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Many thanks to Skydive City for hosting an awesome 4th of July weekend! Lot of jumping, food & beer during the middle of the "off" season thanks to the efforts of the Zhills staff. The turnout for the 4-way meet was fantastic - Drew & Oren did a great job of divvying up everyone into 9 teams quickly and fairly (no ringer teams!), created a fun dive pool and rounded up cool prizes too (50% off Wings certificates, 30% off Tony Suits certificates, 10 free minutes vouchers at SkyVenture, and a stack of tshirts). The video guys were awesome: Tony, Paul, JC, Ron C., Bob C., Igor, Travis and Patrick ran around in circles all day long meeting loads and dubbing. Bob Healy & Steve Johnson provided excellent coaching and judged all the rounds at the end as well. Congratulations to the winning team, Scared Silly Sexy Turtles! Captained by Skydive City's own Alicia Wolfe, AnneMarie Guelli, Heather Buckridge (heatherb), and Carrie Bramlett who had a whopping 60 jumps going into Round 1 and kicked a whole lot of ass! No one on the team had over 600 jumps but they averaged 9.5 with 50 seconds working time. No handicapping either! Next big event at Zhills will be the Turkey Boogie. See you all there!

The various USPA committee agendas for the upcoming BOD meeting have been posted. Go to http://uspa.org/news/notices.htm#uspamtg to see all the gory details. A couple of the proposals caught my eye, including: - A proposed BSR that tandem passengers wear helmets, I suppose to knock their tandem masters' teeth out in a more effective manner. OK, there wasn't a specification as to whether hard or soft helmets would be worn, but I have a feeling it would suck to get a Z1 in the mouth. - Someone with 120 jumps would like to receive her D but is unable to meet the requirements before September due to injuries, so would the USPA please pretty please just give it to her anyway Ad nauseum. I have to hand it to the BOD members... I would SO lose my shit and start smacking people if I had to deal with the bureaucratic part of skydiving.

If you purchased from Blue Nile, contact them re: resale or credit. If they can't/don't deal with returns, ask for referrals for diamond brokers that they work with. If you have the GIA report, you can also look up the Rappaport sheet and find the current wholesale value of the stone. Ebay is the last place I'd try to sell your stone, unless you go through Sothebys' Ebay store. Actually, a pawn shop is the LAST place I'd go. You'll get a fraction of the value. Chicago's a big city - you should be able to find a diamond dealer without too much effort. Just go knowledgeable.

Nahhh, I think they just put the info up...until recently it had all the info for the Perris nats. See ya there!

http://www.nationals.com/

Ok, one more time... Koreans = dogs All other Asians (except the Japanese) = cats Grrrrr! Get it right or I'll set Arlo (my fellow rabid Korean chick) on you! Edited to add: Those aren't even kittens yet, they're so tiny! Are you sure Mom wasn't just out looking for food? Hope you don't need a lot of sleep, because they'll want feeding ALL THE TIME. Good luck!

Do you understand why you had to do the flips & barrell rolls during AFF? Have you ever had an unstable exit? What did you do - a front flip or a back flip? I think most of us can agree that learning to get stable is a fairly important part of AFF . Yes, more focus and time could/should be placed on canopy flight, but that should be in addition to the education students currently receive - not instead of. As for me, 625 jumps, 1.25 wingload depending on whether or not I've been to the gym and BSRs are fine by me, but I highly doubt that will ever happen.

Hey Hotpants. 1) What the hell are you doing posting at 3:54AM? Don't you ever sleep?!? 2) Additional BSRs re: canopy downsizing would probably be very helpful for the majority, but you'll always run into the "Rules? I don't need no stinkin' rules" crowd. Not a goddamn thing anyone can do about them except hope that they won't pound in right in front of you. I don't think it would matter what sport those particular people were involved in either ... reaction would be the same. See ya Sunday at the crack house - I mean tunnel.

OK, so this topic should probably be in "Gear & Rigging." However, both of the fatalities were regular Zhills jumpers and Ed's one too. (Edited to remove snotty comment) How about redirecting his question to the appropriate forum?

Yeah yeah yeah, blah blah blah. Show off. Saw a little footage. Schweeeet.

Oh, so you drank the Kool-Aid too. Welcome, oh fellow evangelist. Help spread the word.

Eat ONE cat and everyone's on your back, fer chrissakes. Arlo, would you please enlighten this guy about how we prefer dogs? Anyway, the soup you're referring to is (phonetically) "suh-long-tahng" and it's the theraflu of Korea. It will roto-rooter your entire gastro-intestinal tract and wipe out any nasties as well. Prepare to sweat and feel a whole lot better within 24 hours.

I know, I know. Call me technically challenged. The portfolio menus are at the bottom. Anyway, Anil's portfolio deserves your attention as his work is amazing - not your typical scratcher by any stretch. Check out the biomechanical tats. Geiger himself loves Anil! One last thing...small tattoos don't always mean less time. Anil's miniatures are a little bigger than a quarter but take over ten hours each.

http://www.anilgupta.com/frames.cfm Look for the 8th frame from the bottom of the "Mythological" menu: dragon with bolts of lightning. That's my better half's itty bitty backpiece. It took Anil a little over 90 hours (in 2 to 3 hour sessions, twice a week) to get it to the stage you see photographed.