They did it again, the pixel Gods from Pixar and Walt Disney have released yet another one of their very cool animation movies titled Cars and I tell you people it's absolutely fantastic. Go see it. Now. Yeah, I'll wait. ;-) Welcome back! :-) First of all I love animation movies, for example both of the Toy Stories, Schreck (part one) and the Incredibles, are movies you can wake me up for anytime. Of course there are plenty more I wouldn't mind waking up for, but these just sprung to mind. And now they have made another masterpiece and done it about my all time favorite topic: Cars! And for as far as I'm concerned, they couldn't have done it any better, I enjoyed that movie frame by frame from start to finish. It's simply phenomenal. You'll have to watch it a couple of times at least, so you'll see all of the little details they put in that movie. It's astonishing what they came up with in terms of gadgets, locations, names, etc. Simply brilliant.

This year I've seen more of the 24 hours of Le Mans than ever in my life before. Apart from the usual highlights we get on TV over here (read: a few lousy snippets with loads of commercials in between) the whole event was broadcasted live over the internet, the whole 24 hours long, non-stop and without commercial brakes of any kind. I tell you folks, for a motor sport fanatic and Le Mans endurance series fan like me, this 24 hour race is heaven. Absolute bliss. If only one day I could be in one ... Just once ... I could die happily afterwards. Before I was able to relax and start watching it though, it took quite some arranging this time. Cutting work a little short last Saturday and making absolute sure I was at Bas' place in time didn't prevented me from almost missing the start of the race. As it turned out Bas had taken the opportunity to enjoy the nice weather a bit and was cruising on his motorcycle so when I was there, he wasn't ... not even close. Then, in a moment of sheer brilliance mixed with a flair of desperation (oh come on, please bare with me ;-) I decided to get the laptop out, plug in my wireless card and see if any of the neighbors were kind enough to share a bit of internet with me. To my enjoyment this worked and I was able to watch the start of the race live and the first quarter of an hour until Bas arrived and we could continue watching it on TV. Got to love these modern times people, this wireless thing was a Godsend! So now I was able to watch the whole race, from start to finish and that's exactly what I did. Apart from about two hours where I dozed off a little and about twenty minutes in which I drove home, I saw the complete race and I now know absolutely sure that this is by far my most favorite class of racing. Awesome! Fantastic! Magnificent! (you can add your own personal favorite superlatives here ;-) Next to the real life 24 hours race Bas and I held one our own race weekends again. And this one had a serious goal too: train for our own endurance sim race. On the 12th of July we're going to do a full GT race on the famous circuit of Spa, Belgium. This means that we're strapped in our cars for the whole three hours of it and personally, I can't wait. We did a lot of racing and testing this weekend, really a lot, and it's beginning to pay off. Already it's safe to say that we're getting better and more consistent at racing on Spa and we'll be ready for sure when the lights turn green on the 12th.

Yes that's right, this afternoon I've been shopping for shoes. But not for me, I spend the afternoon with my sister and my little niece and it's her who we were shopping for. She now has shoe size 19 would you believe it, this 'little' girl is growing fast I tell you. Anyway, like I hear from colleagues shopping for shoes with a lady takes forever. And here I was, shopping for shoes with two ... Eva can walk pretty good already but to take her for a walk for the entire afternoon is a bit too much so they have a kind of tricycle from which they can disable the pedals so they run free and there is a rod on the backside which enables us to push, and more importantly, steer the tricycle. We had a great time though and my niece was absolutely adorable throughout the whole afternoon. Waving to everyone, calling 'hi' to whoever wanted to hear it. She's adorable, absolutely great.

The past weekend was a kind of busy but very nice one. The Saturday was a nice, but slightly too warm, normal Saturday and I worked in dad's shop like usual. After work I got to take my new small bird home with me which was kind of special of course. After I installed it in it's new home it looked around a bit, climbed to the highest spot and started messing around with the bell that was hanging there. It's a nice little bird. Then I went over to Bas and we did some snookering. I blame it on the heat mostly but our snooker wasn't the best we've had. In the end the score read two all and we decided to call it a day. And then there was the Sunday. First I visited my dad again after which I went to Bas' place to watch the Formula One race together. One word described the race: boring. But that's the way it is with Formula One for quite some time now so it's part of the show I'm afraid. After the race finished Bas switched to the soccer game and I got into the car and drove to my sister and niece. My sister was going to watch the soccer game too so I had all the time to play with my niece. :-) She's growing up fast now folks, really fast. She walks around like she's done that for ages and what's amazing is the way she answers you when you ask something. 'Would you like something to drink?'. ' Yes'. Very determent, no moment of hesitation, when she knows what you mean the answer is crystal clear. She's a lovely little creature, I could watch her do her thing all day. After the soccer game we all went outside where a inflatable pool was waiting for the little one. After a brief moment to get used to the water she just didn't want to get out anymore. Man she had a good time in there, smiling all the way through. When she finally had to get out it was as sad for her as it was for us. ;-) My sister's friends where there too and we all had a nice meal followed by the card game version of Monopoly which was new to me. It seems whatever version of Monopoly they come up with, it just doesn't suit me that well. But we had a good time playing it and in the end that's what matters most. After they had gone home I had a very pleasant sister-brother talk which made time fly and we should definitely have those a little more often. She truly is the kind of person I can talk to, about just about everything. Super! So this weekend classified as a pretty good one, on all fronts. :-)

I haven't been posting much updates (if any) to my site over the past couple of weeks basically because nothing really worth mentioning happened. I've been working, playing snooker and messing around at home most of the time and not much exiting happened. There have of course been some changes at work with which I'm slowly getting familiar again. This also means that I'm slowly becoming the old Biek again which pleases both me as it seems to do my employer. A classic win-win situation, and it feels good to be back in business. Snooker has been absolutely great over the past couple of weeks so me feeling good also reflects on the game again. To think that I was seriously considering quitting snooker just a couple of weeks ago now seems like a strange idea. It's funny how things like this can suddenly turn around sometimes. The GPRT, my sim racing team, is slowly growing a bit and gained a few members over the past weeks too. I have to admit that I really like that very, very much. In a way it's a kind of reward for all the energy I've been putting in over the years now that I see that so called foreign members (as in non-relatives or direct friends) are joining up and racing with us. And if that fact alone wasn't cool enough, the also slowly expanding starting field on the grid at the beginning (and finishes too of course) of our races is absolutely fantastic and the races themselves are so much more alive too. Marvelous, got to love that. The bottom-line I guess is that I feel fine.