Round and round and round she goes. Where she stops don't knobody knows!

Guess the theme:
71: I currently have a little over 17 hours and 38 minutes of freefall time.
72: Aircraft I have jumped out of: King Air, Queen Air, Beech99, Cessna 182, Cessna 172, Cessna 185, CASA, Twin Otter, Super Twin Otter, hot air balloon, and Sikorsky and Bell helicopters.
73: I have had to ride the plane down once.
74: I have had 2 reserve rides.
75: I have done only 1 tandem jump - that was with my husband when he was getting his tandem rating.
76: I think I am too short to get my tandem rating - besides, I prefer AFF because if the bastard gets too wiggly I can let him go.
77: I had 13 jumps before I had a stand-up landing.
78: I have packed about 3 parachutes for every jump I have done.
79: As far as I know, I have never packed anybody a malfunction, including mine. Knock on wood.
80: I pack reserve parachutes under my husband's supervision (he's an FAA certified parachute rigger); out of 115 reserve pack jobs, 7 people have had to use them (an unaccountably high incidence, btw). These are referred to as "saves". My 2nd reserve ride I packed the reserve; that was my first save.

I am much happier with my review of Purple Rain. Enjoy.

I scored some points on the DL mailing list when I was googling around and found some better information (scroll down) on Keane, which will be shown at film festivals in New York, Toronto, and Telluride. To sum up, a schizophrenic man who is trying to find his lost daughter befriends a woman and her daughter. The police suspect that this guy has something to do with his daughter's disappearance.

In other words, I'm not expecting a light romantic comedy. To make matters worse, judging from the small photograph that accompanies the blurb, he either a) dyed his hair brown for the part, or b) is wearing a wig. ARG!

I guess I should be more worried about not being able to see it at all. I don't think it's scheduled to be shown at the Hartselle International Film Festival and Swap Meet.

More hoo-ha:
61: Besides Chuck Heston, in the older school of actors I'm fond of Kirk Douglas.
62: I deeply admire Michael Caine's work ethic.
63: I like Jimmy Stewart and Gary Cooper even though they basically played themselves no matter the role.
64: I am very fond of Alfred Hitchcock movies, especially Psycho and Vertigo.
65: Despite my addiction to leaving airplanes in mid-flight, I get a kick out of watching thunderstorms and other forms of violent weather.
66: I am attracted to bodies of water. I love rivers and lakes, but I really love oceans. I bet you knew that.
67: I love to fish. I don't get too upset if I don't catch anything.
68: I have caught, killed, cleaned, and eaten many different types water creatures.
69: I'm not sure I could ever kill a cow or a pig.
70: I don't think I would have a problem killing or cleaning a chicken, though.

Got 9 jumps in this weekend, in between thunder showers. I'm getting mighty tired of the weather.

I went to the Huntsville Airport Saturday night to pick up Billy Rhodes, the guy who taught me to teach people to skydive. He's in town for the week to run an instructor's course at our drop zone. We only have two participants; I hope they get their rating because Jon is getting burned out and we could use the help.

Halfway there:
51: My favorite artists are Dutch; Rembrandt and Van Gogh.
52: But my absolute favorite is M.C. Escher (again Dutch), whom many (including himself) do not consider to be a real artist.
53: I prefer landscapes to portraits, especially with photographs.
54: My favorite classical music is Beethoven's symphonies, esp. the 9th and the 3rd.
55: When driving to work, I prefer to listen to NPR.
56: I prefer to dress in black and blue, but I am in no way affiliated with the BDSM crowd.
57: Cotton.
58: I prefer form to follow function and have little use for knicknacks.
59: Despite that, I have my 'island of lost toys' next to my computer. I just rescued two dinosaurs that someone left at the dz.
60: If a genie popped out of a bottle and told me I could look like anyone I wanted to, I would tell it I want to look like Lauren Bacall when she was 24 (watch Key Largo to understand).

Never give any power to government that you wouldn't want your worst enemy to wield. Because eventually, he will.
-Vox Day

And even more:

41: I don't like people in gereral.
42: Out of every one I have met, I have met very few whom I didn't like.
43: I can only think of 2 people whom I've met in recent memory that I actively dislike.
44: I prefer polite over friendly when dealing with a stranger.
45: I don't have much empathy for other people's problems.
46: I think that's because when I have a problem I want to solve it, not cry on someone's shoulder.
47: I like helping people when they have a problem.
48: Sometimes I have a hard time distinguishing between someone who just wants to talk and someone who needs to have a problem solved.
49: I have cried on people's shoulders. Usually about men.
50: It embarrases me to show that kind of emotion.

I watched Purple Rain last night. The movie did nothing to improve my opinion about Prince. When the review gets posted I will point you to it.

Yet more:
31: My favorite American mass-produced beer is Killian's Red, with Rolling Rock second.
32: My favorite import, is of course, Guinness stout.
33: Other favorite beers in order of preference: Anchor Porter, Sam Adams, Amstel Light, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.
34: My favorite fast food are Egg McMuffins.
35: My favorite junk food (salty variety) is honey mustard/onion flavored pretzel pieces.
36: My favorite junk food (sweet variety) is Hershey's milk chocolate.
37: My favorite expensive-as-shit food is lobster.
38: My favorite cheap-assed (emphasis on 'ass' because that's what's in it among other things) food is bologna.
39: I'm also addicted to Oscar Mayer braunsweiger.
40: I hate liver, bananas, and inexplicably anything with fruit in it (inexplicable because I love most fruit).

And more:

21: I do not like to kill spiders. Spiders eat bugs. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
22: I am allergic to all furred and feathered animals. Therefore my favorite animal is the frog.
23: I ate frog legs once. I still suffer from horrible guilt.
24: I love all forms of cats despite allergies; especially tigers. Cute and fuzzy predators.
25: I once tried to save a falcon who got injured by a cat. He died.
26: I have worked as a security guard, pager repairer, cook, and pizza deliverer - among the jobs I don't write about.
27: I am afraid that I am incompetent at my chosen jobs.
28: I love maps.
29: My husband's nickname is Curley.
30: We went and saw Mars Attacks on our first date.

I received a flat tire yesterday coming home from work. I called Jon, who was in Huntsville at the time, and he said he would be right over to help me. I got impatient so I started to change the tire myself. A nice man driving an Ace Hardware truck stopped and offered his assistance. I think it's best to be wary of opportinistic men; having said that it is also important to let men act gallantly whenever possible. I consider it a good behavior to encourage. He took over and I was on the road in 5 minutes.

2 of Damian Lewis' movies will be shown at different film festivals coming up in the fall (Toronto, New York, and Chicago). Not only will Brides be shown, Keane will also be debuted. The latter I haven't talked about because of contradictory information. Directed by Lodge Kerrigan, it concerns a man with schizophrenic episodes who is trying to find his abducted, 6 year old daughter. Schizophrenia is often confused with multiple personality disorder, by the way; this movie doesn't make that mistake.

This news has caused a great rumble in the Yahoo mailing group dedicated to his royal Gingerness. Many are plotting to stalk planning to go to the various festivals in hopes of running into him. And I really don't want to make fun of these women; when he did a play in England over the winter, many went and met him. The ones who bragged about it behaved like ladies (for the most part) and report him to be a nice fellow (who smells good and likes oatmeal raisin cookies). Some posted pictures they took of themselves next to Damian (usually getting a hug); sometimes I wish I didn't get so in a bundle about the way I look. These women aren't supermodels. They look like me. Except they smile.

Any way, I'm not planning to go. I shall live vicariously through their trip reports.

More info:
11: I dropped out of High School.
12: I finished up at an open campus.
13: I have a bachelor's degree from Georgia Southern University (nee College) in Anthropology.
14: My minor is in spanish, but I also took many philosophy classes.
15: I also ended up loving math. I ended up taking math through Calc II, probably the only one at that college who got a liberal arts degree to do so.
16: I first learned to program in BASIC on a TRS-80 in high school.
17: I bought my first computer (a 386) with money I saved from time I spent on active duty during Desert Storm.
18: I learned to program in Pascal on the 386.
19: I tried to learn C but had problems understanding pointers.
20: After studying assembly language for a while I understood pointers so I went back to studying C.
21: A pointer is a variable that contains the memory address of another variable. This is seared - seared - into my mind.

Yes!!! I'm:

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

I knew I had it in me to be an evil overlord!!

I'm kidding. I really scored Albert Einstein:

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

I ain't no Einstein.

Thinking about doing the "100 things about me" but I tend to yak about me a lot. What the heck. I think I'll break it up into manageable chunks like Nancy's doing:

1: My middle name is Linn.
2: I'm tired of people mispelling it.
3: I once went postal because I had a boyfriend who insisted on spelling my first name "Sandi".
4: My mom's name is Melsena.
5: My oldest brother, my dad, his dad, his dad's dad, his dad's dad's dad, etc. all have the first name Edward.
6: They all have different middle names so there's none of that "junior" bullshit going on.
7: I have a birthmark on my lower abdomen roughly shaped like Australia.
8: I used to play the clarinet.
9: I used to play guitar.
10: I used to collect stamps.

What an annoying weekend! It wasn't totally rainy both days so I had to be at the drip zone - I mean drop zone for the entire time. We managed to get one AFF level 1 in Sunday Afternoon. Sheesh! Both days it would look like it was going to clear up, then *poof!* rain.

The AFF was with a woman who was just perky to the point I wanted to smack her. I feel bad about feeling that way; she's a nice woman who did a great job. She scuba dives, hang glides, and is involved in the theater. I now know who took my share when God was handing out extroversion.

Saturday a lot of us went to a fellow jumper's house on Smith Lake. Most of us drove over; a few of us jumped into the lake via skydiving. Water jumps can be fun but it's a bitch drying out your gear. I chose to drove.

I made a cake for my husband. I tried to make my own buttercream frosting but that was a disaster. I bought storebought frosting; I also bought a bunch of those tiny tubes of cake decorating gel and I had everyone at the drop zone 'sign' the cake like they would a birthday card. Wish I had photographed it - highly amusing.

For my next review I get to do something more challenging - Prince's Purple Rain. I do not like Prince, never seen the movie. So watching this with an open mind will be interesting.

As for continuing the diet, my husband now has expressed interest in losing, so we've agreed to work on it together. So no radical diets this time, just plain old watching what we eat. We're hammering out a game plan as we speak. What the hell did we do before the days of Instant Messaging, Email, and cell phones?

As promised:

My Candyman review. I don't think this is nearly as good as I know I can do; but then again I've really just started.

Still, it's a foot in the door, eh? I'm also gonna put a permanent link to this movie site in my links.

Dammit! Eric, no Bond for you, okay? Not a good idea! Helly sent me an article saying Eric Bana was trying to decide whether playing Bond would be good for his career. No! No, no, no, no no! It will not! Sean Connery managed to climb out from under that persona, but it took him a long time! Did it help Roger Moore's career? How about Timothy Dalton? Or the last Australian to play him, George Lazenby (and include me in the group of people who think On Her Majesty's Secret Service is one of the best Bond films out there)?

Mr. Bana; Eric, Darling: I realized that flighty but talented Steven Spielberg pushed the filming of your next project back, and that considering his track record it might never be made, but James Bond will be the kiss of death to your career. Unless you agree to play a Bond baddie. That has never hurt anyone's career, really! The bad guys always get to chew scenery - remember Chopper, where your character got shivved repeatedly and the absolutely incredible look of sadness and betrayal on your face? Damn, you were scary in that movie! Not to mention the absolute badass you played in Black Hawk Down.

*Sigh*. I'm in lust with you, so if you play Bond I'll be there opening day. Just don't tell me I didn't warn you.

Anyways. I mentioned I'm going to be reviewing movies for a movie site. I'm submitting my first review today; don't know when or if it will be posted. If I submit it I can't publish it here because of an agreement I signed. For the review, I watched Candyman, which was just released on DVD in a special edition. I haven't seen that movie since it was released, and I am happy to note it's still as creepy as when I first saw it.

Last night Jon and I watched Kill Bill Vol.2. Sigh.

You know, I really like Tarantino's movies: Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Jackie Brown. They all tend to have long scenes of conversations which for the most part hold my interest. But by the end of Volume 2 I was begging Uma to Kill Bill allready. Do you really want me to explain the entirety that is Kill Bill to you? Simple: Quentin has a crush on Uma.

Volume 2 suffered because none of the fight scenes came close to matching the Crazy 88 scenes in volume 1. Oh sure I liked the showdown between Beatrix (whoops, hope I didn't spoil anything for you) and Elle Driver, but it was too short. And I never realized David Carradine spoke so mincingly. Really! The best part of volume 2 was the flashback with Kung Fu instructor Pai Mei. Tarantino has truly seen every cheapassed Hong Kong flick in existence. I really loved it when Pai Mei was berating The Bride for not being able to speak proper Mandarin. They were both speaking Cantonese. Yeah, I can tell. Cantonese is more singsong while Mandarin has a lot of hard R sounds in it. I too have seen way too many cheapassed Hong Kong flicks.

My absolute favorite American movie with a Hong Kong spirit will always be Big Trouble in Little China. This movie came out before it was cool to like cheapassed Hong Kong movies. Do not confuse this one with Showdown in Little Tokyo, an old Dolph Lundgren movie. If you watch this piece of doo-doo, it is only worth seeing because it was one of Brandon Lee's movies.

I've said it before, I think; but what a waste of a perfectly good hottie. I saw this alleged film on HBO one day over at a friends house during college. I remember saying to my friend, "Who's the Bruce Lee looking fellow?". Damn, he had an easygoing charisma; he had moves, and oh he was a babe. I was watching CNN some years later when they reported on his injury on a movie set. It wasn't an hour later they reported his death. First time I lost a listee. Usually they just fade away.

Today is my beloved's birthday. Happy birthday, honey! He's 34. Yep, I like 'em young.

I bought him Doom 3 and we ate at the Sushi Boat. Mmmm.

Watched a couple of movies recently. First off was the hysterically awful House of the Dead. You know me - I can't resist a zombie movie. But this is staggeringly bad. Bad acting, lots of gratuitous bullet-time scenes, egregious continuity errors,.. I was afraid that this year was going to be merely mediocre but between the brilliance of Spider-Man II and this vomit bag my faith in Hollywood's ability to produce awe-inspiring movies at both ends of the bell curve has been restored. I can't say enough bad things about House of the Dead.

And in other news: The Last Samurai was more in the middle of the bell curve. Na, I'll give it some credit: the cinematography was wonderful and the acting was good. It spent too much time slamming Americans and romanticizing feudal Japan. In other words, I think Watanabe Ken is far more handsome than Tom Cruise is. Actually with the shaved head and the moustache/goatee thing he reminds me of my husband. Anyway, the movie itself has a decent story; I didn't think much of having the American have such a large role in the shaping of Japan's fate.

You know what amuses me? Japan was originally populated by the Ainu, a caucasian people. Oriental people invaded, took their lands, pushed them into marginal areas, etc. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? They also intermarried somewhat and that's why with a little practice you can tell Japanese and Chinese apart. Japanese people tend to have more angular features. No point to that observation; just amused by the Japanese culture=good American culture=bad silliness perpetuated in this movie.

More on the Rantoul trip:

Jon and I were going to fly up to Rantoul in our little plane, the Cessna. We are renting the Cessna out to a smaller drop zone in Rome, Georgia; so that meant we were going to drive to Rome first. However, the drop zone owner of Skydive Atlanta, in Thomaston, Georgia, called up Jon and asked him if they could use the Cessna that week. Jon explained we were flying to Rantoul, and SA's dzo (Trey) said, "What a coincidence! I'm flying up there with my wife; that's why we wanted to use your Cessna. I have some students and need another plane."

To make a long story short, he flew over to Cullman in his King Air and picked us up. The trip by car is about 8 hours. By Cessna it's about 4. In the King Air, it's about 1.5 to 2 hours. It's good to be the King! Er, good to have a King. Whatever.

Steve was injured at Rantoul early on. He was landing and ran into a golf cart. He received a bunch of stitches and spent the rest of Rantoul on crutches. He tore some muscle but didn't break any bones. That has to hurt, however. I was happy to hear that no one got dead or seriously messed up. Sure there were standard broken ankles and other mishaps. And that guy we passed wednesday night who was staggering around the bonfire with a bottle of Jack Daniels probably wished he was dead the next morning.

I have met a good deal of people in this sport. I am chagrined to realize a great deal of them have less time in the sport than me. Those who have the same amount of experience as me I tend to think of as equals. A few of them I regard as fools, but if you have not crunched yourself out of the sport by a thousand jumps you must be doing something right (for the most part. Some people are just lucky or stubborn). The ones who have more jumps than me I tend to respect; I also have a very few I consider personal gods. I was thrilled to run into one of my personal gods at Rantoul; he has the wonderfully baroque name of Winsor Naugler III and we got to talk a while but it was too windy to jump. I hope I can bring my own posse next year and get him to jump with us.

"Posse". Sheesh. I mean a group of formation skydivers. I was the only one from Skydive Alabama at Rantoul who does formation skydives. Everyone else does free flying, which I don't do. I should work closer with some of our younger jumpers to get them competent with formation work so that our drop zone doesn't become a free fly only dz. I did some jumping with my brother and some other younger jumpers last weekend and I had a good time. It also gives me an opportunity to work on fundamentals.

Ah, well; I'm rambling now. Check out Lilek's bleat today. He spends some time berating some of the latest fashion trends.

I'm back. How was Rantoul? It was windy, cloudy, and cold. Not exactly what I want in a skydiving vacation. What the hell is up with the weather? Guess I shouldn't complain too much; my house wasn't destroyed by a hurricane.

I ended up jumping only 4 times at the World Freefall Convention. Because of the clouds, it was more like the World Hop n' Pop Convention. A hop and pop simply means you open your parachute a few seconds after leaving the aircraft. With only 3000 foot ceilings, that's about the only thing you could do. Borrrring. It's more fun to sit on the ground and watch wave after wave of canopies open and speculate on who is going to have a cutaway while drinking yourself silly. That is until you cheer when you see a cutaway then realize it's your husband. Silly man.

I did do a hop and pop out of a Sikorsky helicopter. Heh. That was nifty. A bunch of us also did a jump out of a hot air balloon. Thursday morning was fair, few clouds, and no wind so we got to be the third load on a balloon jump. The big problem with balloons is you can't really control your direction; just up and down. So load 1 took off from the airport; loads 2 and 3 chased the balloons in vans. Once the balloon pilot lands you have to run out and climb into the basket.

Our load chased for quite a while until he found a suitable landing area: a high school football field. And there were kids practicing there. I wonder what they thought when a balloon loomed over their school, touched down in the middle of the field, when all of a sudded 7 gaily dressed people in helmets scrambled out of a van to leap into the balloon's basket just as it took off again? I bet it helped break up all the monotony of those drills.

Then our group jumped out at 4600 feet and landed in a golf course. Those tee flags make great wind direction indicators! I landed in the driving range and I'm greatful no one used me for target practice.

We hitch-hiked back to the airport and by the time we arrived it clouded over again.

But hey, it was sunny and beautiful on Friday! At least it was when we left that morning.

Jest a quick note for today:

1) I'll be on vacation in Rantoul, Illinois until Friday.

2) I got the job doing DVD reviews! URLs to follow.

See ya.

I'm off the diet train until I get back from Rantoul. Here's hoping I don't blow what little progress I made.

The answer to yesterday's question was: "It stinks!".

I had a back spasm yesterday. I took it for as long as I could, then I went home and dosed myself with by back meds, and slept for about 16 hours. I feel washed out, but hey my back feels better.

Same old, same old.

In the rumor department: Negative on the Eric Bana/James Bond rumor (thanks, Helly!), thank goodness. Bond movies are jokes. Ralph Fiennes will be playing Voldemort, however. Yay!

I'm feeling nostalgic today:

With a pickle mind, we kick the nipple beer.
Steady as a goat, we're flying over trout.
Ghetto down the highway at the speed of light.
All I want to feel now is the wind in my eyes.
Sack of monkeys in my pocket, my sister's ready to go.
Hear the engines roll now.
Idiot control now.
Hideous control now.
Nitty on the road now.
Midi in control, wheels on fire, burning rubber tires!
Near each other rolls now.
He really loves me, go now.
Needy inches bow down.
Pity and a poor boy.
Hear the engines roll, bees on pie, burning rubber tires.

What do you think?

Day 10 *hah*140.2 pounds.

Last night we had company over. It wasn't the food so much as the beer. Oh, well, I'll just keep going.

No update yesterday because I was working my butt off. Wish that were true; then I wouldn't have to keep eating so much tuna.

Random thinking day

Trey Parker and Matt Stone are making a new movie: Team America: World Police. I am so there, even though puppets give me nightmares. I'm especially loving the buzz: liberals are wondering if this movie will liberal bash and conservatives are wondering if it will conservative bash. Both groups: of course it will. Nothing is sacred to these guys. Explicit puppet sex scene? Oh, god, I'll never get any sleep tonight.

When did Stephen Baldwin (the goofy looking Baldwin brother. No, the REALLY goofy looking one) find God? Has anyone spotted him on the 700 club yet? He is making Christian movies. If he's happier, then good for him. I'm reminded of a South Park ep about Christian Rock - there is a huge market for Christian-themed art (music, movies, etc) and sometimes I bet some of the artists are thinking to themselves 'there's gold in them thar hills' as opposed to actual prayer. Maybe I'm being cynical. Not that Stephen is doing this.

I avoided any coverage of the DNC just like I'll studiously avoid the Republican convention. I was unable to avoid one picture of demonstrators burning an effigy with two faces: Kerry on one side, and Bush on the other. If they had constructed it as a huge pinata, a photograph of a mass of people fighting and scrambling for candy as the pinata burst open would have been a far more apt political statement. Oy, where's that deserted island I ordered? I'll protect it with sharks with frickin laser beams on their head.

Yellowtail Merlot is mighty tasty.

Brides, the latest non-BBC TV movie Damian Lewis is in, is rumored to be shown at the Toronto Film Festival. I hope a U.S. distributor will pick it up; I'll still have to wait for DVD. The trailer should be up on the web in a few days. Lewis plays an American photographer who falls in love with a Greek mail-order bride who is sailing to America on the same ship as he. A more detailed description of the plot makes it seem like a four-hanky romance, but part of me was humming 'the Love Boat' while I was reading it. But still, if he doesn't smack her around or rape her, it will be a step up role-wise.

I know a man who is having an affair with a married woman (whom I also know). Without going into details, I am horribly fascinated by their relationship. I won't judge them; if they want to be together that's their business. But am I surreptitiously watching a romance, or a train wreck? I hope the former but I suspect the latter. I know a woman who is having an affair with a married man (whom I don't know). Her life is a train wreck; but she was pretty well psychotic beforehand. Cupid is an incorrect image; Love is a fearsome rabid beast that likes to bite people on the ass.

Day 8 PSMF: Still 138.2 temp is the same. Stairsteps.

Gotta admit I cheated on Saturday. I had to, those pizzas were causing me to drool! Anyway, I'm back to it now. I'm feeling a lot of muscle burn because of the lack of glycogen in them. It made skydiving interesting. I did 8 this weekend, including several with an ex-student of mine, Jenn, who lives in Wisconsin, I think. She came down with some friends for the weekend. She was one of my first students. I'm so proud! *Sniff!*

As far as the Ultimate Politics Survey goes - I hear Eric Bana is still up for the next James Bond. I still think he would make a better one than some of the names being bandied about. His English accent will need some work.

Also, Ralph Fiennes is rumored to be playing Voldermort in the next Harry Potter book. Him and Jason Isaacs in the same movie, playing bad guys. Now if they would cast my favorite redhead as the eldest Weasely son, I will die happy. Well, actually, I would wait on the dieing bit until I actually saw the movie.

And another thing: I am *not* going to go see the Village just to see the Batman Begins teaser! I already know the twist because so many reviewers worked hard at not revealing it. I still loved Unbreakable the most of Shyamalan's movies.

So that's my political stance on *those* issues, and there's not a damn thing you can say to me to change my mind!