UDaR on dates and paperwork

The latest Rome news is in, and it's official paperwork, meeting dates, and program dates! Check it out at Una Donna a Roma, where anything and everything Rome-related goes in the six months left until my departure for Europe.

%&&%!--Thus, Chopin

Spring quarter has gone pretty well so far, at least up until about an hour ago when I had to start printing things off for classes. In a slim attempt to save trees, I decided to double-side the printing the old-school way (odds, put back in to print evens), since my printer does not do that in the hip modern duplex way. I eventually got it down--after many poor pieces of paper wasted messing up in various ways along the path to double-sided glory and many obscenities yelled at my printer for needing two ink cartridge changes (black and then, 20 minutes later, tricolor) and a paper-jam fix along the way.

Thus, although there are stories to tell and a UDaR update to put up at some point this week, for now I will leave the blogging world with something more peaceful and blood-pressure-reducing than wraslin' with my printer: Chopin.

Additionally: UDaR update on family + Rome

Earlier this week I updated Una Donna a Roma, my Rome-focused blog, with some of the history of my family and Rome (my mother's side of the family is Irish and Italian). This was mostly to keep the blog from dying with lack of greater program specifics by trying to post once a week or so with things at least partially relevant to the eventually upcoming trans-continental experience. :) If you haven't seen it yet, check it out!

Wonderfully creepy, my lord

Lots more Game of Thrones-related stuff has been announced in the past few days, but the highlight of what's been posted lately is this featurette of Petyr Baelish, also known as "Littlefinger," one of the courtiers in King's Landing. The master of treasury, Littlefinger is about as shrewd as they come, and he also harbors a long-smoldering obsession with Catelyn Tully Stark, the wife of Eddard Stark, who thinks of Littlefinger only as a little brother. In Catelyn's absence he sort of gloms onto her children, especially the older Stark daughter, Sansa, in his shrewd, awkward, and creepy way.

Littlefinger (Aiden Gillen) and Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) turning on the creepy factor. Screenshot courtesy of Westeros.org

Littlefinger is definitely a love-to-hate type of character with a bizarre and slightly pathetic history, and that screenshot really captures the awkwardness and creepiness he seems to bring to just about every interaction he has with anyone, particularly anyone connected to his infatuation with Catelyn, doomed from the start due to his position as a relatively lowly lord and Catelyn's position as both a Tully (first lords of the Riverlands) and a Stark (the wardens of the north).

Vacation blahblahblah

Not dead, just on spring break. Which is of course delightfully un-full of things to do but which thus makes blogging about things less necessary. Blogging is often a procrastination tool for me, a way to settle my mind before moving onto something else, but there's nothing really to settle here or procrastinate doing. Except sleeping. Which I'm doing, for some reason.

I have A Game of Thrones back from my housemate, so I've been re-reading that. There are a lot of sneaky little details I missed the first time through--unsurprising, in a way, considering how quickly I usually read things. It just takes such a long time with ASoIaF since every book is at least 800 pages in mass-market paperback form, and at school I only read before going to sleep, which only allows for a chapter or maybe two a night (the chapters get really long as the series goes on, it seems). 20 pages or so a night, 50 if I really chug on through (but then I usually have trouble going to sleep afterward, so yeah). That means it would take 2-3 weeks a book to re-read at that pace.

I also have been reading Amy Tan's The Bonesetter's Daughter over the past week or so. It was pretty good. Totally, totally different from what I've been reading the past few months (fairly generic modern realistic fiction as opposed to epic fantasy and then trashy fantasy), but that's probably a good thing. Oh yeah, and all that reading I do for class, which for some reason I never really think about when I get to thinking about books I've read. Next quarter I'll have fiction to read for class; I don't think I've had that since last spring quarter, when I took a class on Shakespeare. Kind of looking forward to being able to write English-y style papers in addition to obnoxious sosc papers next quarter.

Being home is extremely, extremely boring in the sense that, well, there's not much to do. Almost none of my high school friends are also on break, so it's mostly just me and my family rattling around small-town New England, fiercely missing friends from school. It's also so transient--just over a week, just 10 days, three of which are now done--that it's hard to really bother settling into any sort of routine. I'm not sure where my suitcase is (I assume my mother took it and hid it from me), but my clothes are all in a laundry basket. No real point in putting them away, it seems, when a week from right now they'll be packed up and ready to read back to the central time zone.

Some more interesting stuff should be happening starting tomorrow, which I guess is good. Lazing around driving my mother crazy and being driven crazy by her is only entertaining up to a certain point, after all. :)

UDaR update on program specifics

A new post is up at Una Donna a Roma regarding the conversation I had today with a friend who did the Rome civ program this past fall; I learned quite a lot about the program, some of which I reproduced there.

Total bonanza

First, and foremost: DONE WITH WINTER QUARTER. That's all, really, on that front. Back to New England tomorrow.

On the Game of Thrones front, there are so many videos out as to make your head spin. House features for Houses Baratheon, Lannister, and Targaryen, PLUS character features for many of the Starks and the key Lannisters and Targaryens. The character features are exclusively for Comcast subscribers, but they have already started leaking onto YouTube. Not all videos are yet on YouTube, but many are.

First and foremost, the feature of House Baratheon, the royal house of Westeros since Robert's Rebellion about 15 years previous to the start of the story. This features King Robert, a tiny bit of Cersei (she's featured in the Lannister video, of course), Joffrey/Tommen/Myrcella (the royal children), and Renly, Robert's younger brother. This is not yet on YouTube, but you can find it here courtesy of TV.com.

Now the YouTube videos, embedded below, beginning with House Lannister. Cersei, Jaime, and Tyrion are featured here, with new shots and interviews with the actors. There is also a brief shot of Tywin Lannister, the infamous house patriarch, in his glorious lion-themed armor, which is something fans have been clamoring about for a while now.



House Targaryen is the former royal house, overthrown in Robert's Rebellion. The two remaining heirs, Viserys and Daenerys, were rescued and taken to the far east, where they've lived with the wealthy merchant prince Illyrio Mopatis. As the series begins, Viserys and Illyrio are marrying Daenerys off to Khal Drogo, a khal, or warlord, of the nomadic Dothraki people, in exchange for Drogo's help in taking back Westeros for the Targaryens.



Now onto the character featurettes done in collaboration with Comcast, beginning with the Starks. First up is the patriarch Eddard (Ned) Stark, beloved friend of King Robert, father of five legitimate children and one bastard. Serious and probably the most rigidly honorable character in the series, he nonetheless has a great soft spot for his children, including his bastard, Jon, whom he has, unusually for a lord, raised alongside his legitimate children.



Next is Catelyn Stark, Ned's wife, originally from House Tully of the Riverlands region. She is devoted to her family and yearns to see them rise in the eyes of the king and would do anything for her children, but she also can be fiercely stubborn and determined when need be.



First up among the Stark children is Jon Snow, the bastard child of Ned Stark, who decides to escape the shadow of his bastardy and his famous family by joining the Night's Watch, an order that protects the Seven Kingdoms from the wildling invaders from the north.



After Jon is Sansa Stark, the eldest Stark daughter and second-oldest legitimate Stark child (the Stark heir, Robb, does not have a featurette). Naive and drawn to stories of knights and chivalry, she dreams of escaping the wilds of the northlands and joining the royal family after she is promised to the crown prince Joffrey Baratheon.



Next is Arya Stark, the second Stark daughter and third legitimate child overall. Much more tomboyish and wild than her sister, she yearns for adventure and has a deep bond with Jon, as both are rather different from their siblings.



Last is Bran, the second-oldest legitimate Stark boy and second-youngest child overall (there is a younger son, Rickon, who is not featured in these featurettes). Too young to be much of a player in the political arena, he mostly lives a good life running about the castle but worries Catelyn intensively with the hijinks he gets up to.



The Lannisters have three featurettes, beginning with King Robert Baratheon, who is not technically a Lannister but is married into the family. A great warrior in his day, Robert has a soft spot now for wine, food, and women and was a much better throne-winner than he is a throne-sitter.



Cersei Lannister is Robert's queen and the twin to Jaime Lannister (who, strangely, does not have a featurette). Stunningly beautiful, Cersei has great ambition and an unusually strong lust for power for women in the medieval period and is good at playing the game of thrones.



Tyrion Lannister is the younger brother of Cersei and Jaime. Born a dwarf, his mother died birthing him, and his father has never forgiven him for it. Although his relationship with his siblings and father can be very tense, he acts a lot like the other Lannisters: he is extremely clever and witty.



Last are the Targaryens and associates. Viserys is the older Targaryen child and the heir to the ruined Targaryen fortune, and he has never stopped obsessing over his lost kingdoms and plotting to win them back, even to the point of (quite literally) driving himself mad. He is extremely possessive of his sister, Daenerys, whom he likely would have married were the Targaryens still in power (the Targaryen custom is to keep their blood pure by marrying brother to sister).



Daenerys is Viserys's younger sister. She has no memories at all of Westeros, unlike Viserys, and is dependent on him to learn about their family and their right to rule the Seven Kingdoms. As the series begins, she is to be married to Khal Drogo so that Drogo will provide Viserys with an army to take back Westeros. She begins to learn the art of ruling at Drogo's side.



Khal Drogo is the vicious khal, or warlord, of a horde of the nomadic Dothraki people. Huge, strong, and intimidating, he claims to have never lost a battle and accepts Daenerys as his gift-wife from Viserys and Illyrio Mopatis but slowly begins to fall in love with the much younger, and much more fragile, Daenerys and helps to teach her how to rule.



And that's it for now--so many videos, but they're all so good! Great shots in each.