wartload

FJC was $35, and included 3 SL jumps. Not sure how much student jumps were without personal gear, because I bought my full rig ($50) after my first jump. Hop'n'pops from 2,000' were $2 ... but didn't always quite get to 2,000'.

When's Snoopy gonna be in DE?

Gary - it's too bad that not all of the franchises have someone around like you. I think that more could, if they'd be willing to pay more than illegal immigrant wages to their employees--and it looks like your store does ... which brings me to speculate that you work for a licensee store, rather than one run by the corporation.

THIS is a great idea! Too bad we get so pissed that we don't always think of those things in time.

A few years ago I saw a dog closed up like that in a Mercedes in DC (NJ tags). I waved down one of the Park Police (on horseback), and she said that she'd make sure nobody saw who did it if a window got smashed. It did ("found" a big maglight somewhere, too!). When the owners came back to find us letting the dog drink out of one of the reflecting pools in front of the Capitol Building. The lady cop said that the dog was running around free, and that I'd helped her catch it. THEN she said that it was a good thing that they hadn't left it so that it couldn't get out of their car on its own, because a citation for animal cruelty would have required them to make at least one expensive court trip back to DC. Funny ... they never mentioned the broken window ... just got in and drove away. I'm really sensitive to this because the baby sitter for good friends left their incredibly smart little Bedlington, and that dog's puppy, in a car. She swore that they were only in there for 15 minutes (may have been, but it was summer in NC), but when she came out, the puppy was already dead and the older dog was brain damaged and had to be put down. I'll risk a broken window charge, but will try to call a cop before I do it.

When I first started, I would have said that it was more dangerous for girls for two reasons: 1) The gear was military surplus, designed to fit men, and required more strength to wear and deploy than today (by far!) 2) Most American female children of 50 years ago were taught that the "femine" reaction to something perceived as a danger was to scream and cower -- not so much these days. Going into the fetal postion wasn't a very good long-term solution to a malfunction.

It's merely because we Americans only recently started to think of firearms as being weapons. We used to consider them tools. You can bash the brains out of a weasle, or a neighbor, or a neighbor who's a weasle, with a shovel, after all. Just to take a return poke at Oz (and I really *do* like you guys), you have the only country in the Western World where someone (a good friend) can be arrested, imprisoned for a month, then sentenced to more time in jail than domestic murderers on the grounds that they involved in a crime that took place while the QLD authorities had them in jail. Hey ... they had Miami Vice re-runs in OZ, after all, and therefore any pot smuggling *must* have involved an American. (But I'm not bitter ... and I'd gladly buy you a beer any day.)

PLEASE DON'T!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have no doubts that their meet is high-quality. I believe that it is. My qualms with the company is that they have allowed the local store operations to slip to below third-world standards in many parts of the country. Here's my test: I don't want to eat in a place where the overall sanitation is so bad that I wouldn't want to sit on the toilets in the bathroom. I figure that if the management doesn't pay attention to that, they don't watch whether or not the employees using those bathrooms wash their hands on the way out. By that test, there aren't many fast food places where I want to eat anymore.

Not so hard to believe -- two weeks of having "the squirts" and you only lost 8 pounds?

Sort of has those "runaway bride" eyes, too! I wonder what their kid would look like?

VERY close! The source that I have says that it was from the French words parer -- to parry, and chute -- a fall. This taken from Balloons, Airships, and Flying Machines, by Gertrude Bacon (early English balloonist, and daughter of one of England's first balloon pilots), written in 1908. The idea for the parachute reportedly came from acrobats in Asian countries who used something like a parasol (or pair of parasols) to lessen their rate of descent when jumping from unusual heights. Bacon credits Blanchard with having built the first parachute demonstrated to be practical. In 1785 he safely parachuted a dog, tied inside a basket, from "a great height" achieved by his balloon. Soon afterward, M. Garnerin, already famous as a balloonist, parachuted successfully from a balloon and started all of this.

I think that the assertion that there's no biological or evolutionary reason for women to have orgasms is ridiculous. Were it not for that fact, no woman would ever have had a second child. I'm convinced that they'd have run away from the male, risked death, or whatever was necessary not to go through childbirth again. Make all the arguments that you want about natural maternal instincts. They may be valid, but it's the Big O that tilts the scale in favor of risking that again.

Just curious ... how many people know the origin of the word "parachute"? What does it literally mean? If nobody comes up with the right answer, I'll post it.

No question about this one. It's the definition of film comedy.

10/12

Not much forward drive on it, is there!?

I've passed up making sooooooo many possible replies to this one!

Yep. There was a relatively easy fix for it, but the thought of trying to land a plane while kneeling or squatting (no rudder pedals) isn't pleasant.

BEER BUTT CHICKEN This isn't so much a recipe as it is a cooking technique for a whole chicken, using a covered grill, smoker, or cooker. Use any sort of rub on it that you like. If you really want to do a good job, use a small, sharp, knife to separate the skin from the breast (don't remove it ... just separate them), then mix the rub with olive oil and spread it onto the breast meat under the skin. THEN ... drink half of a can of beer for each chicken you are cooking. Stick the remaining half of a can of beer up inside the cavity of the chicken, so that it makes sort of a "stand" for the chicken to be held upright on the grill (you may want to put a pie pan under the bottom of the upright beer can). The beer steams the inside of the chicken as it cooks, giving you some of the most tender, moist, chicken that you ever had.

Not a new idea. I've got a wood-cut illustration from a book in the mid 1800s that shows that.

NOW I understand why you thought that "Clerks" was a good movie!

Sort of like me getting punished with confinement to the boat -- effective the day that we left on patrol for over 90 days.

At one of the of the small DZs where I jumped in the past, one of the pilots was a NC State Trooper ... and a really nice guy. He worked I-95 quite a bit, and he told me--from his perspective--what the worst thing was that you could say to a Highway Patrolman ... First, you have to be in a car with NJ tags, having just been stopped for doing 20 mph over the speedlimit. Then, in a nasal NJ accent, you say: "Fer chrissakes, offfisuhrrr, what's da fuggin' PRAHBLEM???!" ======== I'd also suggest NOT saying, "Thanks for the ticket, Barney. Don't drop your bullet, and tell Andy and Opie that I said 'hey'!" ======== Then there was the up-and-coming local drunk who got pulled for doing 95 mph. The sheriff, who knew the young hellion well, asked him ... "Billy, do you know how many feet it would take you to stop this car at 95 mph?" Billy thought for a minute, then slurred, "You was tryin' to trick me, Tom. It's TWO! One for the brake, and t'other one for the clutch!"

Congratulations ... glad to hear that the upcoming event is so much like the excitement of your first jump, but try to keep the two events separate. Don't, for example, go on your honeymoon thinking you should count to ten and pull it out.