Young Adult Revisited

  I don't know if there's anyone still out there. I like to think that there's at least one person breathlessly checking the blog daily and waiting for any sign of an update, but that's probably just me. So, how crazy has this last year been? COVID pretty much knocked me and millions of other people on our collective asses. I went from making jokes about Captain Trips that no one understood to realizing that this was pretty damn serious. As much as I wish I could blame the pandemic for my lack of posting, it's been more of a combination of things. 1 – My boyfriend went from a factory job with a good paycheck to landing on unemployment that took months to pay. At some point, they decided that he made too much and dropped his payments to $54/week. You try living on that! 2 – I became the breadwinner of the house just in time for my clients to start dropping like flies. It turns out that when there's a global pandemic, you don't really want to p...

According to the official book list, this is number 60 in the SVU series. I found it super confusing though because it mentions stuff that happened in the earlier books but not what happened later, as in Liz and Jess fighting over Sam and then her taking off to England. So, the book picks up with Liz moping over this guy Ben. He's supposedly a journalism major who was super into her until they actually went out on a date. She keeps waiting by the phone for him to call and feeling super pathetic about herself. That makes it all the worse when the twins' cousin Diane calls to talk to them about her upcoming wedding. Not only are they bridesmaids, but they're all staying at the same hotel together for the weekend. Jessica considers bringing some rando with her for the weekend, which makes Liz feel even worse. Cut to Liz whining over whether she should invite Ben or wait for him to call her. Guess which one she chooses? When he still doesn't call, she resign...

Mr. Crane, who is I guess their new teacher, brings in a bunch of musical instruments for the kids to play. After they try them all out, he announces that he's holding auditions to see who will play what in the St. Patrick's Day parade. Jessica becomes obsessed with the drum and think she's the best, but so does everyone else. Even Liz wants to play the drum. During auditions, Liz goes on the drum first and does great. Jess goes next and does horribly. She was so focused on the first song they played that she couldn't focus on the one in the audition. Their teacher asks her to try the flutophone, which she does a good job playing. Jess gets it, and Liz gets to be the little drummer girl. Since this is Jess though, she convinces Liz to switch parts with her. She really wants to lead the whole parade, which the drummer does. The twins dress as each other and even switch their name bracelets for class. Jessica does a really bad job with the drum, to the poi...

It's time for the annual River Heights Carnival. The big event this year is that Isabelle is performing. She's a big deal start from the town who is only 15 but already has a song on the radio. Nancy and her friends decide to enter all the contests because first prize gets a giant stuffed panda. Isabelle loves pandas, and if any of them win, they'll give the toy to her. They enter a pie eating contest and lose, but there's a sack race the next day. Everyone who enters gets in a sack and finds the bottom filled with raw eggs. Annoying little Brenda wants to do a story on the awful things happening, but Nancy begs her not to because it might keep people from coming to the carnival. Brenda gives her until Wednesday, which is the next day, to find out who did it. Their only suspects are Cruncher, this girl who eats all the time, and Orson, a kid who entered a frog in a jumping competition and got disqualified because the judge thought he pushed the animal. T...

Ned and Alice somehow think that the perfect Christmas Even activity is taking the kids to Evelyn's, some new department store. Once they get there, the parents decide to let the kids have some time alone as long as they stick together. They immediately head to the toy department and go crazy over these little cars. When they try to sit in them though, a man comes over and screams at them. He's Mr. Fegato, the manager of the whole store. Fegato tells them that unless they have money, they need to sod off but in nicer words. The twins want to explore and look for the perfect gift for Alice. They find a jewelry box they love but is too expensive and head to the sleepwear department. Steven gets so bored that he decides to go off on his own, though he does remind them that they have just a little bit before they need to meet up with their parents. While wandering through the store, some random guy rushes by. He grabs Jessica's purse and takes off with all their...

Ned invited both Nancy and George to the Emerson College campus to take part in something called the Big Chill Clues Challenge. It takes place every winter over five days and requires that teams compete to find hidden clues. After Nancy makes out with Ned for a bit, they get into a massive snowball fight and then meet some of the people on their team. There's CJ, who is some big deal athlete, and his girlfriend Dede. Dennis dated Dede until she dumped him for the other guy. They also meet Joy, the president of a sorority that won the challenge last year. When the group heads over to Sport Mania, the store sponsoring the event, they get to meet Mr. Lorenzo, the owner. He freaks out at some dude following CJ around with a camera until CJ reveals that the guy works for Sports World and is doing a story on him. That's another reason why Dennis doesn't like him. He was the big man on campus the year before but then hurt his shoulder and lost his status. Mr. Lorenzo a...

Jessica and Lila love this magazine called California Girl , which does an article called “Real Girl” each month about a normal reader. They both entered for the next month's issue and used Lila's address so they could find out together. Though letters come, Jessica gets a generic form rejection letter and Lila gets picked. They'll come to her house for a photo shoot and to learn all about her. This naturally makes Lila the center of attention. Jessica tries to make it seem like she was the runner up, but Lila busts her and tells them she got a form letter. They all want to hear everything about the shoot. Janet even brags about how they're cousins. When Jessica finds out that Corny O wants to shoot a new commercial with twins, she decides that she and Liz should go for it. Liz agrees after realizing that she could use they money to buy software for the newspaper. After practicing for a few days, they finally tell Ned and Alice about the commercial. They...