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So, I had every intention of jumpstarting 2012 with some posts: a Monday message, a few recipes, a couple of funny tidbits about the girls and what they’ve been up to.  And then, on the last day of the Christmas Break 2011, I cracked open the first of George R.R. Martin’s series A Song of Fire and Ice, the first book being. . . “A Game of Thrones.”

And cut to me still sitting on the sofa, turning pages.
I didn’t check my email.
I didn’t get on Pinterest.
I didn’t get on Facebook.
I didn’t watch TV.
I may have fed the family a time or two, but mostly, I read.
And I read.
And I read.

Seriously, it’s not like I didn’t watch the HBO series with the rest of the world. The entire first book is exactly what I saw Sunday after Sunday.  And yet, I still couldn’t put it down.  Craig had warned me; he and his brother had read the books way before the show came out, but they had returned to them just as the series was starting.  Keep in mind, these books top off at about 900 + pages in paperback.  We’re talking door-stops here, and yet both of them just burned right through it.  So, I picked up my copy of book one and that was all she wrote.  I couldn’t.stop.reading it.

I finished the first book yesterday and busied myself with some long overdue chores just so I wouldn’t inhale the second book.  Given our book-wormish tendencies, I didn’t doubt we had the entire series somewhere upstairs on a shelf. I had seen the last two books, most recently released, come into the house via Amazon not that long ago. I even remember chastising Craig, gently imploring him to take his time reading it because the next book wasn’t going to be released for a while (he didn’t listen, but I can’t say that I blame him; a good book is a good book).  Anyway, I folded clothes. I put laundry away. I cleaned up the Christmas crap decor and stored it in the attic. I straightened up the playroom (don’t even get me started on that disaster). I did everything I could think of to keep myself from bee-lining to the office and ripping the book of the shelf. When I had finally put in enough work, I went straight for shelf only to find, it wasn’t book 2 at all.  It was book 3.  What the what?

Remember all those boxes left-over from the great office clean-up? Yeah, I went rooting through those looking for the book. It was ridiculous; “A Clash of Kings” became my Holy Grail for the afternoon; I had to find it.  I even texted Craig at work like, “Stop fooling around. Where’s the book?”  His response?

“Are you kidding me? You finished Game of Thrones already?”

Uh, yeah.

So, no  “Clash of Kings” in the house. What to do? What to do? I got online and checked the public library.  Success!  They had one copy on the shelf. Now, I knew I could put a hold on a book via on the online system, but I needed that book. As in right now (yes, I am totally outing myself on how crazy I am). I called the library and asked how soon I could get the book if I placed an online hold.  The lovely librarian explained that the online hold would have go through a cycle, blah, blah, blah, or he could just pull it for me now if it was available and I could pick it up later on.

Ka-ching! I know what our after-school activity was going to be!

Between securing the book and right now as I type this, I haven’t had a chance to crack into yet.  You know, there was homework to be done, kids to feed, the usual.  Plus, I was feeling kind of badly that everyone else on my blog-roll has updated their blogs with Happy New Year/Back to the Blog/Did You Miss Me type posts.  I had nothing say since I’d been so absorbed in Winterfell, King’s Landing, Riverrun, and the rest of the Seven Kingdoms.

Whoa. . . I really just said that. Next I’ll be going to Toys ‘R Us for my very own Dungeons and Dragons playset.