Jerm’s Insanity

I’ve rarely gotten political in my blog, i figure all 5 of my readers pretty much know about my politics, but events of late just tend to drive me batty.  In particular, the Sarah Palin choice for McCain’s running mate.  Even without knowing anything about her it seemed like a case of pure political vote snatching.  After all, if the Dems have the black vote through Obama, the Reps will try to grab the female vote with Palin.  Conversely, my money says that if Hilliary had won the nomination Colin Powell would have been McCain’s Choice.

Anyway, the more I hear about this “Bulldog with Lipstick” the more I cringe.  People with more time on their hands and political savvy have compiled the details for me, so i pass them on to you.

• Palin recently said that the war in Iraq is “God’s task.” She’s even admitted she hasn’t thought about the war much—just last year she was quoted saying, “I’ve been so focused on state government, I haven’t really focused much on the war in Iraq.” ^{1, 2}
• Palin has actively sought the support of the fringe Alaska Independence Party. Six months ago, Palin told members of the group—who advocate for a vote on secession from the union—to “keep up the good work” and “wished the party luck on what she called its ‘inspiring convention.’” ³
• Palin wants to teach creationism in public schools. She hasn’t made clear whether she thinks evolution is a fact.⁴
• Palin doesn’t believe that humans contribute to global warming. Speaking about climate change, she said, “I’m not one though who would attribute it to being manmade.” ⁵
• Palin has close ties to Big Oil. Her inauguration was even sponsored by BP. ⁶
• Palin is extremely anti-choice. She doesn’t even support abortion in the case of rape or incest. ⁷
• Palin opposes comprehensive sex-ed in public schools. She’s said she will only support abstinence-only approaches. ⁸
• As mayor, Palin tried to ban books from the library. Palin asked the library how she might go about banning books because some had inappropriate language in them—shocking the librarian, Mary Ellen Baker. According to Time, “news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving “full support” to the mayor.” ⁹
• She DID support the Bridge to Nowhere (before she opposed it). Palin claimed that she said “thanks, but no thanks” to the infamous Bridge to Nowhere. But in 2006, Palin supported the project repeatedly, saying that Alaska should take advantage of earmarks “while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.” ¹⁰

She and those aroudn her are already stretching the truth, if out outright lying about matters of record.

And this Daily Show Clip is priceless.

Am I the only one who’s frightened?

Update:  An enlightening letter from an involved resident from Palin’s mayoral city

Got a cat. She’s cute.

Been making pesto from my monster basil… ohhhh the yummyiness

Last weekend I made my 3000th Jump a few days after my 10th Anniversary of my first skydive. Chrissi made her 300th on the same jump along with 11 of our friends.

I’ve been building an arcade machine. Really. More on this later.

I Finally made it out to California in August. It was swell.

I bought a Mac. I love my Mac.

Update: my basil got even bigger…

New picture:

Old Picture

Greetings from PR!!! I was hping to keep everyone updated and informed via pictures and videos and commentary, however i have no method to get stills to the internet (onnactounta no card reader.. and PIX messaging doesn’t work from PR (on verizon).

So, i apoligize to my 2 faithful readers who i’m confident i’ve already told all of these stories to, for putting you through this again:

I’m wriging this after some unkown number of rum&cokes, so please bear….. ah fuck it it if you can’t take a joke.

Thing i’ve learned in PR:

“Normal” temperature water in a shower means “as itomes from the tap.” Wither heated, nor cooled, but generally TO FUCKING COLD TO SHOWER.

Some hotels have time windows in which they turn on the water heaters… and often convienientl ‘forget’

Even dropzones have a vice-principal whose job it is to say ‘No’ to EVERYHTING

DZOs aiming to please will often overrule an evil vice-dzo

Rum is good (i knew this one, but being in the “Rum Capital of the World” just makes thr point ever more stronglier)

Road-side cart at 11pm is the best food on the island.. i dont care how drunk i was.

Skinnydipping in the ocean is fun

Skinnydipping at night is more funnerer

Red lights are optional after 11pm in PR

I CAN navgiate my way out of a paper bag… even if i can’t understand the road signs

i can get on the mike and be totally cool…. at least long enough to announce KEALANI’S 100TH Jump!!! woohoo!! (it was also a great distrction to let the pie brigate sneak up on her)

I love my friends.

Beach jumps rock (last time it twas so humid that sand stuck to evertything… this time is much better)

hmm. I seem to have fallen asleep after that last one, and am no longer drunk.  So my my list must end. Anyway it’s been a blast.

Oh….. having your girl leave the tropical paridise (for a long long time) a couple of days before you really really sucks. http://terrisperber.mycyberway.com/celebrex9466.html

I had a great time Saturday night. We got a bit silly at 2 different bars for Kealani’s birthday and ended up at a diner until nearly until nearly 4am after which and Dan & Ke dropped me off near the 59thst bridge. I hiked over to 63rd & York and quietly, so as not to wake the slumbering (read: the wuss went home early) Doctor, retired to the unoccupied sofa… mm drunken sleep.

About 8am I got a txt From Bernadette letting me know what time, 10am, to meet to help her move. I lounged for a bit, showered and managed to get on the FDR at 9:01am — i was gonna be late. I called her as i was approaching thruway exit 17 asking where i should meet her, and she said that things had gotten pushed back, to meet at 10:30. Cool! I could now could grab a change of clothes and some breakfast and not be too late. It was 10:01am. I got home at 10:20 and cooked an egg, threw on some jeans, checked all my pockets and… how did my ipod get into that pocket?

It felt like an ipod (is that an ipod in your pocket?), but it turns out it was actually Dr. Jenn’s wallet. Oh hell.

You see, Jenn, having dressed for going out, had a lack of pockets on her non-coat-clad person. As we weren’t wearing coats in the bar, i offered to keep her wallet in my pocket so so to be readily available.

I called the good Doctor, “I have some good news and some bad news… the good news is that you haven’t lost your wallet.”
*dramatic pause* “Jerm, this is really really bad”
“Any chance you can survive w/o it till friday (tunnel day)?”
“Jerm, i have to be ON A PLANE at 2pm”
Pondering the ramifications of this i realized 2 very unpleasant things:
1) i was going to be very late indeed helping B move.
2) i just did nyc->new paltz in record time w/o getting pulled over and it was going the frustrate the hell out of me doing the same trek 2 hours later and not being able to match the time (more traffic, smaller balls, etc..)

How could i minimize both the tardiness and automotive self-loathing? “Any chance you can met me half way”
“No, i’m still in brooklyn, and i haven’t packed… FUCK! i need to go pack!”
Shit.
I put my shoes on
I grab my coat
I grab my headset
I grab her wallet
I walk out the door & close it behind me
I wonder if i have my keys on me.

This is the part of the story where, if you considered, even for an instant, that i in fact DID have my keys, I must start to worry about you even though we have apparently never met.

I start laughing. In retrospect i imagine a less-positive stress response could have saved me a lot of time (punching in the window), but i figured that this wasn’t really a problem, as John’s car was still in the driveway, so he’s probably still home, especially considering that it’s not jumpable.

Subtract 2 points if you thought that John may have actually been home.

As i see that i’m getting long winded, i’ll summarize and let you know that i WAS able to get in touch with John who was nice enough to come let me in. I got in touch with Bernadette who was very gracious about my brain fart, especailyl considering the increase it workload this was bound to cause her, and I did manage to get Jenn’s wallet to her, though I ended up delivering it to her outside TerminalB at La Guardia….. after missing the exit for TerminalB and continuing down the GC parkway a bit then doubling back. *sigh*

I proceeded to have lunch with Rudi near city hall (i needed food & caffine), then to back to gardiner in time to help B’s crew unload the truck. I visited with Utah & deb for a bit and ended up stuck there because the roads were iced over (and you know it’s bad if _I_ won’t drive on it. I tried, i was only barely not sliding off the road, which was ok, but then i realized i wasn’t on the steep part yet. They kept me up chatting &, eventually, drinking until far too late.

‘Twas a long day.

PS The kicker of the whole incident is that Jenn was off to an interview for, I shit you not, a job that she had absolutely NO intention of accepting if offered. Nonetheless, she had to attend the interview, ah, politics.

And i wept. I don’t do that often. Nevermind that this was a very special friend. Nevermind how close to my heart she and her dad are or were (they were). That all contributed, and made me sad, but that phrase gripped me, and made it all the more real. “My dad died.” *thud*

There was no sugar coating it: “he passed away, he left us, etc…” No, my friend was always very to-the-point — very clinical, very grounded, realistic. It was raw, and no-nonsense… “my dad died.” What a horrible thing to have to say, and yet we will all, unless we beat them to it, will say it at some point. That’s scary. It’s life. It’s the way the world works, but it’s still scary. My frind is my age, her dad younger than mine. He was in his 50s. Scary.

“My dad died.” Thank you for being so honest. I’m so sorry for your loss. I can’t imagine what you’re going through. I don’t want to. He was such a good man. He was, is, your dad.

I forgot to mention that the whole thing was organized by the Demo Divas. They’re a trio of bad-ass women who make me look like a baby in the sport. Their experience is and professionalism left me in awe and i would be proud and honored to work with them again.

There’s nothing like a baseball game; the crack of the bat, the roar of the crowd, the smell of hotdogs, the wind whooshing by my ears as i prepare to touch-down on home plate…. wait, what?

There was this problem. The AllStar game was a 40 minute drive away, we had the opening-pitch-ball. and there was only 20 minutes till the start of the game. What were we to do? Air delivery, of course! Fortunately we just happened to have a pilot and plane at the ready so we put on our gear and climbed into the cessna.

We had some aerial shots of the stadium, a description of a good approach vector, and a 2000ft flyby before exit time. There just happened to be some people that we know on the ground, with a radio on the same frequency as our plane, letting us know it was OK to jump and that there was basically no ground wind. Great.

I was first out from 5k. About 10 seconds into my 17 second freefall i notices that my knee really hurt. I would come to find out later, from the pilot, that i whacked it on the step on my way out. Figures. After 800 cessna jumps I manage to forget all i know about exiting a 182 after a few short years as a turbine whore. Anyway, my knee hurts, but someone threw a large, fast moving planet at me, so i responded by throwing a pilot chute. WOOHOO! It worked! I was Up-wind, on the wind-line and in a great position to be the first down and make my approach.

Looking at the field, I noticed a bunch of people right in my approach lane. I had planned on doing some sort of — probably something on the milder side — HP approach in the stadium. I wanted to come in from the far corner behind the left-field foul lone and carve across the landing area, setting down in the infield near home plate. Well, the visiting team apparently didn’t care that the organizers had asked for the field to be cleared and were spread out all along the left field line still doing throwing warm-ups. Not so great. Time to alter my approach.

I came in between the stadium lights out in center field and surfed into the infield, first contact on the pitchers mound, ran it out and took a few extra steps to stop on home plate. I was a rockstar. Then came the 3 other rockstars behind me: KayWay, Bev and Janjan. Janjan, last down, had the ball. She landed like a princess and presented the First Pitch Ball to the…. guy who was supposed to get it and we all made our way off the field. Not before Heidi, who just happened to be at the game, came over and gave me (a bit too big of) a kiss, for which we were taunted and admonished by the mascots (and a few fans in the stands who had kids). Naughty Heidi.

We were treated to beers and burgers and an amazing Prime Rib. ‘Twas a good eve. Check the video. I’m the first one down, and the one taking the first-person view.

Update: I’ve been informed that the video is broken in IE. I haddn’t noticed, as i don’t usually parate in the pleasures of that POS. For anyone who does not get a happy-happy youtube video window below, you can check it out at this link.

After months and months of bringing down local property values with the tarpaper/crappy gutter motif, we finally got of our asses and hirted someone to come fix the place.  Our belov-ed jumpy buddy LT came out and replaced the gutters, trimmed the windows in aluminum and, most notably, patched in the siding around the house.

He fixed the front window, side window, empty spots form the old deck and fied the melted siding from the previous owners’ grill.  He also re-did the trim in white…. smashing!  Check it out:

Before

After

Always, and i mean ALWAYS, wash your hands thoroughly between cutting up jalapeños and going to the bathroom.

SURE people have told me that before, and I’ve had poor experiences with rubbing my eyes, but wow. Just… wow. I think i’ve learned my lesson.