*Aizxana

Ok, *onikokuei tagged me in her journal quiz, which mean's it's my turn to answer it! So.. what is this? Am I a boy or girl???

YOUR BOY SIDE
(x) You love hoodies
(x) You love jeans
( ) Dogs are better than cats
( ) It's hilarious when people get hurt
(x) You've played with/against boys on a team
( ) Shopping is torture
( ) Sad movies suck
( ) You own an Xbox
( ) Played with Hotwheels cars as a kid
( ) At some point in time you wanted to be a fire-fighter
( ) You own a DS, PS2 or Sega
( ) You used to be obsessed with Power Rangers
( ) You watch sports on TV
( ) Gory movies are cool
(x) You go to your dad for advice (yeah, if it's stuff to do with computers, cars, bikes etc,
( ) You own like a trillion baseball caps
( ) You like going to football games
( ) You used to/do collect baseball cards
( ) Baggy pants are cool to wear
( ) It's kinda weird to have sleepovers with a bunch of people
( ) Green, black, red, blue, or silver are one of your favourite colours
( ) You love to go crazy and not care what people think
(x) Sports are fun (only snowboarding and skiing, but they're still sports!)
( ) Talk with food in your mouth
( ) Wear boxers

YOUR GIRL SIDE
( ) You wear lip gloss
(x) You love to shop (mostly window shopping though!)
( ) You wear eyeliner
( ) You have some of the same shirts in different colours
(x) You wear the colour pink
(x) Go to your mum for advice
(x) You consider cheerleading a sport
( ) You hate wearing the colour black
( ) You like hanging out at the mall
(x) You like getting manicures and/or pedicures (I had my first manicure a few weeks ago!)
(x) You like wearing jewellery
(/) Skirts are a big part of your wardrobe (I put a half in as they are a big part for work but not so much for the weekends!)
(x) Shopping is one of your favourite hobbies
(x) You don't like the movie Star Wars.
(x) You are/were in cheerleading, gymnastics or dance (i did gymnastics)
(x) It takes you around 1 hour to shower, get dressed, ad put on make-up and accessories (2 hours in the bath, an hour to do my hair... 10 mins make up!)
( ) You smile a lot more than you should (always! eveything thinks I'm mad )
( ) You have more than 10 pairs of shoes
(x) You care about what you look like (I think we all do to some extent)
( ) You like wearing dresses when you can.
(x) You like wearing body spray/perfume/cologne
(x) You wear girl underwear (um... well sure I do)
( ) Used to play with dolls as little kid
( ) Like putting make-up on someone else for the joy of it
( ) Like taking pictures of yourself with your cell phone/camera when you're bored

So - totals!
Boy: 5
Girl: 13 1/2
Well, the evidence is conclusive - I'm a girl!

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Opps, another long gap between journal entries! A bit silly really, considering I keep a diary most days and can fill up a whole page, but I guess that's personal stuff which i wouldn't put online. Actually that's one thing I would care to rant about - personal blogs, diaries, Facebook updates (John has just woken up, John is having breakfast, John is on the loo, John is having a bad day at work ... etc etc). No one cares about having any privacy anymore, everyone wants everyone to know everything about them. Ok, so i might be contradicting myself my writing my personal thoughts each month on dA (and yes i am on FB!), but i do intend, at some point, to get round to writing about actual subjects Morphing, Skydiving and Photography rather than just having a moan.

So, yes, the Grand Prix. First one in May, second one was the weekend before last. The May one, at Langar DZ (UK) was a heck of a lot of fun and we learnt loads. They had some top class coaches from one of the UK's most successful teams going round giving everyone advice. We also did some of our best jumps. Ok... so we screwed up a couple of jumps and came last, but what the heck, cos it was a lot of fun!
The second (Netheravon DZ) was good fun too, and we did a bit better here by coming 6th out of 8. Which is great for us because we were up against some much more experienced teams (who really should have been competing in the more advanced category, some of us thought, hehehe!) and besides we had no intention of getting a medal, we just wanted to have a laugh.

Anyway, the next competition isn't until August, so we have a few months to try and improve. Unfortuntely, just a few days after the recent GP, one of our team mates had to resign. We've since found a replacement, and are looking forward to jumping together soon.

I have finally secured a permenant position at work. Hurruh! I have been temping since October, moving about the place, and I have at last been offered a perm role in Administration.

Morphing... Sorry about the lack of updates! Since I spend all day on the computer at my desk, it's not very tempting to get straight onto the computer when I get home to make some morphs. Also a lot of my weekends are taking up with jumping... So I will try and update when I can, but it's certainly not like I used to I'm afraid.

I may well be able to update with some non-morphing devs soon though. My dad has a new toy, a digital SLR and I've been having a go with it. I'm getting used to how it works, as all i've used before is a simple compact camera, but I'm very excited about it and want to see what it can do.

**EDIT**

Talking about facebook and people's private lives - I've just had the most bizarre "status update" from a facebook-friend on my "feed". It was from a female and obviously aimed at an ex lover. It read something along the lines of

[i]"dear xxx....it's not working out, it's not you it's me...hope we can be friends and so you know it was the best sex I ever had."[/i]

Honestly - who would write this for ALL TO SEE????
We don't CARE! And poor Xxx probably does not want his private life spelled out all over Facebook!
I just want to scream at people; Please keep it private!!

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We have our first skydiving (formation, 4-way) competition in a few weeks time! The first of the Grand Prix's. The 4 of us have been doing lots of tunnel time and did 6 jumps at the weekend together, mostly on Sunday. Saturday was a bit of a frustrating day, as it was the first gorgeous Saturday in a long time - and the pilot at the DZ was ill! So we had to hop in the car and take a trip to a nearby DZ; Weston. That meant becoming members there (another £25), getting all our kit and docs checked, and buying jump tickets for that DZ. We did get to jump a Dornier though, which was nice practise for the Nationals in August.

Sunday we went back to our usual DZ, Hinton, and got in 4 jumps. The first jump totally funnelled (went wrong on exit) and it was all my fault as i slipped and lost my footing on exit! I found it was a difficult exit ("Sidebody" and I am Outside Centre) - it was one we had tried successfully from the Dornier at Weston, but that has a much bigger door. The plane at Hinton has a smaller door and it was much more cramped making my position difficult. The rest of the jumps went ok though, we spent the time doing drills and practising one exit over and over (Bow) as this will be our "stock" exit. There are 16 formations ("randoms") and in a competition you have to do 3, and repeat them over and over as many times as you can. But you don't have to "launch" the first formation. It's nice if you can, as then you can use it as the first point and save time. But at our rookie level, there's no way we can perfect 16 formations to launch just in case they come up. So we picked one, and will use that. Later on, we will try out more exits, but for the moment we will stick with just one.

We have another session in the wind tunnel in a few weeks and are going to make sure we have tried out every formation - as so far we have been sticking to the easy ones! We need to have a go at some where at least one of us is outfacing. I doubt we'll get 3 easy ones come up on the big day. Hopefully we won't get three we've only done a couple of times though!

Check us out in this pic:



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**Edit** I have 50,000 pageviews... THANK YOU ALL VERY MUCH!

Well not a huge amount has been happening here but I thought I would update to let everyone know I'm alive!

The work placement is going quite well, unfortuntely I applied for a full time, permentant place but I didn't get it. Very annoying. Also the woman who DID get it is sitting two feet away!!! We are moving offices next week. Right now I feel like a bit of a spare part as the new person is using my desk and computer! Hopefully soon I will have my own space!

Things are quite stressful at home though for my family especially my mother and uncle - my grandad has become quite ill and over the weekend his health detoriated very suddenly. He nows needs a lot of help and someone with him 24 hours a day. There are a few of us who take turns in staying overnight there 3 or 4 nights a week but it is diffucult with most of the family working full time or at uni.

Things are going very well re skydiving though. We finally have a full team which hopefully will work out ok. We haven't jumped together all at once yet, but it should be fine. We are a rookie-level 4-way formation skydiving team called Team Fallout! There are 4 of us plus Pip, who is our camerawoman and filmed our training jumps. We compete to make as many formations (shapes) in the freefall part of the skydive as we can. That's 35 seconds in a competition. Then the rest of us have a certain position to fly (like football players have positions, so do skydivers) - they are called Point, Front Centre, Rear Centre and Tail. Each has a different role and needs different skills. I am Front Centre. According to some people, Front Centres are those who think they are the best flyers and want to lead the skydive each time! Even though that should be Rear Centre's job!). This is in fact partly true!

We shall be doing a few jumps at the weekend, although it won't be the whole team there, but we will all be meeting up to go to the wind tunnel for a session on Monday and then again a few weeks later with a world class coach! I can't wait! I also ordered a new jumpsuit and helmet which came last week, I want to jump them! It will also by my team mate Dan's 200th jump at the weekend, hopefully we'll do something like an 8-way formation depending on how many formation jumpers are around. I've advised him not to wait til the last minute to organise it like I did for my 100th!

Morph wise - hopefully I will have time do make a few more in the coming week or two. It is getting difficult to find the time to make them - sadly it is a long time since the days where I could bash out several in a weekend! I have a couple of requests to do though, including a Black Horse, Starfish and Black Wolf.

I also have a few photographs that I took at the weekend to have a look at and upload. I went with my smaller sisters for a walk around the local park as it was stunning weather, and took my camera. Hopefully got some nice shots of birds in flight.

I have also noticed, a little shocked, that I have had almost 50,000 pageviews. That is a amazing, thank you very much!! As usual, the person who gets a screenshot can request a morph. To make it a little special, I will also add to the picture a close up head-morph for extra detail. Or, if you like, I could do a person-to-person morph where the two people actually change pose through the sequence as well as morphing into one another. This is much more elaborate and in fact is three morphs in one! Another thing I could do is a themed morph: I was looking at some of the Animorphs covers the other day and thought it would be nice to try some morphed that had a storyline. In book 41, Jake morphs into an older version of himself as it is set in the future, and in 46, Ax morphs into a fighter-jet pilot. Perhaps one day i will do a morph of an "average" teenager morphing into a futuristic skydiver, or into a daredevil motorbike rider.

**EDIT** I have 50K pageviews, whoohoo! Thanks! I haven't had any notes from anyone who has caught a screenshot yet but if ahyone has...let me know or, or if you something like 50005 or similar! I will make you a morph!

And on a final, sad note, I have just been informed that fellow horse-lover and deviantArtist =DancesWithHorses has passed away. Please visit her beautiful site and wish her family and friends peace.


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Hurruh - finally done it! I have acheived my skydiving B certificate!! At the same time I hit the milestone 100 jump mark
For those not in the know, to apply for the B cert, one needs to have acheived the following (simply put - not quoted this from the BPA ops manual or anything):

At least 50 jumps
Canopy Handling grade 2 (CH2) where you have to do the following: a series of exercises under canopy, 5 accurate out of 10 accurate landings into a target pit or marked zone of 30m diameter and a written exam.
Jump Master grade (JM1) where you have to be able to do the following: received a brief of spotting (the correct point at altiude of 10,000ft or more at which to exit the aircraft for a jump) and successful spot under supervision of an instructor.
Be able to pack, inspect, cut away and re-connect and untangle a main parachute.
Have a briefing of the BPA operations manual,
Receive a brief and be able to carry out flightline equipment checks.

Once acheived this marks you as an "intermediate parachutist" and you are eligable for the following activites:
Jump a hot air balloon, helicopter or jet (DZ dependant)
Wear a full face helmet
Jump at night/dusk
Carry out a flightline equipment check
Jumpmaster an aircraft

Plus any other DZ-specific rules (e.g. at Netheravon there is hire kit available for B cert and above only).

For the 100th jump, we did a 5-way FS jump with another guy, Andy, who was also doing his 100th. We planned to do 3 points (more if possible). And, in the tradition of any 100th jump going to the dogs, 4 people managed to get into the 1st point, before Andy, bless him, came in like a missile and took everyone out! Ah well, twas great fun.

Went out to celebrate for a meal afterwards.

Hopefully photos of the jump to follow.

The day also included a 8-point 3way with a couple of friends (jump 99), and a 1-point 2-way with a random guy at the dz (jump 98)! And the 1 point was the exit!!!

- the one and only point!

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