1 x Run 4 miles

[ionthesparrow]

Date: 4/26
Mileage: 4.44 miles
Notes: First time going up The Big Hill since my running hiatus ended. Uptick in mileage felt good. I may stick around the five mile mark for awhile and see if I can shave some time off. I don't know. Any thoughts?

Also, I passed a place called "Omega Notary" and I thought: most boring a/b/o AU ever?

Prompts:

1. Worlds are coming up! So, your favorite player/character trying to navigate a city they do not know.

2. Also timely: your player-of-choice seeking comfort after being eliminated

3. Podfic. Do you listen to podfic? Do you make podfic? Do you like long podfic? Short podfic? If no, what throws you out of it? If yes, what's one of your favs? (one of my stories was podficced and posted today. I am very excited to listen, even if half the time when listening to my own writing, I end up hiding my face in my hands)

Comments

[nebulia]

ahh, i can't even listen to my own podfic at all! if it's porn i don't even try, and for not porn i can listen to lile twelve seconds at a time before i have to pause it because blushing takes up all my attention.

because i'm from des moines, and james neal used to play in des moines, here's james neal getting lost in des moines:

the classy part of downtown is called the east village. it apparently used to be a pretty shitty place, and like, people didn't even libe there, it was just some churches and a car dealership and avandoned buildings, so then the city did what cities do and made it trendy instead. it's not very far from wells fargo, so theoretically he should have an easy time navigating it.

theoretically.

he's supposed to meet dicky at this new zombie-themed restaurant that has acoholic milkshakes, but he can't fucking find it. he walks into a bar called the 'blazing saddle (he should have guessed. why didn't he guess?) only to then realize it's a gay bar, but the bartender tells him he's not far off track and gives him perfectly clear directions. "it's half a block away, you can't miss it," he says.

at some point james must have taken a wrong turn, though, because he sees a sign that says 'court ave district' and--that's across the bridge from the east village. when did he cross the bridge? goddamnit. he wants an alcoholic milkshake.

there's light spilling out from one of the alleyways, and laughter; james turns in that direction instinctively. the coffeehouse is called java joe's, and it's packed on a tuesday night, but coffee, and like most food joints in iowa it has a liquor license, so there's also beer. james steps inside.

someone's reading on the stage from an ipod, gesticulating wildly with her other hand. she has hot pink hair and looks like she's about seventeen. james approaches the counter and waits for her to finish, listening to her despite himself. she's funny; some of it seems to be American politics he doesn't quite follow yet, but he still finds himself laughing at her delivery. there's a strange, deliberate rhythm to her speech.

when she finishes, three people in the audience hold up signs--an 8, a 9, and a 6.

"Ugh, fuck you, Cam," the girl says to the guy holding up the 6, good-naturedly.

"What's up tonight?" James asks the barista.

"monthly poetry slam," she says. "last tuesday every month. what can i get you?"

"uh, 312," james says idly, and the barista slides across a beer. "i thought poetry slams were like--" he pauses, and then snaps his fingers a lot.

the barista laughs, not unkindly. "stick around, kid," she teases, even though they're probably the same age. "you might learn something."

james doesn't get to zombieburger that night after all.

[ionthesparrow]

ahhh... the idea of James Neal headed to zombie-themed burger joint is great, but him stumbling into a poetry slam is AMAZING.

This is so great, and I'm so glad you're here! Stick around, have fun, tell your friends <333

[asimplechord]

Podfic - nope. Nope nope nope. I have nothing against it, and people can and have podficced my work. But it doesn’t work for me as a consumer of fanfic or non-fan fiction or nonfiction. When I read I hear a very specific narrator in my head, and listening to podfic, with someone else’s voice, jars me right out of following any plot. Especially if the reader’s gender doesn’t match with the main character/narrator’s gender.



Have some bb!Wild from back in the day when they were still the Aeros:


It should not be this difficult to get from the practice facility in Sugarland to the Toyota Center. He’s made the trip a handful of times, and he should get to know it, because the regular season will start soon, and it’ll be a regular trip.

Practice over, errands run, Jonas leaves First Colony Mall with plenty of time to spare before he’s supposed to meet Scandi and Darcy. He isn’t sure how he gets into the Grand Parkway, but he probably should’ve noticed when instead of heading into the highrises of downtown, he ends up driving on freeway through empty brown-green fields of dying grasses.

Freeway. Why is there a freeway way the hell out here? It’s mostly cookie-cutter houses on weirdly uniform lawns, interspersed with acres of fields with a random cow or oil derrick and punctuated by strip malls and big box stores.

He pulls off at the next exit and parks at the Starbucks in the lot of the next strip mall to googlemap his way back downtown.

Twenty minutes and most of the way through his venti iced vanilla latte (Jonas isn’t normally a fan of iced coffee, but it is fucking hot in Houston, and it is late September; he prays to the hockey gods to please let the NHL not go to lockout so he can head up to Minneapolis before he melts), he’s... still not on 59. Jonas is, in fact, in Katy proper.

Jesus fuck. Who designed these roads?

He wants to bang his head on the steering wheel, but taking his eyes off the road in this commuter traffic might actually be deadly. At least there’s an exit coming up, and he can turn around.

Forty-five minutes after that, he’s finally back in the Galleria, seriously contemplating never leaving home alone again.

[ionthesparrow]

oh, the Houston Aeros <3 Oh, lost and dearly departed Texas minor league teams <333 It's so fun to see these names in fic :))))

(I also feel like the Wild are full of fun, under-explored players. Like that Suter-Parise article. That was AMAZING. That deserves more thought and consideration than I can give it on a weeknight for sure...)

And re: podfic - for alot of my job, I have to keep my eyes on a screen, but don't necessarily have to pay 100% attention, so I end up listening to ALOT of podcasts, and also to audiobooks. It's amazing what an intimate experience it can be to have someone read to you, and how the wrong narrator can really throw you out. ATM, I'm trying to listen to a Kurt Vonnegut novel, but it's like the narrator... doesn't get that it's supposed to be funny? Or doesn't quite get the joke? I don't know that I can explain it. But it's definitely distracting to the point I don't know if I'll finish the text. Who knows.