Flying my Crossfire into the sunset courtesy of Kevin Anfinson
Why society hates me
Tattoos
Finished lower sleeve: By Scott Bramble, Mercury Tattoo, Glenside, PA
Play piercings
Blood Flowers scene: from Diabolique in Philadelphia, PA on November 16th, 2001.
Tongue
Quintet tongue: Just another view that I found of it. Isn't my uvula cute? Now I'm down to just 3.
2009/06/12 08:07 Holy crap, it has been more than a month since I wrote in here. Well, pretty much all that I did was work. I packed reserves, I did many tandems and did a ton of AFF jumps. Much good food was had at restaurants like: Pepper Tree, Fadi's, Thai Seafood House. I just got in some materials to make a weight belt, to help me keep up with the larger folks that have been coming in to jump. Been playing too much Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook, so much so that I have been having dreams of playing it. Made out with a cute girl the other night, hope to continue to do that a lot. Had an apartment all lined up, stuff happened, probably not going there anymore, looked at two other places, one seems the most promising, due to the lack of a lease.
Yeah, that is my life in a nutshell of recent.
Oh, and today is my six year anniversary of my first skydive. Now I have over 2000 skydives and sixty BASE jumps, jumped in three countries and have loved every minute of it. Thank you, John Berry.
Oh, and the video of me on Mythbusters is out there, too. I was on Season 7, Episode 7, "Seesaw Saga." Look for the black jumpsuit with the purple and green stripe. That is me with Grant. Woot.
2009/05/07 20:54 Well, the winds are finally starting to die down around here and we are getting students in the air, so that is a little bit of fantastic. I am making decent money with my rigger ticket on top of it all, so this kid right here has had his job satisfaction jump greatly in the past week.
Last night was my coworker Matt's birthday and we went to Dot's house to chill there. After a very short amount of time and many clouds of a variety of smokes and LOTS of bayou mosquitoes, I found the first ride out of there and came home and CRASHED out. Yup, watching people drink and smoke is still not all that exciting.
One of my students, Ting-Chun, is on vacation here from Taiwan and is loving skydiving, but is so damn hard on himself. He is not terribly flexible and is kind of awkward, but is getting it slowly, but surely. I love having students that have break through moments. Hell, that is why I am doing this for a living.
Today my one student had an ok second solo freefall, despite his legs being on his butt the whole time. When it came to pull time, he held onto the pilot chute that deploys the main parachute, so like I was told I started punching him in the ribs in order to get him to release it. I tried to reach across him and pull it out of his hands via the bridle, but that just pulled the pin and his main bag came out of the container. My asshole puckered and he finally got snatched up by his canopy opening. He got a good stern talking to about that situation and I trust that he will not repeat that mistake, lest he leave the DZ with a broken rib if he has me again.
2009/04/30 09:59 This cloudy/windy weather is so very shitty. Thankfully I have been working up in the rigging loft, therefore assuring that SOME money will be coming into the coffers. Did my canopy flipping, up a bit after all that, so that is better news.
Last night I had dinner with this gal Jill that I met on OkCupid. We went to Pepper Tree, which has to be the best veggie Chinese restaurant in Houston. Granted, it is probably the only one, but it is pretty tasty anyway. Next on the itinerary was the Water Wall by the Williams Building in the Galleria section of the city, but it was not currently watery and was thereby less impressive. Rudyard's was our next stop for a drink. My eye lids were getting heavy while I was there, so we broke out back to her place so that I could get my car. Once I sat down I thought it best to rest for a few minutes before I drove. About an hour and a half later at 0145 I woke up and thought a little more shut eye was in order. When I turned the car on again it was around 0630, just in time to make it out of the city before rush hour started and get back to the DZ in a very timely fashion. First was the shower, now is the sitting around and hoping for holes to form, so that I may jump out of planes for fun and profit.
Tonight is Ben's (one of my coworkers) memorial. He hung himself around 3am on Sunday morning. He was having some issues that he apparently could not rectify in his head, so he took the easy way out. It sucks, but such is life.
2009/04/23 12:27 My trip to Philly was supremely awesome. As soon as I got off the plane I got on the train into Center City and met up with Dave for the lunch special at Kingdom of Vegetarians. It was extra delicious and my friend Vedika swung by for a minute or two. After the gorge-fest I got back on the train to Lansdale to see the parents and friends. It was nice to hug my momma and rip a few more CDs that I was missing listening to and do a delicious meal at The Oasis with my friends John, Mitch, Bud and Erin. Oh, how I missed their hummous and falafel. The owner was happy to see me, as it had been half a year since I was there last. John gave me some delicious vegan baked goods for my birthday (there are reasons why he is one of my best friends ever).
Wednesday was taking care of my new driver's license and signing tax documents. I should be getting a decent refund, which makes me way excited. After a whirlwind run around I met up with John again and we went downtown to do dim sum at New Harmony. Since we had eleven people we got the private karaoke and he was playing Kung Pow, followed by Ong Bak 2, which my friend James had just bought at a booth in the Gallery. We ate well, we shared stories (be it old hardcore friends, old movie store friends, old raver friends, skydivers, etc.) and enjoyed each others company. When we were all done there my friend Denise came and picked me up and I we headed back to her place to chill for the evening and snuggle. Team America was watched and laughs were had, a bit of amazing make out happened and I was all smiles. Bed time came fast because she is a teacher, so we headed up to bed and got our spoon on. Yes, I love cuddling, but this was particularly amazing cuddling. Denise is a redhead that is slim, but curvy in all the right places and right ways. She is such a sweetheart and I pissed her off a few weeks back unintentionally and it upset me greatly, as she has been an awesome person to contact back home and her smile always melts me. If I lived nearer to her, I would not let her get away from me, no sir.
Thursday saw breakfast of Ethiopian, pipe shopping and Korean for lunch with my friend Heather. Chilling with her daughter Juniper and baby-daddy Dave was great. Everything was on Heather, so it was even better. ;)
Another great catch up session was had and lots of tasty food. The Heather giggles were great to have again and made me pine for the days gone by in Philly.
Next stop was Govinda's for a pepper steak sandwich and a ride to the airport from my super-awesome friend Marielle. For those keeping track she is the girl that taught me how to rock climb and I have a huge crush on until this very day. She is so beautiful, smart, fun and has awesome taste in food, a woman after my own heart, I guess. We got our sandwiches and sped off toward the airport. I got there, only ate half of my sandwich (I DID just eat a bunch of food) and got myself all ready to go through security while in line. I got to my gate with about four minutes to spare, but got on a-okay. When I landed in Houston I had to wait for my friend Ali to pick me up. She got me back to the DZ and I passed the hell out.
The rigging loft at my new DZ just recently took me on as the other rigger, so I have been keeping somewhat busy up in the loft and opened up an alternate source of income. So far, so good. The DZO from my prior workplace that kind of bothered me about stuff that I did while there and it has made me double and triple-check everything that I have been doing here. It is not a good feeling when you are a rigger and someone lets you know that you misrigged any part of a parachute system.
Right now the Texas State Record 160-way is sitting on the ground, waiting for the weather to get more conducive to jumping. They did one jump today, but as per usual were working out fall rate bugs. We shall see what the weekend brings.
2009/04/09 09:39 I am very excited because I just got my copy of Tokyo Zombie last night and luckily also scored a copy of Pharaohe Monch's album "Desire" with the Best Buy exclusive track on it that only had one run, but was just sitting at this Best Buy in TX. Let us hear it for folks that just love country AND western music.
Had some decent food at a Vietnamese place, Pho Hoang. The woman remembered me from the last time I was there about a week and a half ago. She brought out more fresh spring rolls (Mmmmm) and a hot and sweet tofu dish with rice vermicelli. On the side was some Chrysanthemum tea that was absolutely delicious. It was a nice, relaxing meal at the end of the day.
Been working plenty, making a decent living at skydiving for once. My trip back to Philly for a few days is looming and I am excited to be home for a bit, even though it is going to be a VERY short trip. Good friends, good food, get to see the parents, it will be nice to have that touch of sanity and comfort in my life.
2009/04/05 17:39 Today was my premiere first jump course at this DZ. It took way long, so we are going to work on ways to tighten up my presentation of the material to meet their standard. Mykel, the chief instructor for the STP program, liked my presentation of the material, but said that he would go over things to tighten it all up.
More chili was eaten, more is on the way into my belly soon enough. Yum!
Hopefully I can get through a movie or two tonight and have a nice, relaxing day tomorrow. Hell yes.
