We're reading our first french book in class. It's called Le Nouvel Houdini, meaning the New Houdini (as in the magician (good job)). The book is more difficult because it uses past tense verbs, but it's pretty simple to get the gist. And anyway, once you learn what the words mean, they kind of tend to stick with you for the rest of the book.
   
     The book itself is INSANE. It's about a seventeen year old named Brandon who's parents are leaving town, but instead of letting Brandon stay home alone, they call his grandma in to stay with him and tell him he can't leave the house except for school, and he can't hang out with friends, and he's not allowed to drive his dad's crazy awesome car.

     So of course Brandon tricks his grandma into letting him take the car to school by messing up his own car and saying it stopped working. He immediately drives past the house of some beautiful girl and  they make a date... TO MCDONALD'S. Wooooooow. Brandon asks the girl, Marianne, to pass him the ketchup, but somehow she made it explode all over the car! (Just... What?) So Brandon freaks out and calls his horrible friend Jake, who tells him to clean the ketchup with vinegar, so Brandon tries that. Nope, doesn't work. Instead, the car now smells bad.

    Brandon ended up paying hundreds of dollars to get the car cleaned, and it was sparkly and new and wonderful again, so Brandon and Marianne go on another date, but on the way home, the car gets hit by some other driver and ends up with a huge gash in the side. It's too expensive to fix, so Jake (that horrible friend again) tells Brandon to color right over it with sharpie... Voila! Good as new!

    Brandon takes Marianne on yet another date to a fancy restaurant, but when they get there, Brandon's grandma walks in, so Brandon and Marianne have to run out of the restaurant before they're seen! Too bad, it's a torrential downpour out there, and Brandon, being the imbecile that he is, locked his keys and his phone in the car. 

This is a frustrating story.