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May. 16th, 2011
1) I went to a friend's place to play board games today. He was an MSP until a fortnight ago, when his party did too well for him to be elected*. It turned out that I was running a week early, but we ended up playing board games anyway. He was just back from a conference involving people from the International Criminal Court, and we ended up playing a proper wargame* based around the Spanish civil war, about which I know absolutely nothing except that Franco won. When I finish my re-read of The Baroque Cycle I think that improving my education in that area might be next.
2) My mother's sister is dying. She lives*** in London, and Julie and I will be down there Wednesday/Thursday to see The Wall, so I phoned home this evening to suggest that we could go and see her in the hospice. But apparently she's now reached the stage where she's not really aware of her visitors, and I've been advised by my mum that it's not worth it for her sake. As I haven't had much contact with that side of my family for about 15 years I don't feel the need to see her for _my_ sake, so we're not going to. I feel slightly sad about it, but more for my mother's sake than anything else. This will be the first person of my parent's generation that I've lost to old-age**** and it feels like this is probably the start of a trend. My paren't retiring was a big thing in some ways - I hope that they'll be around for a fair while yet, but they're definitely now in the "old" camp.
3) Game of Thrones continues to be awesome. Even my parents like it. I'm wondering though - if you were a television exec would you invest lots of money in a TV series based on a series of books that weren't even finished yet unless you had either (a) a cast iron promise that the books would be finished before the TV series caught up or (b) permission to finish the TV series however you liked if you ran ahead of the books? And frankly (b) would just piss off a lot of the fans, so you have to wonder if they know something we don't. Like George RR Martin has the final two books finished, and was just having problems with the intermediate one. Because if not, that's a hell of a gamble to take with a lot of money...
*If you really want me to, I'll explain that.
**It had little cardboard counters with pictures of tanks on and everything.
***Insert tasteless joke here.
****Well, kinda - my aunt's husband died when I was very young, and I don't have any idea what of.
2) My mother's sister is dying. She lives*** in London, and Julie and I will be down there Wednesday/Thursday to see The Wall, so I phoned home this evening to suggest that we could go and see her in the hospice. But apparently she's now reached the stage where she's not really aware of her visitors, and I've been advised by my mum that it's not worth it for her sake. As I haven't had much contact with that side of my family for about 15 years I don't feel the need to see her for _my_ sake, so we're not going to. I feel slightly sad about it, but more for my mother's sake than anything else. This will be the first person of my parent's generation that I've lost to old-age**** and it feels like this is probably the start of a trend. My paren't retiring was a big thing in some ways - I hope that they'll be around for a fair while yet, but they're definitely now in the "old" camp.
3) Game of Thrones continues to be awesome. Even my parents like it. I'm wondering though - if you were a television exec would you invest lots of money in a TV series based on a series of books that weren't even finished yet unless you had either (a) a cast iron promise that the books would be finished before the TV series caught up or (b) permission to finish the TV series however you liked if you ran ahead of the books? And frankly (b) would just piss off a lot of the fans, so you have to wonder if they know something we don't. Like George RR Martin has the final two books finished, and was just having problems with the intermediate one. Because if not, that's a hell of a gamble to take with a lot of money...
*If you really want me to, I'll explain that.
**It had little cardboard counters with pictures of tanks on and everything.
***Insert tasteless joke here.
****Well, kinda - my aunt's husband died when I was very young, and I don't have any idea what of.