Skydiving

Someone on looking at my life recently might say that I'm an adrenaline junkie. I don't think I am. But, I do know that I've done a lot of things that could aptly be labeled crazy in the past year or so.

One of those things was skydiving. IT WAS AWESOME!

This one is thanks to both my brother and my roommate. My brother challenged me to do something I had never thought of. About the same time, my roommate sent an email to a group of people saying we should go skydiving. I decided to do it :)

We scheduled our appointment, rented a car and headed to Pennsylvania. We signed our lives away. And then we sat and waited. And waited. And left for breakfast. And came back and waited some more. And played Phase 10. And finally the cloud cover lifted just enough that they could take the plane up.

In the plane on the way up it really hit me what I was doing and my heart started pounding. What was I thinking? Was it too late to back out? Why does my tandem jumper keep asking me if I have something I want to say to my family before this starts? Why do I just keep nervously giggling?

And then it was my turn to jump. All I could think about was that I only got one foot on the edge of the door like I was told so everything was going to go wrong! (silly, since my tandem jumper had neither foot on the door and he didn't seem concerned…)

Good news – it went smoothly. I'm not sure I did anything they told me to do. But I am sure that I LOVED the experience. I just laughed and laughed. I enjoyed the view of the pretty landscape (and was weirdly fascinated by the local school – buses, football field, everything).

A few days later, I came across this quote:

"Adventure, yeah. I guess that's what you call it when everybody comes back alive."
-- Mercedes Lackey, Spirits White as Lightning

An adventure, to be sure.

And if the skydiving wasn't enough, we finished out the day by heading to Amish country. I'm not sure if it was a reflection of just having survived jumping out of a plane or not, but the kettle corn, the homemade pretzel, and the homemade ice cream were unbelievably delicious!

Would I do it again? Absolutely!

Knitting a Dress - Post #1

One of the goals I set was to knit a dress. I have a feeling this one is going to take awhile :)

But, I picked a dress pattern! Check it out:

Mostly I feel excited, but I also feel extremely overwhelmed. When I mentioned this to one of my friends she asked, "Isn't the point of your list to stretch yourself and grow?" I'm not sure that was the point of my list when I first made it, but it seems like a good purpose for the list, so I'm going to run with that.

This goal will certainly stretch me and increase my knitting skill level if I succeed with it.

The next hurdle is selecting yarn. That might not sound like such a big deal, but the yarn they used in the pattern picture is $32 a skein    and I can't imagine making a dress that would cost nearly $300. So, no comes my need to learn more about textures and weights of yarn AND pick out a color I want – bring it on!