karenmeal

I'm listening to Harry Neilsen, dancing around the kitchen, singing to the dogs, cooking jam. It's a great day!! "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

Oh dear! That fuckin' scared me! (Billy, just watch it anyways.. it plays jingle bells normally, then in reverse.. and then it goes all exorcist style on you.) "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

TOO (not to) "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

I've never walked in on my parents.. But after they "fell in love" again when I was in highschool the head-board banging against the wall woke me up a couple times.. wasn't long before they got a new bed without a head-board. I thought that was considerate of them. My dad can't keep my hands off my mom, they act like highschoolers.. it's kinda weird sometimes, only because I feel like the third wheel, but mostly it's cute and funny. If I did walk in on them, I'd probably shrug and walk back out. -Karen "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

As long as you plan well for what classes you need to take and when to take them, it should never be very hard. I think that most of the time the people that complain about having a hard time registering and what not are the ones that don't plan, procrastinate, and then blame someone else for the situation they got themselves into. (I've done this in the past, but I always blame myself.) The best way to avoid stressful situations like that.. see your advisor early and often! As far as surviving any college class, all you need to do is attend class, take notes, and keep up with the reading. If you are having trouble, see your teacher at office hours. I'm always amazed at how many people don't do this and then wonder why they get a bad grade in the class. It's not hard, just follow the syllabus! (atleast in my experience.) I've been so happy since I've returned to school, when you are there because you want to be there, it's awesome! Good luck! -Karen "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

Dude, be careful! It's a slippery slope.. pretty soon they'll be eating all your food, drinking all your booze and be sitting in the living room doing running commentary to eachother on the sounds coming from the bedroom! "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

Are you serious in pretending like you've made some moral metamorphis because of criticism you received over the internet? I find that pretty hard to believe. If you don't know right from wrong at this point.. don't become a cop, you will certainly be placed in situations where you will be tempted and it will be your personal integrity that keep you from abusing your power. I think you should keep your current job and go do some volunteer work for a while. Maybe take an ethics class in the meantime. Save some money up too, so that if you decide that you still want to be a cop, you won't find yourself in some situation where you feel like lying is your best option. "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

Maybe sometimes all the help in the world won't "fix" someone. But they atleast need to try and exhaust all their options. That is all that I would ask of a friend. The tricky thing is, it's the nature of depression to not see those viable options, or to assume that they won't work. If you had cancer you would want to exhaust all your options. You wouldn't try chemotherapy for a month and tell your Doctor that you just didn't think it was going to get rid of your cancer. You would go through an operation, you would take your chemo, you would get radiation, and you would get on tamoxifen or something for the next however many years to beat that fucking cancer! I don't really think depression is that different.. so you go to one Doctor get some therapy and it doesn't work.. go to another Doctor, try some medicine, some different therapy.. enlist your family/friends as helpers to research how you can get rid of your depression! Get a team of people to help you out! It's not something that needs to be dealt with shamefully. It generally can be fixed, or can be made somewhat better. If I had a friend who had been battling severe depression and had really really tried to get rid of it.. a good solid, respectable effort.. and they still wanted to end their life, what can you say? Atleast they tried, at that point you may have to accept that it is their life to do as they please. "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

I think that the only time one could make a rational decision to end their life would be when facing a painful, terminal disease. Either that, or a severe loss of quality of life due to some sort of severe handicap like being paralyzed from the neck down, personally I don't think I would ever want to live that way. For people suffering from severe depression I don't think they are truly capable of making a rational decision about suicide. I think it is kind of the nature of the illness that they are literally unable to visualize a happy future where their quality of life is improved. I've lost a really good friend to suicide, it was such a waste of an absolutely wonderful person who I know could have had a beautiful and fulfilling life if he had gotten appropriate help. "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

Yeup, I will still be here in 2007. Right now I am a junior, I just finished/am finishing up my first quarter here and I absolutely love it. The last couple of months have been so satisfying. My major is Speech and Hearing Sciences.. there is a very good chance that I will continue through and get my masters here too, if I get accepted for graduate school. (So I would be at the UW through 2009.. god that seems so far away!) I really don't know much about their digital & experimental media department.. but it sure sounds like something Seattle would have covered! I can try and look into it for you.. If you are wanting to come to the US to experience the skydiving scene over here, California or Arizona would be where its at. However, if you are into doing a number of outdoorsy things like hiking/back-packing, skiing, maybe some cold-surfing, kayaking, rock-climbing, or are into the arts, hating on George W. Bush, drinking lots of coffee.. then I think Seattle would satisfy you to the extreme. Not to mention that the landscape in Washington is just entirely different from Australia, I'm pretty sure that you will be amazed. I grew up on the east-coast where we mostly have small hills. I've lived in Seattle for two years and everyday I am still dazzled by the mountains! I also have to say, when I visited Australia I hung out mainly in Melbourne, Sydney and the area in between. Now I really wish that I had gone further North and really experienced an area that was unlike anything I was used to. Most of the parts of Oz that I visited reminded me of bits southern California. Anyways.. thats all I have to say about that for now. Its midnight here and I've got an early final tommorow! Good luck with the decision making and all that stuff. Merry Chrismahanukwanzika! -Karen "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

I have been following this thread for a couple days.. And I have to say that it seem that everyone is quick to jump on the student for being an idiot, and the instructor for doing a poor job. I really have no clue which one it is, or if it's both, or neither.. I just have to note that in my time in the sport I have seen students make a number of bad decisions that can't be marked up to poor instruction. Cutting away because the slider wouldn't go back up, mistaking a snivel for a mutiple line-over, cutting away and pulling their reserve because their instructor continued to fall after they deployed, not cutting away when they should have, grabbing the pilot chute when it went in front of their face and holding on to it... the list is really endless. Some people receive the best training in the world, but when it comes down to making a decision under pressure, they respond poorly. You can't necessarily pick out these people on the ground either.. some of them seem very intelligent and competent. As far as the student knowing to correct the turn with a riser.. Out of all the things in the first jump class... is this really something that is stressed during training? If this was possibly her first time handling her rear risers, do you think maybe she a bit nervous or scared of what would happen? I know when I was a student, when trying rear riser turns for the first time, if I had popped a brake and not realized it, it may have made me panic. We give someone a first jump course, saturate their head with information, place them in a stressful environment and then expect them to remember every little detail? Hopefully they do, but a number of times they don't. It's one of the reasons students are equipped with things like RSL's, AAD's, SOS systems, spring loaded pilot chutes, extra large parachutes... We can try to make things very, very safe. But no matter what, nothing will be fool-proof. As far as the criticism or her making a bad decision to cut-away and not fix the problem, I'm sure there are plenty of experienced jumpers on this site (maybe reading this thread and not posting) who have done this. Plenty of people also cut away a perfectly good (or easily fixed) main canopy while still a student and grow up to become perfectly good skydivers. In fact, I'm friends with several of these people. I never marked them off as hopeless, just tried to be understanding of their errors and then teased them when appropriate. There probably are some things to learn from this incident, but I think the focus has turned into bashing this woman, and not learning about what one can do better as a student or as an instructor. We all probably wish that she would not speak to the media so much.. but not many people at 10 (or was it 1?) jumps are really a part of our community yet and may not understand how/why things like that are frowned upon. My two-cents.. -Karen "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

University of Washington Seattle!!! That's where I go. You'll be close to beautiful mountains that will fucking amaze you!! Good for skiing.. got a number of DZ's to choose from (mostly smaller ones though) The city has it all and is nice and mellow. So much stuff to do, if you're willing to try new things (or the same old things) you will never run out of things to do. The school itself is really great, nice campus, pretty much right in the city. You can see a 14000 ' volcano from campus.. (Mt Rainier) As far as the student life.. my weekends are spent at the DZ.. so I don't know what the party scene is like there. However, with a school of about 40,000, how could you not find somewhere to fit in? What is your major? Umm... anyways.. I say come here. I volunteer to show you around. Plus, I lived on the DZ in Picton for a month and a half so we can gossip about people you know. -Karen PM me for any information and I will do my best to help answer any of your questions, or send you pictures of the area and the campus (virtual tour) "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

OH man!! That would make me SOOOO happy! I need to ask the DR about that one! I would absolutely freaking love that!!!!!! "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

Oy! that doesn't sound like a great way to do it. The nice thing about having the testing is they gauge just how much of a reaction you have to each particular substance and then introduce it to your system very gradually so that you never have much of a reaction. When I was recieving my shots I also had to report what my reaction was like, was the swelling around the shot area the size of a dime, nickel, quarter, half-dollar.. If it was more than a nickel size reaction then they would adjust the intensity of the serum so that I always had a very low reaction. If for some reason I did have a larger reaction, they would wait a little longer for it to go down before administering another shot. I can't believe they would give you more shots after having such a horrible reaction! "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

I did a search on immunotherapy and it says that it is the same thing as allergy shots. "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

Oh.. what is immunotherapy treatment? I guess I assumed that it was the same thing as allergy shots. I'd be interested to find out more about immunotherapy since I'm probably going to start another round of shots.. how long does it take? I wouldn't want allergy shots either if they made me pass out! I always just got an itchy arm. How did you get allergy shots without having the skin-prick test? I thought they had to do that to customize your serum.. ? I know my dad has had the blood test, and I guess it was really easy, I don't think they took much blood. But for some reason I guess not every doctor does that, or not everyone is a candidate. -Karen "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

OK.. calm down.. I've had this done four times (estimating about 30 skin pricks per time.) It's not any more painful than holding cats. You know how sometimes they stretch and poke you with their claws? Thats what it feels like. The doctors are usually good and try to just get it done with quickly. The worst part is waiting for 10 minutes or so for the reactions to appear. Just have something to distract you.. a book.. call a friend on your cell phone.. something like that. Then when they put some liquid adrenaline on to stop the itching.. OOOHH!! Feels SOOOOO goood!!!!! I ended up getting allergy shots for four years, it was no problem. Pretty painless shots. It helped to reduce my allergies for a while (about 70% reduction) but it seems like I've developed new allergies, so I might give shots another shot. -Karen "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

It took me almost half an hour!

Merry Christmas one and all! Aww, I really hate doing Holiday specials of any kind but frankly I’m pissed off at all the neo-yuppie scum bags hell bent on removing the Christmas spirit from the Christmas season. Every year around the holiday some jack off has to go complaining to some court about how he hates Christmas and about how there’s some manger scene with the baby Jesus offending him at some local school. Well who the fuck cares? If someone decides to toss a baby Jesus on their front lawn during the holiday, what’s the fucking problem? And that’s another thing. You know how public schools used to have Christmas plays and shit like that? They don’t do that anymore! And if they do, they remove all the songs that have any reference to religion in them. No silent night, no joy to the world, No fucking little drummer bastard. These are the same fucking institutions that tell you to be tolerant of other people’s beliefs but try to beat every hint of good ol’ Saint Nick out of Christmas. How could anyone be offended by a fucking fat guy who gives out free stuff? What, are we all pissed at Santa because he’s fat and happy and perfectly content with his image?? It’s like all these neo-yuppies want to give him an inferiority complex and put him on the fuckin’ FAtkins’ diet. And that’s why I like Santa, He’s a fat bastard, works one day a year, is actually happy, eats all the cookies he wants, rewards the good and punishes the guilty. Kinda like a vigilante with gifts! Hahah. And just so you know where I am coming from I am not one of those preaching religious fanatics, I don’t go to church and I couldn’t care less about the various issues people have with the various god’s they worship. I just want Christmas to be Christmas and without some fucking jackass telling me not to sing Christmas songs because it has religious overtones. Leave the Christmas folk alone!! T’is the season to shut the fuck up and stop being a whiny little bitch Stop ruining the holidays you neo-yuppie scumbag! Or I’ll beat you with a baby Jesus So Merry Christmas one and all and I don’t care who says what. (*next part is mumbled*) Believe in the power of Santa, or get nothing. You’re gonna get, coal in your stocking, because you’re yuppie scum. Just means more gifts for me! Keep pissing Santa off! There ya go! It more or less somes up my beliefs.. -Karen Edited to add: Imagine the voice of an annoying 10 year old boy jacked up on coke or something. "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

I'm trying to transcribe, but its long and he talks fast! Give me a little bit longer.. "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

I'd just like to add my two cents.. Remember way back in AFF (which I am assuming you did since you're down in CA) when they had you do back flips and barrel rolls to practice regaining stability? Practice that in your sit! Its a really great skill to have that helps you learn to deal with corking-out. So induce some instability on your next solo and fool around with that. Try some cartwheels and back-flips. And the advice you got on moving forward is great. One more word of advice, try to resist the temptation to do more than a two way. You will learn so much more on a two way (ideally with someone more experienced than yourself,) than you would on a three way. It's safer, it's easier to focus and so much more can be accomplished.

1:0:0 Studying all weekend for finals. Besides.. I don't mess around with this -20 at altitude shit. No way. Karen "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

this thread is fucking hilarious! next time I teach a packing class I am going to make sure the whole instruction is riddled with sexual skydiving inuendos!! Hahah "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

You can come, as long as you don't fuck my dog and shit in my purse. -Karen "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

Just don't go to their house then! "Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham