We had family over for Memorial Day, and thank goodness because otherwise I would've spent the day in front of the TV swearing about the Coke 600. (I am SO GLAD Dale Jr. is trying a new crew chief, btw. No idea if it will help or not, but it's something.)

On Monday we took a walk back through our woods, to this sign:

We blithely ignored it, cos we're hardcore rebels, dude.

( and I took more photos, charming ones of course )

...And then I somehow got an eye infection. Fucking ow. I have super-strength painkillers that do nothing at all! This is going to mess up the French Open for me because, well, it's extremely painful to blink. I should've knocked on wood when I said in my last post that awesome things happen this week, damn it. Haha. I'm still watching of course; Fed's match today got a bit worrying there for awhile. My fave ~Peter Polansky~ unsurprisingly lost in the first round, but it was impressive that he qualified at all I guess.

Although I did find one awesome thing, in my quest for entertainment that doesn't involve going anywhere (because I guess it's contagious?) or looking at anything: the motherlode of free German audiobooks! Audiobooks are so strange. My grandma used to listen to them while she crocheted, but I don't think I'd heard one in years. Currently I'm listening to Angels & Demons (which is unimpressive so far) while I wait for some German things to download.

I would definitely appreciate any recommendations for music/audiobooks/other things that one listens to.

*The Ryan Newman Fanboy is the main person responsible for getting me into NASCAR. Whenever we see him he wears an ancient Ryan Newman shirt, which started accidentally, turned into a joke, and has now gone on for so excessively long I don't know what it is anymore, but I do think someone should buy him a new shirt.

[This post is brought to you by my sleep-deprived and annoyed-at-having-to-wear-glasses self.]

Guys, thanks to jessilestrange I now have a dreamwidth account! So everyone who has one should add me there:
augustfalcon@dreamwidth
I made the layout. I am very impressed with myself.

Actually, while I'm at it, here's my twitter. I know I'm following some of you but there are probably some I don't know about.
augustfalcon@twitter

The world is officially green now, as evidenced by the backyard:


( +2 from hiking yesterday )

Oh well. I am happy that Memorial Day is coming up because traditionally EXCELLENT THINGS happen to me during this week of the year. The French Open starts, someone in my family usually throws a party, and then there are other random things. In 2002, my cousins, siblings and I performed Placid's Problem! (One of the worst plays ever. I wrote it. It involved romantic advice from grasshoppers.) In 2006, I became a fan of NASCAR! In 2008, I discovered NASCAR slash! (I have no idea why it took two years. Or why it's a good thing. But it is.) And Sunday is awesome for those obsessed with auto racing, i.e., me.

If anyone knows of any places in Europe that I absolutely must see, please do tell. I bought tickets; I'll be there in the fall/winter. Other than that I have no idea what I'm doing yet, so any suggestions will be seriously considered. :D

I saw the Star Trek movie today! I really liked it. Many lols were had, and I'm always up for a screwy alternate universe/time travel type plot. It lived up to my expectations, so now my incredibly short list of movies I don't hate will get about 10% longer.

I'm currently shaking because I just ate italian ice and the door is open. Lol. I'm also trying to decide when to leave for Europe later this year because plane tickets are pretty cheap atm. I kind of think I should wait until after the NASCAR season is over, even though I'd feel like a bit of a fool for putting off ~the beginning of the rest of my life~ for that. But it would give me a month to get the money issues straightened out. Mostly I just want someone to say "Yes, it would be an excellent idea to leave in the 4th week of November, so do that." I'm not normally this indecisive, I swear. Then again my very first thoughts on the matter were all of 4 hours ago.

I've been writing for summerwrite2. I have about 10k; going for 40k or so this month. Anyone else on here doing it? My story is set around Lake Erie, so last night I was interrogating my dad about all this random crap (because for whatever reason he knows everything about shipping on the Great Lakes) and it turned into this ridiculously long conversation about his sailing adventures and I didn't get much writing done at all. But it was funny.

Speaking of that story, I have a few bits of it on runaway_tales, links here. When making that (and redoing my profile) I realized how horribly rusty I am at html. I mean, that profile probably has about 500 more tables than necessary. Sad.

So after wetdiamonds posted about Tumbleweed Tiny Houses, I've decided my life will not be complete without one. I mean, come on! Who doesn't want a teeny tiny house that you can TOW ALONG BEHIND YOU? I like the very smallest one best. The only problem is that I wouldn't have anywhere to put it. :|

The NASCAR website scanner thing is so fun. I was listening to Jimmie Johnson, obviously, who was having the most utterly shitty race, and Chad would be like everything's fine, it's gonna be fine and Jimmie would be like waahhhhhh. Kyle Busch won, so even though it was a horrible night for the 48 I'm still pretty happy. And my flist probably thinks I have bad taste in drivers now.

Speaking of sports stuff, Nadal won Rome and I'm pretty happy about that. Still, I miss the Federer-Nadal finals. Yeah, they were nervewracking as hell a lot of the time (Rome 2006 final anyone?) but now it's like...there's no rivalry, and all Fed's diehard fans are constantly angsting about how he's not god anymore. I'm hoping he gets his act together because his slump is bringing down the mood.

Since I'm always begging for book recs, I figured I'd recommend one for once, so I give you:
The God Eaters (and this link goes to somewhere you can read it, too)
It's this fantasy/western with gunfights, sex, and mad science. But don't get me wrong, it's actually on the gritty side and contains plenty of death and torture. AND IT IS AWESOME.

I'm tentatively doing summerwrite2. I also joined runaway_tales finally. If you have any short story ideas, tell me and I'll probably write and post them, because I'm saving the current novel idea for SocNoc and I don't currently have much to write. I mean otherwise I might write a bunch of slash and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

*I'm way overly fond of this quote (from The God Eaters), like to the extent of practically wanting it tattooed on myself or something.

evilgourd and I think we should have a local cable show. We aren't sure what it would be about, possibly local UFO sightings of which there are naturally SO MANY, and we could replace the wrestling show because they are as charismatic as mollusks. We have a plan, where we'll deviously gain information from the wrestling guys, then sneak in when they're filming by luring the cameraman away with candy and then impersonating him. It is an excellent plan, if I dare say so myself.

I've been trying out the show Supernatural. What do you think, is this a good idea/bad idea/what? It's not technically my thing at all but I'm still finding it entertaining...I enjoy fuck-with-the-main-characters plots, I grew up reading Veryan after all. (AHEM MY NAMESAKE, who kills his bff in duel (well, thinks he does) which everyone then hates him for so he only has one friend, who's actually just his friend so he can continue drugging him...he is eventually tortured and left to die in an underground room full of rats eating at him...you get the picture.) I've also been watching Quite Interesting, which is a comedy quiz show and if you haven't seen it you definitely should. IT IS AWESOME.

Last weekend I posted an entry which I made private because I was too sleep deprived to make much sense. Here is an excerpt describing a story:
It's like how Nigerian lads pretend to be Charles Soludo, so a baiter pretended to be Charles Soludo instead and the lad who was convinced of this threw himself in front of the real Charles Soludo's car and the real Charles Soludo was like "wtf wtf", but in M.I.S.S. the baiter's the villain, Charles Soludo is the protagonist and the lad is BILL, the stupidest character ever written.

It was in the 80s today. HOW CAN ANYONE LIKE WARM WEATHER? The only thing it is good for is storms.

*someone who might be reading this and therefore will NOT BE NAMED