Raithe

Also to be fair, Maisie Williams is naturally right-handed, so you have to give her props for developing her left hand over the years playing Arya.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6JIGyEEUT0

Wasn't that a fully grown and trained for decades Water Dancer? The issue of believability with Arya vs Brienne is more that she doesn't have the physical strength to compare. It doesn't matter if you have the reflexes and skill to put your blade in the way in the right angle to deflect an incoming blow.. if that blow is ridiculously strong and heavy compared to what you can handle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epxdxcy6dYs Also for the random interest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE2wcBeyNdk

It's that awkward balance. Her being fluid and deft and graceful being able to dodge and sidestep the blows, that's believable. Her opponent having trouble hitting her, again believable because all of her opponents have been of almost equal size to her, so suddenly trying to hit someone half their height will throw her off somewhat. The quick snap attacks with Needle to Brienne's hand or knee, believable enough when you have contrasting styles of knight hack-and-slash versus agile fencing. What wasn't believable was the blocking moments. Even if she was deflecting the blows more than blocking, that size / weight / strength mismatch would have beaten her down more. You needed more of the kicks that knocked her on her ass. For the devil's advocate, I suppose you could also posit that Brienne wouldn't have been attacking with full strength during the first half of that sparring match, because she's a trained swordswoman teaching a much younger, not fully grown lady she's sworn to, and you don't leap in at full strength combat when you don't know how good your trainee actually is.

Depending on the cruise serivce, there can be a lot or nothing. The classic cruises can be formal evenings at dinner, slow and lazing out on deck. Hobby and craft studious run in some sections by day, the ship's library, quite often a small casino. Various clubs, bars - which range from quiet drinking places to music and dancing. Most usually have a theatre and cinema aboard with regularly scheduled performances of all sorts. Hell, I've seen one that ran a murder mystery weekend troupe over the cruise length. Although the last decade or so has seen a vast increase in the "wild club party at sea" type of cruises. So you might be stuck on one of those if you weren't paying attention.

Alias was kind of worth it for the ending, but it did have a lot of ups and downs on the way (and was incredibly, incredibly silly in its own way). There were a few interesting character arcs was actually quite well done , quite possibly due to Ron Rifkin's portrayal over the years. But yes, to continue : was an unusual direction to take at the time.

If you have an Amazon Kindle (or the app) and have signed up for Kindle Unlimited you can read this one for free: It has a "Planescape" thing going. I'm not a big fan of fantasy writing because with a few notable exceptions it's so unoriginal. This one does not really buck that trend but it's better than most I've tried to choke down. And it is free, so there's that. Sometimes there is a joy to a fun cliche / stereotype full story. That's one of the useful things about Kindle Unlimited, there might be a lot of garbage to wade through but there can be some gems found. Although I'll admit, I do have a bit of a weakness for some of those "cheesily bad / mary sue-ish" stories that are both badly written but have a few interesting ideas.

A U.S. Navy destroyer stops four Mexicans rowing towards Texas. The Captain gets on the megaphone and shouts, “Ahoy, small craft. Where are you headed?” One of the Mexicans puts down his oar, stands up, and shouts, “Gringo, we are invading the United States of America to reclaim the territory taken by the USA during the 1800s.” The entire crew on the destroyer doubles over in laughter. The Captain finally catches his breath, gets back on the megaphone and asks, “Just the four of you?” The same Mexican stands up again and shouts, "No senor, we are the last four. The other 21 million are already there."

Finally got around to watching Guardians of the Galaxy 2. Entertaining, amusing. Treads the boards between being campy space pulp adventure with dashes of serious emotion and philosophy hidden in the background. Do kind of wonder why Stallone rated opening credits since he was basically a cameo - who, okay, had like 3 brief scenes in the total film. Was caught out by Michelle Yeoh's cameo, a nd the voice of Miley Cyrus? Of course, I've now got the GotG Inferno song stuck in my head on loop.

Well, PETA is the agency that complained to Games Workshop over the prevalence of fur-wearing characters in all the art - most notably a certain chapter of Space Marines.

Abusing that's is systematic at my workplace, which isn't a small charity or anything. It's got 30k employees and is government owned, but if you take on any position with responsibility you might get more working hours, but you don't get a raise or anything. The responsibilities, stress and general worries are slowly getting to me. I'm on the verge of becoming violent at people some days. Yes. A lot of charities do seem to have that in them. The gradual emotional pressure on volunteers to put more time in because "there's no one else to do it" and the "Can you just help us cover this because so and so is off sick" and then you've suddenly got them pushing you to volunteer over 30 hours a week and piling responsibilities on top.

On their 50th anniversary, a wife found the negligee she wore on her wedding night and put it on. She went to her husband, a retired Navy Chief and asked, "Honey, do you remember this?" He looked up from his newspaper and said "Yes dear, I do. You wore that same negligee the night we were married." She said, "Yes, that's right. Do you remember what you said to me that night?"... He nodded and said "Yes dear, I said, Oh baby, I'm going to suck the life out of those boobs and screw your brains out." She giggled and said "That's exactly what you said. So now it's fifty years later, and I'm in the same negligee. What do you have to say tonight?" He looked her up and down and said, "Mission Accomplished."

I've been helping out at a local charity store the past few months, the manager is a friend of mine and was in dire need of extra volunteer help. But the other day, her boss, and her bosses boss did a visit for various reasons. Then after they left, she was all "my bosses boss was impressed by you, he was saying you're obviously sharp and put together and..." insert several minutes of compliments and "he thought you could go far. Maybe you should consider taking the the assistant manager volunteer position and maybe in time it could become a paying thing". Maybe it's my overly cynical nature, but the guy spoke about 3 sentences to me while i was there. I know I can be charming, but that's really not enough to produce several minutes worth of overly flowing compliments about my abilities. Then push to try to get me to take on more responsibility with the addendum it's still a volunteer non-paying job but "oh would look nice on your CV."

The argument could be that this should go in nerdgasms or movie, but, nope, I think it deserves to be here... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MMMe1drnZY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ27iS1mkuo&spfreloa

So, with Kayleigh McEnany doing Trump News, and Donald's name splashed across the wall behind her as she gives that "this is the real news"... is this what's going to replace the White House daily press briefing?

"The point is, they were magnificent women; Insane, soul crushing, magnificent women."

The trouble is, once you get used to that smooth, aged tequila from down there it makes drinking the crap shooting tequila served elsewhere taste really, really dire.

Drinking on a tangent - When you realise you need to come up with something to use up the leftover coconut milk in the fridge. Throw in some vanilla extract, some almond extract. A dose of maple syrup, scatter some cinnamon, a whole heaping of Cadbury's chocolate, and a dose of spiced rum. Heat, stir, then drink.

The opening line is always a fun thing, and that was a great example of one that's pure win. One I always remember is technically two lines, but made a great opening : "To say that I met Nicholas Brisbane over my husband’s dead body is not entirely accurate. Edward, it should be noted, was still twitching upon the floor." - (from Deanna Raybourn's Silent in the Grave, an interesting little Victorian era set mystery). I have to admit, Stephen King can be very hit or miss with me. He has lots of great ideas, but sometimes his writing works and others it's just annoying.