With credit to Malcolm Reynolds.

So this last Tuesday my new ward’s bishop came by to visit. I got the place all cleaned up to make a good impression, then ate some brown rice dinner while I waited.

He came by and I invited him in, and we got to chatting and he was here to extend a calling: Young Men’s Advisor, focusing on the Priest’s Quorum. This ward has interesting demographics – there are ~13 kids in nursery, and it tapers down from there, to where there’s a grand total of two Deacons and three Priests. So it’ll be interesting to see what we can do here, especially until they fully lift social distancing requirements. (Washington recently came out saying “let’s wait a while until the vaccination rate gets a bit higher.”)

Later that evening, after the bishop left, I happened to catch my reflection in a mirror, and saw a couple of dried out grains of brown rice adhered dead center on my shirt. Awesome first impression there.

Several evenings this week I’ve found excuse to be out and about, and I took the opportunity to try some new restaurants. Found a place super near my house that’s always looked a bit sketch, but turns out it’s great and serves spam musubi, so, that’s awesome.

Wandering around a relatively new development in Kirkland I found an awesome burger place and an awesome sunset. Photo of course doesn’t do it justice.

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This Friday we had a short work event where we put a wood puzzle together that’d been shipped to us a week or so previously. Something to take the place of events we might’ve done together if the office were open. On the one hand, it was relatively low-key. On the other hand, the thought did cross my mind while we were gluing pieces together, “They’re actually paying us for this? Ridiculous.”

In any case, it turned out pretty nice.

Two movies I’d recommend y’all catch, both on Plex. One of them is an edited version of The Big Short. If you enjoyed Margin Call, I think you’ll like this. It’s also about the 2008 housing crisis, with a bit more of a star-studded cast.

The second movie is Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man from 2002. The CGI is certainly dated, as is Tobey Maguire’s acting, and that’s all part of the appeal. Not that Tobey’s acting is bad or anything, quite the opposite, just that you wouldn’t see this sort of thing in modern superhero movies. Overall just a fun well-put-together movie.

Now to explain the title of this blog post. Yes, I tore my meniscus the last time I jumped, and there’s some coolness factor to being able to say I did that while skydiving. But as it turns out it was for a really dumb reason, a very noob mistake in my landing technique. I read up and learned how to do hard landings properly, and was feeling like my back wouldn’t break at the drop of a hat or anything, so I decided to give it a go this weekend.

I had a thing at 3pm which was a two-hour drive away from the drop zone, so I rushed out at 8:30am to arrive by 10am, giving me time for plenty of jumps. However, when I arrived, it turned out that Google Weather lied about the cloud cover. It was quite overcast, and remained so for a long while. 1pm rolled around and I was getting ready to throw in the towel, when the call went out that the cloud cover was breaking up, and folks should get themselves geared up and ready to go. I’d just be fashionably late to my 3pm.

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There’s a rule when learning to jump, which is that if you haven’t jumped within the last 30 days, you need a “recurrency jump”, where you have a coach accompany you on the way down. Also, while learning, there are a number of jumps you do with a coach that teach you how to “dock” mid-air with another jumper. So I killed two birds with one stone and checked off the first of these learn-how-to-dock jumps.

Funny incident on the way up in the plane, stemming from the physics of air pressure. The cabin is not pressurized at all, so any pent-up gas tends to find its way out of whatever orifice is handy. Someone let out quite the stinker, and everyone noticed. To fix the situation my coach got up and – well before jump altitude of 13,500 feet, while the plane was still climbing – opened the jump door, only half-way, enough to circulate and clear the air. This drop zone certainly features a pretty chill crowd.

Given my overall build, I fall very fast relative to other jumpers, but on our way down we managed to dock a couple times before 6,000 feet, where no more maneuvers are performed. At 5,500 feet I broke off and tracked away from the formation, and at 4,000 feet I deployed my chute. At this my back made very clear that it wasn’t super happy with what had just gone down, but it wasn’t gonna punish me, just yet anyways.

Upon landing, I tried out the “parachute landing fall” technique, which I feel like they should’ve drilled into us earlier, would’ve saved me an MRI and surgery, but oh well. It worked precisely as advertised, landed hard but got right back up and didn’t stress my knee at all.

Turned in my chute, got all checked out, and headed up to a friend’s graduation party. It was held in her friend’s sister’s back yard. I was wandering back and inspecting their tree house, when one of the residents, a 5-year-old girl, walked up and asked me what I was doing.

“Admiring your treehouse.”

“It’s a tree deck.”

“Oh, my mistake.”

“Want to watch me hang on these monkey bars?” (Hanging below the deck.)

“Sure!”

[At this I marveled at children’s weight to grip-strength ratio, and lamented that I can’t do monkey bars anymore.]

“Hey, what do you think about the idea of a pulley on this thing?”

“What’s a pulley?”

“I used to have one on my treehouse. It’s a rope that goes over a wheel, and you can use it to pull up snacks and stuff.”

[At this the lightbulb turned on, her eyes widened in delight and I could see her envisioning how much cooler the tree deck would be with a pulley.]

“Yes I want a pulley! It’d be sooo coool. Can you ask my dad?”

“Haha, no, you ask him.”

“Pleeease?”

“Nooo, you’ll have to ask.”

“Ok.”

She then ran off to ask her dad, who was standing outside. I made myself inconspicuous, lest I come across as putting dangerous ideas in children’s heads.

The rest of the evening was fun, with the eventful episode where I got to climb a tree and rescue a cat. Much fun.

This morning my back was even more explicit. It did not like yesterday’s adventures. I’m thinking the inversion table I picked up and will put together with Mom will help considerably. And there will always be drugs.

Made even more of a great first impression this morning by forgetting to zoom in to Young Men’s after the Sacrament Meeting where I was sustained in my new calling. Would’ve had such a great intro too (“Sorry I’m recovering in bed from skydiving yesterday”). Will have to meet-n-greet next week, or during this week’s youth activity which I have no idea about yet.

Alright, signing off to pick up Mom from the airport. See ya!