of the cIass, averaging a 74 and failing almost every test and quiz we had. This second half, I was able to pull a grade of 87, which brought my average to an 80: a B. BUT the world hates me, and I got a 70 on my final in that class, and since it is worth 10% of my grade, my grade dropped down to a 79.3. Yes. I was .2 off from getting a B in the cIass. Saddening. :( Other than that I did fine in my other cIasses. I got an 87 in English III Honors, an 88 in US History Enriched, and a 98 in Computer Technology. That makes this quarter my best of the year (GPA wise, since I was taking Honors courses). Next year will be even better. Next year excites me. I'm looking forward to my Virtual High School Computer Science AP course the most, because I plan to major in Computer Science. That course is a full year long, as well as my Computer Technology 2 course. I'm also taking Calculus Enriched, Principles of Technology, Economics Enriched, and College Composition. This will be my senior year, and it looks like it will be a lot easier than the last few. The hardest course I'll have will be Calculus, but I've always been good at math so I'm not worried, especially since it is an Enriched course instead of an Honors course. I decided I wasn't going to take any AP courses besides Computer Science, because I'm tired of feeling stressed about school all of the time and because I would like to take it easy next year and enjoy my senior year. But that's enough about school. That's over and done with for a couple of months. :P 95% of my time is spent with Olivia. We're approaching 3 months dating (July 11th will be 3 months) and I have enjoyed every moment of it. It's a great feeling, and it is great fun. I've changed a lot as a person as well, I've gotten more confident and more secure about myself. Not to mention I'm more social, hence the lack of posting here. :P That means that my hobbies have dwindled down quite a bit; I haven't been gaming as much, I haven't been reading as much, I haven't been watching anime as much, and so on. I don't really have an issue with that, because I'm still really enjoying how my time is spent. I've done a tad of graphics over the past few weeks though, take a peek:

Nothing fantastic, just some dabbling here and there. I'm hoping to start doing these more actively again now that I don't need to worry about school. I've also been trying to keep up with manga. I've been keeping up with some of the big titles like Naruto, Bleach, and Bakuman. I've also been rereading I''s because I told myself I was going to do that. I also reread Shaman King, which might explain my new theme. :P Once I finish with I''s, I'm not sure what I'm going to move on to. Suggestions are welcome. As far as gaming, I haven't been doing much. I will occasionally play some Bad Company 2 on the PC (in fact, I kind of feel like doing that right now, so I might do that once I finish with this blog) and I've started The Witcher 2 on the PC as well. Besides that my gaming life is just about dead. This is, it will be until Battlefield 3 comes out. I am really looking forward to that game. I'm kind of upset that it is coming out after I go back to school. I would have loved to spend my summer with it. :( One thing that I haven't been skimping on is music. I've gotten back into Metal lately, and I've been finding a lot of new bands. I'm trying to get Olivia to like some of the music that I do, so I've been locating bands that I thought she might like, and then starting to like them myself. I've discovered: 55 Escape, Artas, Bleed the Sky, A Broken Silence, Brother Firetribe, Come to Dolly, Degradead, Delain, Denial Machine, Destrage, Dimension Zero, Dreamshade, Egypt Central, Empathic, Eye of the Enemy, Fail Emotions, His Statue Falls, Icon in Me, Imaginary Flying Machines, Index Case, Northern Kings, The Rose Will Decay, Shatter Silence, Signs of Betrayal, Tracedawn, The Unguided, Universum, Vanisher, Within Temptation, and Zonaria. Woah, that's a mouthful. :o Since I'm almost 17, it's time for me to get a job.. according to my father. So, what is a 17 year old teenage boy to do to make money over the summer? Well, I decided I was going to start a computer repair service! Since I love computers and I've been fixing them for over a year and a half, I figured I might as well make money from it. People make mistakes with their computers all of the time, and they're willing to pay money for them to be fixed. And since places like Geek Squad are really expensive, I figure that if i offer a lower price I can get quite a few customers. I'm off to a decent start so far, but I still need to get my name out there. And it's gotten my dad off of my back, so it's a win-win situation. I was planning on going into more depth, but with all of the distractions I have at the moment this blog has taken me quite a while to type up. So I'm going to cut it off here. What is everyones' plans for the summer? :o ~Sora