HeatherB

Funky. I remember *trying* to get them to come off when I worked there, lol.

If you don't use the loops on the underside of the cap I can see it happening. I've seen people neglect to do it...it'll detach more easily then. They aren't just decoration. I've had 4 chops on my Wings and no problems. (none of them were terminals though, thankfully)

Your wish is my command! I just PM'ed you the details. I forgot to mention that it is a good dessert for gatherings. If you make it just for 2 or 3 people you'll have a ton of it leftover and you'll eat it for days on end and each gain 5 pounds. It fed about 10 people yesterday, some with small portions and others with large portions or second helpings. I will look for the recipe thread and post it there if anyone else is interested.

I brought my "death by chocolate" dessert. Everyone seemed to love it. I was called "evil." I'm still stuffed.

Ambien is evil! It makes me hallucinate. And that's just with half a pill. I can't stand the stuff!

I just got a new Tetris too. It's gorgeous...he did a great job. It is not quite as tight in the legs and butt as my previous Michigan but we'll see how that goes. I need to try some 4-way and see how my fall rate is in it. The suit was fine for bigger-ways this past weekend. Mike builds great suits. I love his grippers and booties!

Yeah.....I need a kitty-sized treadmill for him. Or a giant hamster ball. I feed him very little but he will not lose weight! I think he'd eat a pot pie If I let him have one. She is on the other end of the spectrum -- teensy tiny.

Here's a photo of my two cats squeezed into their cat bed together. He takes up the whole bed by himself but she finds space to squeeze in. Apparently she likes being shmooshed.

Northeast for me. I used to have an absolutely horrible Long Island accent when I was a kid and teenager, but I grew out of it. I didn't know I had an accent until I moved to FL at age 14 and everyone at school made me say words like "dog" over and over again. I still get confused when people say "pen" and "pin" the same way. What the hell? Different vowels, people! And "cot" and "caught?" Different! But I do not say "cawt" anymore. I'd say I have no accent now. At least nothing strong...unless I'm around a New Yorker, then it's contagious. And I still jokingly say "couple two tree"...that's a NE PA thing apparently. As in, "I had a couple two tree beers last night."

All Saints' Day is on 11/1 All Souls' Day is on 11/2 I remember this b/c we always had mass at school on All Saints. A few hundred kids falling asleep during mass b/c we'd stayed up too late the night before and were crashing from all the sugar.

Too bad USPA would not allow the NSL to provide complete Nationals coverage (with NSL-TV etc). I love Omniskore but Kurt does a great job on skyleague.com too, providing a different perspective and lots of info about the teams. Why restrict the coverage this way? This situation is mentioned on skyleague.com (scroll down about half-way): http://www.skyleague.com/pages/news/showArticles.php?story=575

Any 8-way predictions? (Hopefully they'll be able to get off the ground soon)

Some stuff off the top of my head, without knowing what you do or do not already have down pat: -falling straight down (not backing up or sliding around. no-contact proximity dives are good for this, especially if you have one solid flyer as a reference) -fall rate control (again, helpful if you have someone to use as a reference for you to play follow-the-leader in the sky, or to have tunnel walls as reference) -forward and backward movement -side-slides -center point turns (90, 180, 270, 360 etc) -outfacing moves -superpositioning (eventually) (this is side-sliding and turning at same time) -grip drills (especially fun for 2-ways in tunnel or sky) -grip discipline (talking about grips, who is picking up who, who is presenting what, etc during dirt dives) -keys (talking about these during dirt dives too...who's giving them, what they're looking for, etc) -eye contact, eye contact, eye contact! Some mantis work will help keep your arms more in front of you and help you use your legs to fly more. (It's easier and faster to take grips if you are not flying in a big ol' boxman position) You can probably find some articles on this site or on the old 4way.org site. I remember some fairly recent articles about beginning 4-way in Parachutist too. (Ed Lightle was the author perhaps?) I'm sure some of the more experienced folks will chime in...they're probably just all at Nationals.

Strange. I can understand the desire for the "group hug" thing, but realistically many people need to leave once their event has finished. Oh well! I ain't running the show.

No medals ceremony until Saturday night?

They have a 10 point spread to overcome at this time (after round 7)....so probably not silver now. In intermediate: Impressive 26 in round 7 from the Air Force.

Bad call again, drunk boy.

On my end, Skyleague is showing all of rd 3 for intermediate but Omniskore is not yet (even after refreshing). edit: Doesn't seem like there's a lag anymore. Who knows.

Cool, thanks guys. Skyleague is loading finally too. 63 4-way teams this year, compared to 80 teams last year. 3 fewer in open 5 fewer in advanced 9 fewer in intermediate Just some random facts...since I have nothing better to do than sit here, click away, and sneeze a lot!

Lost 2 points to Knights in rd 3 though...you're gonna have a bipolar kind of day, aren't ya? You're not the only one watching! I'm clicking away on omniskore....(I'm at home...with a massive head cold too) And where's the intermediate draw? I can't get skyleague to load...maybe it is on there.

edit: Got it! Thanks for the helpful messages.

A few stupid things I've done that could have turned out badly: 1. After a 5 or 6 month layoff at around 70 jumps, I did my re-currency jump with a friend who also had about 70 jumps (and was not very current). No official review of mals or anything either. Probably not the best idea. 2. I jumped with a stuffed animal tucked under my chest strap. (I have photos somewhere). If I had needed to cutaway or go for my reserve that animal could easily have gotten in the way. I think I had about 100 jumps at the time. I may have done it twice in a row now that I think about it. 3. I *almost* jumped with uncocked PC b/c I allowed myself to get distracted while packing. (this was a couple months ago). I suddenly thought "I don't remember cocking it" while doing my gear check before putting the rig on. I usually double-triple check it during the packing process; I don't know what I was thinking that time, but I do remember getting up, searching around for my manifest card, giving it to someone and then returning to my pack job. Lesson: Keep my steps the same, remember where I left off, double-check things, don't let distractions distract me, keep doing those gear checks. 4. And 2 or 3 ill-planned raft/inflatable dives that I probably could have easily gotten knocked unconconsious on. I did get clocked very hard on one way back when by someone who was rather uncurrent. I saw stars. I stopped doing those kind of dives a long time ago. Lesson: Don't do "crazy" dives with people you don't know well. (my own personal rule: don't do "crazy" dives) 5. Oh, and I had a bit of a low-pull phase a long time ago too. Not low like 800 feet low, but lower than I realized (Hi Oren!). I'd spend too much time coming out of the track, waving around, looking around, etc. Thankfully I remedied all of that before I started my chops-a-lot phase. This is probably all run-of-the-mill stuff, but if it can help one person that's cool.

What do you believe constitutes a living wage? What do you think is fair pay for doing an AFF jump or teaching a FJC? And where would that money come from? Raising student jump prices? Raising experienced jumper prices? Out of the owner's pockets or management's pockets? Somewhere else? I'm not an AFF instructor but I'm curious.

Yep, he's still around. He's had a few albums and EPs out since BFF broke up. Rockin' the Suburbs, Songs for Silverman... I think the new albums are a pretty good mix of "angst" as you say, and the more wistful stuff. It's very much "white boy" music and he pokes fun at that fact, but I love it just the same. I'd listen to him play anything on the piano. His piano is better than his voice but I still find him charming. Here's one of his newer songs, "Landed", I don't see any of the angrier/harder songs on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZs40Erpy0I

Flaring felt pretty funky. Pushing a bar outwards and up instead of pulling toggles down. It was fun (just did a few flights from a training hill -- sand dunes actually). It'd do it again. On my first try, the guy had to let go of the rope (not enough weight under the thing) so I was on my own and fairly worried that I was about to kill myself. We lived. Very little training for those first flights...we watched a 15 minute stoner video featuring people biffing in and words of wisdom about "being one with the glider" but there wasn't much technical training.