Valar Morghulis!
So that was a pretty busy weekend, actually. Jocelyn & Brian & I were talking about doing something after work & to my pleasant surprise they said they wanted to come into my little corner of Brooklyn. Hey! That is more than alright by me! They came over to the apartment & hung out for a bit, & then we went to Bar Reis to allow other people to come meet up with us for hangouts. Alas, no one took us up on that...except Jenny! Jenny met us at the bar & we had a couple of drinks & then decided to go feast on burritos from Rachel's. The margaritas may have been a bit potent-- the people who work there like me & I think they gave us some bare knuckle tequila heavy cocktails. Then it was back to the apartment for chuckles & ha-has. It was nice; I like hanging out with groups of people when Jenny is around, she's a nice like, safe foundation. I don't get social anxiety, but I do have like a penchant of being either too geeky, too weird or too mean sometimes, & Jenny being around means that I'm probably within acceptable margins. Saturday was Eleven-Books Club, so that is all accounted for. Then Sunday!
Sunday was supposed to be lazy, I thought, but ended up not being lazy at all; I mean, we watched Saturday Night Live while lying around eating crêpes but then I had to do laundry! To be fair, washing clothes at Kira & Nino's apartment is a dang sight better than doing it at a laundromat, but still, it ain't the most fun. I finished up (I had to wash the darks twice since I'd forgotten detergent) & then went to the gym. Despite being there for an hour & forty minutes I felt like I'd done way more on Saturday; I assume on account of how I did lots of cardio, which always feels like "cheating." We were babysitting Olivia for a little bit I found out when I got home, & then we went over to Kira & Nino's apartment to eat a dinner of mixed meats & watch Game of Thrones. I hadn't watched last week's episode-- I don't know, something came up & then Jenny & I forgot all about it-- so we had two to get through this week. "A Man Without Honor" & "The Prince of Winterfell." We watched the backdated episode while Nino washed dishes, & so while it is poor form to complain about somebody making dinner for you & then cleaning up the mess for you, I will note strictly for accuracy's sake that the white noise from the running water made hearing the dialogue tricky at points, especially because there was a ton of whispering. Basically, in no particular order: the Lord of Bones is hilarious looking, Ser Jorah is the best, Ygritte nails her catch phrase, Cersei & Tyrion are like a box of scorpions, Jaqen H'ghar is a stone cold fox, Jaime Lannister is my favorite Song of Ice & Fire character, Theon is the worst & the whole Qarth plot is both stupid & awesome, in equal parts.
I mean, Alexander McQueen-face & bald Piter De Vries are fun & Nonso Anozie's Xaro Xhoan Daxos is fantastic...but the pacing is just plain old stupid. Seriously, last episode they spent twenty minutes showing us how Daenerys is out of options & desperate, presumably desperate enough to go to the creepy & clearly up to no good warlocks...& then has her dragons get stolen as a deus ex machina. Yo, if you set up character development you don't need a hamfisted approach, & vice verse too, if you use a hammer to motivate your characters, you don't need to spend reeltime showing us them getting to the end of their rope. Um, but then there were two more episodes & like, those didn't advance the plot either? I mean, I like seeing Dany & Jorah have screentime & I like creepy witches giving tattoos, but then there was like, magical assassins (again) & even more shenanigans trying to give her narrative reason to go to the warlocks...but why? I mean, the books even have her just going there! She's like "what is up with these warlocks, anyhow?" & like, the Talisa thing, what? Why. Why not just have her named Jeyne Westerling? Some of the choices, like condensing all the Harrenhal stuff into Tywin, or emphasizing Osha the Wildling, make sense. Other choices...mystifying. I was happy to see like, emotional fallout regarding the attempted rape on Sansa. I mean, I still think it was sloppy & meaningless, but at least they aren't sweeping it under the rug, & they're using it as an excuse to have Sansa reach out to Sandor, rather than just having it around to cast him in an anti-heroic light.
