What a long weekend. The drop zone was busy on Saturday; many tandem passengers and accelerated freefall students. I jumped 8 times, 4 of those were AFF. 3 of those jumps were with the same student, Michael, who looks to be about 30. Ex-ranger, although he seems more goofy than most ex-rangers I have known. That was a compliment, by the way.

I did his level 5,6, and 7 with him, and was happy to pass him on all three. Passing level 7 means graduating from the AFF program. He's still a student, but he can jump by himself now. He has a bunch of things he has to do to to get his basic "A" license. Poor bastard doesn't know he's going to be my guinea pig for a structured program I'm working on to get newly graduated students intermediate freefall skills to fly with other skydivers (as opposed to learning these skills haphazardly, like I did).

My other AFF jump was a level 1. Good kid. What was neat was his 81 year old grandmother did an AFF jump, too. I was a little annoyed by how many people came up to me and asked me if I was going to 'allow' her to jump. WTF? First off, I didn't teach the ground school, JK did, and he's been skydiving for over 20 years so I expect him to make any judgement call. And where were all those concerned skydivers when I taught that elder gentleman whose skydive nearly ended in disaster? I smell a little sexism.

Any way, I let that man jump because that was his choice. He wasn't senile, he was old. I spelled it out to him and he still wanted to skydive. JK and Jon took the old lady on the jump, and she did okay and landed fine.

I was reviewing my log book; I received my AFF Intructor's certificate May 8th of last year. In the last year I have done 102 AFF skydives, about 225 skydives total. That total is the most I have ever done in a 12 month span, but of course you can jump more if someone else is paying you. I get $30 for every AFF, by the way. Considering this weekend I did a total of 7 AFF jumps, you can see why I am reluctant to work overtime at my normal job (especially since I have to work 8 hours overtime for free before I get paid straight time. Fie on that).

So anyway, I now have done a grand total of 994 skydives. Barring weather, I don't see why I can't get 6 more by next Monday.

Today's word:
pernicious
SYLLABICATION: per·ni·cious

ADJECTIVE: 1a. Tending to cause death or serious injury; deadly: a pernicious virus. b. Causing great harm; destructive: pernicious rumors.
2. Archaic Evil; wicked.
ETYMOLOGY: Middle English, from Old French pernicios, from Latin pernicisus, from pernicis, destruction : per-, per- + nex, nec-, violent death;


Just because I used it in a sentence today and my husband gave me a funny look. I was referring to a bug in an application here at work.