chaz720.net - journal

September 01, 2003

Flies are buzzing round my head. Vultures circling the dead, picking up every last crumb. The big fish eat the little ones, the big fish eat the little ones. Not my problem, give me some. You can try the best you can. If you try the best you can, the best you can is good enough. If you try the best you can, if you try the best you can, the best you can is good enough. This one's optimistic. This one went to market. This one just came out of the swamp. This one dropped a payload. Fodder for the animals, living on animal farm. You can try the best you can. If you try the best you can, the best you can is good enough. I'd really like to help you, man. I'd really like to help you, man. And now this messed up millionaire, floating around on a prison ship.

Write a journal entry? Sure, why not?

Well I must say a shitload has happened since the last installment so I'll try to sum things up as best I can.

The conclusion of work went pretty smoothly, I was able to get my projects documented just fine. The drive back wasn't as bad as I felt it was going to be. Really I just set the cruise, rolled the windows down, turned up the radio and sang for two days, and then I was home. In Georgia I exchanged presents with my sister (she got me this cool drawing from a gallery she saw out in Washington which is now in my room)

I got my equalizer installed in my car very nicely, it looks as good as I was hoping it would, and it really makes a big difference in the reproduction in my car, night and day.

I saw Radiohead live in St Loius last Sunday which was unbelievable. They put on an awesome show, they did two encores, and at any given moment, played the exact song that we were hoping they'd play. It was incredible, easily the best live performance I've seen. I can't think of anything they didn't play that I'd have wanted them to, the set lasted almost 3 hours.

I've started out all my classes, and they all seem pretty cool except for ece359. The professor is this french woman who just sounds like she's yelling at you the whole time like you've done something wrong and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to handle it. Convieniently enough, this is a class that I took because I thought it might just be interesting and I don't actually need it for anything. I figure I'll give it a week or two before I decide, but right now, it's not looking good :P

The next few pieces of news are related, and the first is the most important. I finally sacked up and told my parents about my adventures in skydiving. I can't really put into words the shock I experienced after discovering that they were very open about it. I gave them a tour of my rig, and I think if I can I'm going to bring them down to the dropzone some weekend and let them watch me jump. It definately makes me feel better that they know, and I want to also comment that telling them once I had my own gear and license was pretty much the plan from the start.

So the next thing is quad day, as the new pres of the skydiving club I got to sit in on the quad the day before school, distribute flyers, take names, and answer questions people had about skydiving. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, as it was interesting to see people in just about every bit of the interest spectrum ask their questions. We got about 600 names and e-mails and all our flyers disappeared pretty quickly so I'm hopeful of the turn out. Talking with the dropzone owners, we are also able to get some really good deals for the people who want to come out and jump.

The final thing is this weekend, ahhh! crazy-go-nuts.

I speant the weekend (so far) at the dropzone so that I could skydive as much as possible. I made four jumps on Saturday, and one jump Sunday. It kinda stunk because of weather, but I was able to do a lot of fun stuff. I think I finally got the whole level thing down as keeping up with a group is no longer a huge production for me anymore (I used to have a hard time falling much above 115mph) I think it took John just grabbing my arms during a practice on the ground and just shaking them violently and yelling "for god sakes, relax!" that certainly makes all the difference in the world. Now I can focus more on my tendency to orbit around when flying for a slot =(

I played around with sitflying some, and I went to a seminar by Brian Germain (a rather famous canopy designer) regarding flight characteristics and I had a lot of good questions answered. He also gave pointers regarding equipment, providing tips to improve performance and safety. The highlight of the weekend, however, was definitely seeing the expression on Marc's face when he came in too steep on an all falling-illini formation we were making, more or less crashing into Sam and I and flipping over through the middle of the formation and falling away from it. If I ever get my hands on the video of that jump I'll have to post it here.

Well anyway, it's good to be back, our apartment is pretty sweet (and contains some new furniture for my room I made) and it's great to have skydiving as a new open topic of the journal entries and possibly even photos to come, expect to hear more.

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