Still Waiting.

The lady I interviewed with (LAST Tuesday) is on vacation. So hopefully I will not die of impatience before she gets back.

That said, it has been very peaceful around here. I finally succumbed and got Game of Thrones from the library - it was available for the Kindle but book 1 had several dozen people on the hold list while books 1-4 were available right away as a bundle. So I have been trying to make a dent in these suckers ASAP.

They are very well written, I love a good swords-and-sorcery epic and I haven't read one in a while. The nearest comparison I have been hearing is the Lord of the Rings books and that is a good idea of the scale of the world-building going on. There are some parallels drawn to the wars of the Roses in some reviews I've seen and that also makes sense. I enjoy that the perspective switches to a new character for each chapter (and there are plenty, of both characters and chapters), and there are some strong, interestingly written female characters (which you can't really say for LOTR, Eowyn aside). A lot of it follows the same family and the three main female characters in the family are really enjoyable because they are so different and interestingly written.

To be fair, there is a lot of sex and violence. However, I find it pretty easy to self-edit with this kind of writing. Rape is a common weapon for subjugation of whoever and the violence is pretty prevalent, but there is a reason I am not watching the tv shows. When it's in a medieval setting I can tune it out. When it's in a book like Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and it is very realistic and detailed I find that excruciating and unreadable but this stuff I can basically just *bleep* over in my head. And his writing of all the sexy sexy sexytimes is kind of hilarious after a while. Probably the weakest part other than his need to perpetually list knights and their colors when you know they're just going to die. I'm in book 3 now and I need about three mentions of the same knight or some actual character development before I'm going to try and remember his name.

I finished the first two books and there was no wait on hold for book 3 so now I don't have to finish the whole bundle in three weeks. So I can put my Kindle down for a breather now. But odds are I will probably pick it right back up as soon as I am home from work.

It has been too hot and boring to work much in the yard - weeding and futzing with irrigation are two of my less favorite activities. I have been working my butt off in the front yard (no groundcovers in yet and the bermudagrass really wants to get in there, I can't let it get any ideas) so the backyard (a.k.a. where the tomatoes are) has been neglected. I still have ideas about blueberry bushes and lots of transplanting back there so there should be some more action out there eventually, but right now it is too sweltering to dig anybody up and try to move them so not much excitement. And I needed to baby my tomatoes for the first couple months and failed to so now they have some fruit that is tasty but they are only 1-2 feet tall. I guess every garden has a learning curve.