Concerning life...

Hey, everyone, time for another entry chronicling the life and times (this time, specifically the life) of me, your humble blogger.

Yeah, so life has been pretty crazy for me lately... everything's been good on the whole, but I feel like I've been so busy I haven't had time to stop and smell the coffee (or is it roses?). What with a very demanding school schedule and a number of time-sinks that seem to pop up on a regular basis, everything has been a massive whirlwind. Although school isn't necessarily all that difficult, it is very time-consuming (although some would question whether I make it more time-consuming than it needs to be). Things just seem to be exploding into my life at every level; I feel as alive as I've ever felt, and at the same time as overwhelmed as I've ever felt. I am experiencing life in all its wonder and in all its troubles, all its beauty and joy and all its ugliness and misery. As all these new experiences well up both externally and internally, it's easy for me to be overcome at times by the sheer power of it.

Thankfully, I'm not alone... I have wonderful friends to strengthen and relieve me and a wonderful Savior to guide and, well, save me. As I sojourn through this high and low point in my life, I often tend to despair of ever successfully navigating the dangerous waters of change which haunt the high school/college transitionary period I'm now experiencing (metaphor much?). I thank God daily (or at least, I SHOULD) that I rarely feel the weight of loneliness... without the people who make my life so pleasurable, it would be nigh-unlivable, and without my Savior, it would be UTTERLY unlivable. So I guess what I want to say comes down to this: thank you, friends, and thank you, Christ, for always giving me hope during difficult times. I couldn't handle it without ya :)

As promised!

Well, here I am, at long last, with a long blog entry... unfortunately, as of right now, I have absolutely no clue what it'll be about...

So. Let's see what I come up with.

My life has been crazy busy this summer, what with college visits and everything. I'll be graduating next year, so I've been spending the last three months studying my options, and making visits to some of the schools I'm interested in. So far I've visited six or seven, and three or so have definitely emerged as the ones I'm very interested in. These three are, in no particular order (although the first and second outrank the third), Patrick Henry College in Virginia, Hillsdale College in Michigan, and Cedarville University in Ohio.

These are all exceptional schools (in my opinion at least), and PHC and Hillsdale are liberal arts colleges, something which really appeals to my tastes.

Oh! I just realized you may not know what my tastes are... I'm looking at majoring in Political Science, with a minor (or at least a specialization) in political history. Later, I may eventually continue into law school, but that's not something I'm permanently decided about yet.

Anyway, this summer has been pretty crazy. But it's also been good... I've had a chance to make new friends, and build some friendships that had only been vague. Life has been pretty pleasant, which is something I really needed after the chaos of last school year. I've had lots of time for physical recreation (and discovered a love of Ultimate Frisbee), as well as some good gaming ;-)

I've been playing a lot (for me anyway) of my favorite game, Star Wars Battlefront II, as well as some fun DS games that have come out this year. Also, I've actually gone back and beaten New Super Mario Bros., so that was a fun use of an afternoon =P

I'm also CRAZILY looking forward to a new DS game coming out September 15th, called Scribblenauts. To some extent, it defies categorization, but it's been labelled as an "emergent puzzle action game". It's a somewhat 3D side-scrolling platformer/puzzle game where the player can summon literally any object (except vulgar or copyrighted things, for obvious reasons), and use it to solve the problem. What makes this awesome idea so incredible is that it seems the developer has really managed to pull it off. From the footage that's been released on the major gaming websites, it actually seems to work exactly the way it's supposed to, something that's absolutely amazing for this kind of completely new concept. The other almost-magical part is that each object actually behaves just as it would in real life. In other words, a cat hates water (and won't come down from high places like trees and roofs), celebrities are afraid of paparazzi, beavers like to eat trees, cops love donuts, etc. etc. etc...

Here's my favorite trailer, which really shows off the game's philosophy:

Can you see why I'm looking forward to this game?

Anyway, that's just one of the great Nintendo DS games coming out this fall. There's also Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (don't ask, I don't know what it means either), Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story (the sequel to one of my favorite RPGs on the system, Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time), Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Mobilized (yes, this game will be so awesome it gets TWO colons in its name), and many, many more. But Scribblenauts tops my list of anticipated games, for its innovation, and more impressively, the fact that it actually seems to all work.

Well, that about wraps up my video games segment... Since I don't post as often as I should here (although that will hopefully change as the year goes on), I'll go ahead and talk about everything in one massive post. I just started schoool a few days ago, and that's been a big change for me. This year, I'm spending much more time outside the home than ever before. I still am a "homeschooled student", but this year I'm spending three out of five days at a very school-like institution called Veritas Academy. It's a terrific place, and I think it's really preparing me for college. It's tough, though... I should probably be doing my homework right now :)

But anyway, I'm away from home a lot doing school, and I can tell already that it's going to be a tough year. However, I think that's exactly what I need... I tend to get complacent if things are too easy, and I think this will kick me back into the gear I'll need for college next year.

Well, I'd better be going now... I'll try to post updates with greater frequency in the future. Cya around! =P

-Daniel

Still alive

Hey, everyone! I'm just snapping off a quick post to let you all know I'm still present and... mostly accounted for ;-)

You can expect a new, much larger post in the next few days (which for me means the next few weeks, but hey, time is relative and all, so...).

Cya later!