And what helps even better is finishing a S.NL 1969 Grand Prix Legends competition race in sixth place! It's been some time since I had so much fun with a competition race, I almost forgot it could be this way. But now I remember :-)

Well what in a case of feeling down always seems to help for me is fiddle with a website or two, and this time it was one of my own I fiddled with. This very one, to be exact. After changing the banner and some colour settings I finally got it looking the way I'd actually like it to look. So I think that apart from a couple of little details I'll stick with this one for a while. I like the lighter looks of it much more than the dark stuff I had before and it certainly does read a lot more relaxed. It's easier on the eyes this way I think.

I suppose it happens to everybody every once and a while. You do something you normally like to do very much and all of a sudden you start wondering why you still keep doing that because for some odd reason it has not been quite that much fun lately. Yesterday evening, while I was getting a whooping from Bas at the snooker table, I had one of those moments (again). And it wasn't because he was winning all but one frames but for some reason the whole deal of snooker just didn't feel that great anymore. We talked about it a bit and generally agreed that it would be so much better if we were to play snooker just a little bit more often it would probably go much better. And therein lies part of the problem folks, because I neither have the time nor a lot of money to do that extra practicing. I've been thinking about this 'problem' of mine all night and a little bit too this morning because I wonder where this negativity towards snooker all of a sudden comes from. When I drove home last night I realized that the evening hadn't even been that bad. I think that in the majority of all frames we played, the two of us together scored somewhere in the range of ninety to a hundred points which simply means that these were pretty good & solid frames, by our current standards anyway. So, sure, last night I lost big time, in terms of frames, but not by much per frame so where does this uncomfortable feeling come from then? It's a buildup of all sorts of small things and now that I've been thinking it over it's not just to do with snooker. Even worse, I think that snooker is actually the smallest problem, if one at all. It seems that lately I sometimes don't have the energy for whatever I need to do. That being work, or snooker or even something like sim racing what I simply always love to do. I just can't get myself motivated enough to get going at those times. The mood I'm in differs from day to day. One day it's fine, the other I can't get myself to care about anything at all. So far I've not been able to find any kind of pattern or reason why but it's becoming pretty irritating to me, to say the least, and it really, really gets me down. And what's even worse is that it reflects on my friends and colleagues as well, who are about the last persons I'd want to bother with these things. Something needs to happen, all I need to find out is what ... To be continued.

So what have been up to for the past couple of days? Well I've been in bed mostly, keeping everything as dark as possible and taking just a little more aspirins than is good for a normal person (or so it says on the box at least) to get my headache under control. And today for the first time I felt like almost a healthy person again, headache is about gone too so things look better by the minute. Hopefully this will improve over the day some more so I can be me again. It's been just a little too much this time, I really can do without these days for sure.

And boy do I need it this time. It's been way too long since we've had a genuine race weekend and they tend to be so much fun so not only do I need the weekend in general, I'm also really looking forward to this one again. Of course we're going to do some racing again and it seems this weekend might hold a bonus for us. For our latest SIM, GT Legends, people are making the Nurburgring track which will be a blast to drive, specially with this class of cars. I can't wait to let an old Corvette or Ford Mustang loose there, the thought alone brings a wide smile to my face. If I was grinning any more the top of my head would probably fall clean off ;-) You guys have a nice weekend too :-D

Wow! Just a couple of minutes ago I found out a foolproof way to test whether or not there is any adrenaline left in your body. -= Please kids, do not try the following at home or at any other place =- When I was driving from another building back to the office the IFO's rear end all of a sudden decided to loose all grip and break away while I was negotiating a long turn. This must be one of those rare moments where you're glad you do a lot of virtual racing with the worlds best racing sims (if that helps at all) because for that split second it felt like going a fraction over the limit with a Mini Cooper on the track of Donington ... Somehow I managed to make just the right steering adjustments and get the IFO back in line on the road again. Though the road was empty at that moment I think I didn't even left my lane so all things considered I'm pretty proud about my in advert achievement. Thinking back I have no idea why the IFO decided to go another course in the first place. Sure it was a couple of degrees below zero but there was no ice on the roads or anything, at least not that I noticed. And that's what makes this a bit scary. I mean if I did push the limits of the IFO and simply asked too much at that moment then it's normal to get a reaction from it but this time I did nothing strange at all. Oh, and yes, there was a lot of adrenaline left, plenty to go 'around' if you 'catch my drift' ... ;-)

The more I play them, the more I'm getting into these combat flight simulators nowadays. And especially the IL2 series which lets me fly the classic fighter and bomber planes. Marvelous stuff. Now I have to agree that in a way enacting and replaying something terrible as war and person to person combat might seem odd, to say the least. And you're right of course, some persons actually tend to loose the fun aspect of games and actually want to shoot a bunch of Germans. However I think it's safe to say that those mental patients are the minority of people playing those games. It has taken some time for me to get used to the whole idea of virtually shooting others just for fun, and even more so now that computers and graphics are so powerful these days that you might almost even accidentally recognize someone walking around on the battlefield. And it's the same feeling when I'm sim racing and after a crash see some cars fly through the air. Having seen photographs of real life racing accidents I can't help wondering if they are okay, even if it is just for a split second, before realizing that it's 'just a game' and continue racing myself. For me those warfare games are nothing more than just another way of testing my skills on various levels because in the end it all comes down on how well I control the plane or car or whatever. It's not that I want to shoot down and kill pilots in a combat flight sim, no all I want is to be better in control of my plane than the AI pilot who is trying just as hard to out-fly me. And it's so much fun flying around in those old planes, avoiding all the trouble and getting home in one piece. For some reason the old planes feel more alive when flying them. With a modern jet plane for example you can do two times the speed of sound but it never feels that way. An old plane on the other hand looks, and almost feels, like it's coming apart when you reach four to five hundred kilometers an hour or when you maneuver beyond the limits of the plane, everything starts shaking and sounds so awful. You would almost feel sorry for the plane when that happens. And if it does come apart you will feel sorry, trust me ;-)

Oh man, I feel just about every muscle from my knees up to my shoulder blades ... And unfortunately ... it doesn't feel all that great. What a way to start the day. Ouch. The reason for this probably is that yesterday we've been practicing again snooker and I think I've just been standing too long on my legs again. I still have back troubles when I've been standing on my feet for a longer period, though it is getting better slowly. The good news is that snooker itself was going pretty well. I've been playing a couple of good frames and to be honest: I needed that. The last couple of competition games I've played were not that great so put it mildly. Let's hope the feeling goes and the form in snooker stays on for a couple of weeks :-)

Best of whishes for the new year everyone. Let's get through this one in good health and have lot's of fun while doing so. Enjoy!