I am alone.

I moved here eleven nights ago, to this apartment I alone occupy. I miss laughter, and caresses, and thoughts other than my own. My upstairs neighbor stomps about at all hours, and causes my apartment to shake. I sleep fitfully, and am afraid I will have to move again. I checked with the leasing office people today, and there is another apartment available, of the exact same floorplan, and on the second floor. It shares walls with the model unit on one side, and the community housekeeper on the other. It has a fireplace, and overlooks a grassy park instead of a parking lot. I will be happier there, I think. I just don't want to go through the ordeal of another move.

I preoccupy myself with unpacking (because I wasn't sure I'd be able to transfer till today), my silly online contests and George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones. The book is so much better than the series: the characters more complex, the vistas vast and imposing, the intrigues more compelling. Everything is bigger in the books: Winterfell, the Dothraki horde, direwolves.

Of the stories one follows in the course of the telling, I find that Danaerys has me in thrall. I hear music, exotic and romantic, when reading her part. Is that weird? Even though I've seen the entire first season and, therefore, have finished the story of this first book and know what to expect, I find myself hanging on every word - when it comes to Dany, anyway.

There are differences, of course, most of which I understand them having to do owing to the constraints of the TV medium. In all cases the book is better. The only deviations of the series that improved on the books were the casting of Tyrion Lannister and Arya. And maybe the Bravosi tutor.