Is August over yet?

I've never felt so "over" blogging every day. I'm not sure what it is about this month but I am feeling very done with it, at least as blogging is concerned. Blogging aside, this month really has felt super long. It seems ages ago that I was going to work for 8 hours a day and staying up to ridiculous o'clock and missing my friends so terribly. Now I see a lot of those friends every day, and it proves to me once again how you can indeed love people as much as, if not more than, you can miss them. It feels incredible to know that is the case too. The ability to love is pretty miraculous.

And somehow Spotify knew exactly what song to play as I wrote that last sentence: "Blue Skies" by Noah and the Whale just came on. It's a wonderful piece of music all about love and our ability to do so again, even after being hurt. It's something we should all embrace, even when life is tough. I'd venture to say I've listened to this song an extraordinary number of times since December 2011. Thanks to last.fm I can actually confirm this number. In the past 6 months I've listened to it at least 19 times and in the last 12 months I've listened to it at least 51 times. I say at least because I know I've listened to various acoustic versions of the song on YouTube, which obviously don't count towards my last.fm count. I also sometimes forget to sync my iPod to last.fm, meaning some song counts aren't being counted at all. So for the past year it's my 5th most popular song.

This second day of school was quite enjoyable. The history class I got into is going to be awesome. One of my friends from a different history class is the TA for it, so going to class will just kind of be an excuse to hang out with him.

Last YouTube video I watched: Come With Us

Classes loom in the distance

This past week has gone by incredibly fast. At this time last week, I had just gotten to Provo and was eating In n' Out. Tomorrow classes officially start for my junior year of college. So here's a little rundown of my schedule:

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I have Italian, persuasive writing, Spanish literature, and on Mondays only intro to advertising.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have a religion class, Italian, and tennis. (Yes, Italian is 5 days a week. It's only 101 so you can see why.)

It's shaping up to be an interesting semester, that's for sure. It will be a tough one, 15.5 credits, but I'm pretty sure I can handle it. The biggest challenge by far will be completing the application for my program. I will soon finally be able to say (hopefully) that I am a true journalism major. Usually I just drop the whole "pre-communications" part because it's a hassle to explain that it's limited enrollment and I haven't yet applied etc. etc. My essay is coming together nicely and I already have the creative piece done. The only things left to start are the physical application that asks about name, address, birthday, grades etc. and the journalistic work part. I've got to write something that shows my interest in a certain medium and it can be about anything. I know I want to show my love for sports but I've yet to determine what to actually write about. We can actually submit that in video form, which is something I would absolutely love to do on account of how YouTube is my second home, but I don't know if I can pull together the right kind of video with the time I have left. I'll be sure to keep you guys updated on such events as they transpire. The application and everything is due September 9th.

Luckily, I don't start class tomorrow until noon so I'm going to chill in the library like old times just surfing the web, watching YouTube videos, and preparing the written parts of the application.

Last YouTube video I watched: Wheezycon

Anna and the French Kiss

I began reading this book last night, though it is 2:30 in the morning so to me it's still the same day. John Green has raved about it. People on Twitter have raved about it. And guess what? I'll be raving about it as well. I'm not nearly finished with it but there's some stuff in it that I adore already.

The friendship between Anna and St. Clair. (It's super weird to be writing about a character with whom I share a name. I don't think I've ever read a book where I have the same name as a character.) Their friendship mirrors one of the great friendships in my own life: the one I have with Matthew. (Fancy that, Anna's ex-boyfriend in the book is named Matt.) The way they interact reminds me so much of my own relationship with Matthew. In the book, Anna and her man are a bit more flirtatious, always on the brink of something more. Though Matthew and I aren't that way, I notice so many similarities in how we act and how the pair in the book acts.

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At this point I have now finished the book. And let me just say: Wow. It was quite good. On par with John Green goodness. It was witty and personal and kind of predictable but in the way that you don't care because the writing is fantastic.

So back to the topic of best friends . . . When I find a book that mirrors so well a small part of my life, I instantly analyze the crap out of my life in an attempt to find all the similarities between the characters and who they would be in my own life; when I say character I don't mean the literal character, I mean the general role they play in the novel. Does that make sense? And so when the plot is driven by the interactions of a girl and a boy who become best friends, I put a lot of work into my thoughts.

Isn't it great how books make you do these things? Analyze, consider and reflect. With my best friend, the aforementioned Matthew, gone for just over another year, it makes the reading of various books much different. The way I consider a novel when he's around is very different from how I consider it when he is not. Your situation in life often dictates how you react to things, entertainment included. The fact that I have another close friend, one with whom I am getting even closer, out of the picture for one more year, makes it even more involved as far as the analyzing and reflecting is concerned; I'll just say this: if we had truly met, me and this other friend, and talked earlier in the year, Matthew and I wouldn't be as close as we were. Books always have a best friend type character, and when it's a girl with a boy as her best friend, things are much more interesting. The existence of a best friend in the novel makes me think about my own best friend(s) automatically. But when the novelization best friends start doing things I would do with my own best friend, acting in ways that my best friend and I have acted, suddenly it's much more apparent that my best friend is not around, any of them, though particularly the boys since they've been gone so much longer than anyone else in my life at this point.

So yeah, I think that's where I was going with this . . . I honestly don't remember what I actually wanted this to be about when I started it at 2:30 in the morning. No matter what, you should all read Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins. It's quality.

Since I finished this BEDA post so early, I won't have to worry about it come 11 at night! Yay. I think today I'm going to longboard and play tennis. I need some outdoors time and it's finally not raining. Tonight I'll probably clean my room, too. Clean is the wrong word, actually. I'm going to rearrange. I still have a lot of clothes and books that need to be put away. Just because I enjoy unpacking doesn't mean I do it quickly.

Last YouTube video I watched: BEST ROAD TRIP SONGS EVER