How is everyone? I'm doing alright I guess. Been a while since I blogged, so I'll try my best to cover everything.

First off is soccer. :x This is ridiculous.

So the last time I updated you guys on soccer, I don't remember how we were doing, but basically we won every game since whenever I last updated, and made it all the way to the championships. Awesome, right? First year of high school sports and I'm on a championship team? And surely we would win, being in first place guarenteeing a home field advantage and having just beat the other team 3-0 in our last season game.

But it was not to be.

In the dozens of ways you can pick homefield advantage (or just pick a neutral field), they had to pick the ONE we didn't have.

In our playoff game, we faced Glenelg. The fourth place team. It was the first team we lost to, a crap filled 1-0 game, and the next time we played them we won 5-1, a much more acurrate portrayal of the two teams. So needless to say, in our semi-final against them, we won 2-0 (or was it 3? I don't even remember now). McDonough, the other school, was in second. They were the other team we had lost to, the one where we were down four starters, on a crappy field, and the game was tied 0-0 until two minutes before the end? That team. So like I mentioned earlier, we played them as our last season game before playoffs. On our turf. With all starters. And we won 3-0. So we were pretty confident we had the championships in the bag.

Here's the problem. The team they played their semi-final agaisnt, Baltimore Lutheran, they beat. That means out of three total times McDonough and Baltimore Lutheran played, McDonough won all three times, whereas my school only beat Glenelg 2 out of our three times we played them. Therefore, McDonough secured home field advantage. Even though we had more wins, goals, shutouts, etc. So we all thought, whatever, we'll get a decent field for a championship game.

Wrong again.

We played on the same crap field. As we walked to the field, we passed a perfectly cut, pristine grass field. Why couldn't we use that? Oh, becuz after our game ended, the varsity team needed it for a practice. Yeah, real fair guys.

That said, our game was not our best. Quite frankly, it was embarrassing how badly we played compared to our total potential. The field sucking didn't help our passing either. That said, McDonough scored with 15 minutes left to go, and we started to finally get our act together with about 5 minutes left. Not soon enough though, and they won. But not fair and sqaure.

McDonough has been notorious for how physical they get. Pushing, shoving, tripping, you name it, they do it. The first half of the game, the refs called it fine. The second half though, the foul calls went out the window and McDonough was pushin' us around left and right. We had some of our own when we got fed up with it, but for the most part we kept our dignity. I think. Anyway, it was a hell of a season, and with so many varisty players graduating this year, JV and Varisty will both undergo some changes to the teams, so I'll inevitably play more this season. My coach even apologized to me for not playing me very often, but next season it'll be better.

Jeez, that was all soccer! :oops: I'll try to make my game tales short :P

First on the plate is Halo 3. Still awesome as always, I'm ascending the ranks quickly, with my Doubles rank being an impressive 38 at the time of this writing, and Team Slayer being 34. I'm steadily grabbing some of the straggling achievements too. I'll link you all to my stats page at the end.

Next is Ace Combat 6, which Kyle finally got out from the store. It's AMAZING. The gameplay is familiar but top notch, controls feel great, and difficulty is for the most part just right. The sound has very much improved since the demo too, everything sounds incredible, and nothing can top the first time you hear bullets rattle off your fuselage and you practically jump out of your seat. It's impressive stuff. But the graphics.....ohhhhhhh the GRAPHICS.....leave me speechless. Enviornments sprawl endlessly, scale magnificently when you're at 30,000 feet, miles above clouds, and all look real. My favorite enviornment so far was reminiscent of a Canadian tundra, with sprawling hills all covered in snow and ice, with ever greens dotting the landscape and a beautiful, setting, red sun off in the horizon. The light glinted brilliantly off the ice and planes, as it would in real life. The lighting in general is just fantastic. The game is simply a wonder to look at. Contrails litter the sky from sidewinder missiles, explosions have very real looking smoke, fire, and spark effects, and water has never been so fun to shoot with that endless ammo machine gun. Definitely give it a look, AC6 is an utter delight. You owe yourself to play this incredible game.

Other than that, not much on the game front at the moment. CoD4 sounds like it delivered the goods and I'll scoop it up sometime soon. PH is still on hiatus becuz I never have time to play it with the great 360 and Wii games coming out. Speaking of Wii, Mario Galaxy got very well received by...well...everyone. I still have my doubts about how much I personally will enjoy it, but I will not knock the game by any means. Looks good figuratively and literally, I just don't know how far I'd get into it. More on all that at a later date though, what I really need to do is try it first.

In other entertainment, Contact Harvest is out and I'm a decent chunk through, but not nearly done. I'm enjoying it a lot though, but like PH am at a loss for time to read it. Hopefully I'll get more in this weekend. I'm told it only gets better from here. Also, that album I was drooling over a few blogs ago is due out soon, but of course my friend Matt got me the whole album already. I'm in love. It's perfection in music form. Its the first CD I personally have ever heard in which I never have the want to skip a single song while listening to it. I seriously urge to guys to check it out, though I suppose the genre itself isn't exactly for everyone. It's good though. For those of you who don't remember, the band is Streetlight Manifesto (whose music is now actually on iTunes) and the album in particular is Somewhere in the Between.

Other than all that, I bid you all adieu. Oh, that's right. Link. Less than a month with the game, already over 4,000 kills in matchmaking. I'm quite proud. :D

Until next time, I've been irmeeleman5995 jamming to Streetlight, and that's a mouthful to say!