Forget BEDA; I'm doing BODA

Have y'all heard of BEDA/VEDA? In case you are unfamiliar, it's Blog/Vlog Every Day in August. Actually, I think it was originally Blog/Vlog Every Day in April, and then someone realized that there are two A months, and thus BEDA/VEDA the Second was born. Anyways, as you can probably tell, I am not doing BEDA this year. I have never done BEDA. I like to tell myself I'm going to do BEDA in April of 2012, when I'm totally done with grad school and have had three

months to adjust to a textbookless, research paperless life, but let's face facts. We've all seen my track record. Remember that, "I am going to blog all the days!" promise I made a long time ago? And the time after that? And the time after that? I rest my case.

So, instead of BEDA, I am doing BODA: Blog One Day in August. That way, even if I don't write another post after this one, I have still succeeded at BODA. Go, me. Finishing something. For once. Woohoo.

So ... as you might have guessed, I'm back in school. Have been for six and a half weeks now. It's inarguably the worst class I have ever taken. Tons of busy work, rude professor, unclear assignment instructions ... it's really everything I've ever disliked about any class I have ever taken, but all piled into one eight week course. Its suckitude is beyond impressive.

What else can I update you on? Ah, the Ravenclaw scarf. (Don't look at me like that; we already knew I was a nerd of hopeless proportions.) If this is what it looked like before:

All in a 3-day weekend's work.

Then I'd say this is what it looks like now:

At this rate, I should be done by Christmas ... of 2015.

As you can see, I am making excellent progress.

Hmmm ... What else? Ah. The Host. Just finished reading that. It was surprisingly very good. If her name wasn't right there on the cover, I never would have guessed it was the same author as the Twilight series. I have two theories about this discrepancy:

Theory the First: Stephenie Meyer thinks teenagers are stupid... or at least she has no idea how to write for them. She apparently thinks that teens just want to read their own cheesy vampire fanfiction or something and that they don't understand complex things like plot and internal consistency.

Theory the Second: Stephenie Meyer is an evil genius who can actually write well, but who chose to slap together a piece of hackneyed crap because she knew it would make a bajillion dollars based solely on Angel Marble Cupcake Adonis Edward Sparklepire's twinkly good looks and creepy, borderline abusive charming personality. She didn't try at all when writing that series and is laughing her way to the bank while people try to dissect the "deeper meaning" within her glitter-filled Twinkies series.

So ... yeah. The Host. A good read. It was a little predictable, but there were no rip-my-hair-out, "Seriously, why are we still talking about this?", "Do you even understand how relationships work?", "No one would ever like this protagonist in real life" situations, gaping plot holes, or internal inconsistencies. The romantic relationships are still kind of weird/unhealthy, but nothing to the degree that Twilight's were. All in all, not bad for an alien-apocalypse-meets-romance novel. I give it one and a half thumbs up... or 3.5 stars, whichever you prefer.

So, that's it for BODA. Stay tuned. Maybe if you're lucky you'll get BOMTA (Blog One More Time in August). But I'm not making any promises.