Had to run to Chicago Heights to get a copy of Dad's death certificate, and decided--while I was up that way--I'd have a gander at my maternal grandmother's old house. It was sold in 1978 so it's been centuries since I was last inside it, but I thought I'd just get a look at its exterior to see how the old place is doing. It's on a one-way street so I had to go around the block; and as I pulled onto her old street the bike began making a bad noise similar to the one the Jeep had made. I only got a little glance at grandma's old house because I was distracted by the noise; I pulled off the road and had a look at stuff trying to figure out if the exhaust heat shield had come loose, or what.
...there was a stick, about fifteen inches long, jammed into the frame. No I don't know how it got there; I assume I must've run over it while I was trying to avoid the potholes on the connecting street because that was about the time the noise started. I would have noticed hitting anything larger than the 1/2" diameter stick so I must've run over it, and the front tire flipped it just so....
Anyway, I un-wedged the stick and that took care of the noise, so WTF.
* * *
This leads me to consider how that was the first time I'd gone into the house of someone who had recently died. When my mother was cleaning out her mother's home and I went along to help, I couldn't help got notice how empty the place felt. Grandma was the only grandmother I'd ever known, though my paternal grandmother was around for a year or so after my birth, before she died, so it was pretty tough for me.
It was even tougher on my mother, who hit the bottle after Grandma died, and hit it pretty hard. If I were a drinker that might have happened to me in May of 2011, but I've never really thought much of solving one's problems with alcohol, so that wasn't really an option for me. Which is probably just as well.
* * *
There was a sack of pennies in the computer room, and since I had to hit the bank today anyway I decided now was a good time to have them counted and cashed in. It turned out to be some $27 in pennies, which was about three times what I was expecting. Please do not get the idea that I am complaining about this.
I'm really unhappy about having to go pay $10 for a new copy of the death certificate, when I know there are a handful of copies of the thing around here somewhere. The problem is, I have put them in a safe place, and now cannot recall where that safe place is...and an exhaustive search of the likely places for it has turned up nothing useful.
*sigh*
* * *
So, last night, the Game of Thrones featured the scene known as "the Red Wedding".
There are spoilers here if you haven't seen the ep yet, but there are no spoilers for upcoming episodes. That is to say, that is written by someone who hasn't read the books, who learns the latest plot developments as they happen in the TV series.
I haven't yet read the book this season is based on (A Storm of Swords) so I'm just as in the dark as everyone else is who's in the same boat. But next Sunday's episode is the last one of season 3, and then maybe we'll finally have some answers with regards to what the fuck is going on with Theon? We just finished ep 9 and we still haven't been told anything about it except that there's a bad guy who wants Theon to suffer, apparently--supposedly--because of his betrayal of the Starks. We last saw him in ep 7 where whoever-his-torturer-is (Bastard of Bolton, maybe?) was about to castrate him, but they focused out on that scene and haven't said anything since. There was a very brief glimpse of Theon in the preview for next week's ep, so maybe--hopefully--we'll find out WHAT IN THE EVERLASTING FUCK IS GOING ON. If not from the TV series, then, at least I'll read the book and find out from it who is torturing Theon. After all, you can't just keep saying "the torturer" for seven hundred fuckin' pages, not without telling the reader something useful.
Then we have to wait quite a while for season 4, which should be based on A Feast of Crows which--reportedly--is officially Not Very Good. I'm expecting it in March of 2014, which means I won't be reading that book before June of 2014 unless my wife relents from her edict.
As for the story itself--there has to be some kind of reckoning for all the evil stuff people are doing in this thing. It's fine for the story to spread across several books and there's nothing wrong with writing an epic, but there are some five or six of these things now, each weighing in at more than eight or nine hundred pages each, and Martin's problem is that instead of working on resolving things he is further complicating them.
I am expecting next week's episode to be quite a barn-burner, though, if what I think is about to happen finally does. It's a spoiler I saw; I thought "the Red Wedding" referred to this spoiler rather than what actually happened...but in any event if I have to wait until next season to see this happen I'm not going to be happy about it. The character I have in mind has needed to be dealt with, and harshly, since the first f-ing book; I want to see it happen.
* * *
Maybe someday I'll have time to watch the "Super Amazing Value Edition" DVDs of Suzuka I bought the other day. I'm not going to hold my breath.
* * *
I really need to cut the grass today, and the sooner I get my anus in gear, the sooner I can do anything else. I'd better get cracking.