Category: personal

Skydived

2014-08-31 15.06.39So, I can cross that off the bucket list. Guess I should start drafting a bucket list…

I’d thought about skydiving a number of times and even made tentative plans a time or two before but never followed through. At the beginning of this summer though a good friend of mine decided that he wanted to skydive for his birthday and invited all his friends and a lot of his family to join him. I said yes, along with three other people and on Saturday we did it.

It was a tandem jump from 13,000 feet and I’ll I can say is that it really is nothing like I expected and nothing I’ve ever done could have prepared me for standing there at the edge of a door in the sky and leaping out of a plane. Scariest moment in my entire life. BUT, once you’re out of the plane and falling. It’s really kind of calm. There’s no noise, and if the air wasn’t pushing at arms and hand it’s almost as if you’re not moving either.

Then the guy whose stomach you’re strapped to pulls the chord and you spring up, he unbuckles you from him and it’s like your’e sitting in a chair slowly drifting towards the ground.

It was amazing.

Would I ever do it again? Sure, if I could get a bunch of friends to come out and do it with me. If I could cut the waiting around time down to something reasonable (we had to wait for 3 hours before even putting our rigs on). I’d do it again. Maybe from 18,000 feet?

 

A Festivus Miracle!

I know it’s not normal to write about Festivus in June. But, I didn’t get my 2013 Festivus gift’s until just this week! It’s been quite the wait, but in the end I think it was all worth it!

So what was so miraculous about Festivus last/this year? I got two of them!? I know, crazy right? I thought the person who was assigned to get me a gift had bailed or forgot or was overwhelmed with their own life and so I was not going to be receiving a gift. But my good friend, Nich, decided that people not getting Festivus gifts would not stand! And he went out of his way to make sure that I, and many other people, all got Festivus gifts.

But it gets better! Shortly after Nich had sent me a gift my original gift giver contacted me to let me know that my festivus gift was finally on its way! That’s right, two festivuses, festivii? Truly a miracle! Thanks to Nich and Stiv for the wonderful presents!

You can see all the loot below. Continue reading “A Festivus Miracle!”

Summer Garden 2014: An Update

2014-05-09 07.01.43

It’s been a month since the last update, and to tell you the truth there isn’t a lot to report. Well, there isn’t a lot of good news to report. Something ate our eggplants, Millie or Jake tore out our cucumber plants, then one of them tore out our replacement eggplants, and now something is eating our jalapeno plants. I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s a damn rabbit.

The only cucumber plant that has managed to stay alive. Barely
The only cucumber plant that has managed to stay alive. Barely.

I’m wondering if we planted too early? Last year we didn’t get the garden in until late June or early July and the plants seemed to really spring up. These have been in for a month now and just barely seem to be growing. It might be that it’s still too cold at night or they’re just not getting enough sun. There are some big trees bordering the back yard that block direct sunlight for a large portion of the day…

This tomato plant seems to be doing okay.
This tomato plant seems to be doing okay.

I just need to find some way to keep the rabbits out of the garden or to capture/eliminate them. I thought I had done a pretty good job at the end of last year sealing up the fence and chasing the rabbits away but something is getting to the plants. I went out this morning to find one of my jalapeno seedlings stripped of its leaves. Yesterday it had all of them… Checked the fences again and didn’t see any holes. If a rabbit lived in the backyard somewhere all winter I’d like to know what it ate to survive.

Small but already blooming.
Small but already blooming.

I’m not giving up. The heat is really starting to come on and the local gardening stores still have lots of seedlings. I’m sure I can get some cucumbers, beans, or eggplants to thrive. As long as Nature doesn’t throw another wrench into the machinery!

This jalapeno still has all of its leaves. For now.
This jalapeno still has all of its leaves. For now.
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