Toward the end of last year, one of my big clients decided that I needed to become a different kind of contractor. Instead of maintaining my independent status and sending them invoices, they asked me to become an employee of a temporary firm.

This was a monumental PITA. Just filling out the forms took hours. Not to mention the trek across town to pee in a cup under the supervision of an armed matron.

OK, just kidding. She wasn’t armed.

Anyway, after numerous kerfuffles, like them losing my paperwork but not really, not having a timesheet and then not having any activity codes on my timesheet and my start date being wrong, I finally have all the parts in order.

And here’s what happens.

Every couple of weeks, MONEY APPEARS IN MY CHECKING ACCOUNT.

For many of you, this has probably been happening for a long time. But, for me, money has only appeared in the form of checks in the mailbox that I take to the bank and deposit. Then I go  home and divvy it out among several different accounts: taxes, personal savings, business savings, and, oh yeah, the part I get to spend.

Money also appears in my other checking account sometimes. My client in Copenhagen has a payment department in Bangalore that directly deposits payment. This amuses me immensely, when I’m not clarifying ABA numbers for the umpteenth time. But I never know when the money will show up–and I’m always ever so slightly surprised when it does.

Not like having a PAYDAY.

{ 1 comment }

Kayso, I only have time to post a couple of pictures of the cabin, in and out, because I’m hurrying to meet a deadline for work.

Out:

That is not, although it certainly looks like it could be, an outhouse immediately outside the front door. It’s a wind/snow break, we think, that used to be all cute and wood-shingled, but now looks like a construction zone. The red thing on top is the sled/ge, which, when you balance it across the corner of the wind/snowbreak, functions as a refrigerator. The blue thing is a tarp that kept the contents of the sled/ge in place during the haul.

But what about the internal amenities?, you ask. Thanks to half of Hoffman Bros.’ photographic and technical skillz, we have a panoramic view:

What you can’t see, off to the left, is a bedroom with a perfectly lovely double bed. More on that later. Also my half of Hoffman Bros. definitely took a picture and made panoramas including it, but I liked this one the best.

You can see that there’s a propane heater and a range. There were also solar lights, so it was quite swank. The disassembled kitchen faucet was on the windowsill, so we suspect that they hook it back up and use the cabin for other purposes during warm weather (it’s only available as a rental during the fall and winter).

It was warm and we had warm food.

Perfect.

{ 1 comment }

On Christmas Day, half of Hoffman Bros. and I went to the mountains.

We rented a forest service cabin.

The arrow points to the right side of our cabin. There was also an entire left side, which, since I’m not a photographer, I didn’t take a picture of. I did take a farther-away shot of the whole thing, but it looks like there was Vaseline all over the lens of my camera (which I am still thanking you all for every time I pick it up, MWAH).

Those other structures are unused in the winter.

This is also not our cabin. It’s the one next to our cabin.

How cute is that? And also the source of a Perpetual Mystery, because a sign on the door says ‘Caulked boots only.’ Huh. We peered in the windows and it was empty inside, so I’m not sure if the sign was only a relic. Nor am I sure at all about what caulked boots are and why they were welcome, while my own completely uncaulked boots wouldn’t be.

When we planned this trip back in November or so, we thought about cross-country skiing. Then we decided to try snowshoes, which neither of us have ever done. My partner in adventuring has many friends with snowshoe connections, so we actually had four borrowed pairs to choose from for our adventure.

Unfortunately, the one thing we didn’t have all that much of was snow. It’s been a very dry December in these parts, and the snow on the ground ranged in depth from none to about six inches.

Nevertheless, it was beautiful in the extreme. Witness:

This is a view of Fish Lake, which is where the cabin is. It’s one of two winter-rentable cabins at Fish Lake Remount Station, which was a stop along a packtrail across the Cascades.

During the summer, it’s an interpretive site. Which inspired me to do an interpretive dance about fish and to wonder if they were hiring.

Parking is about a mile from the cabin and you have to bring your own potable water, which necessitates backpacks and sleds. Or, as they’re called when you’re dragging them over pine needles where you expected there to be snow, sledges.

Snow or no, it was cold and quiet.

In other words, perfect.

{ 1 comment }

Kayso, in my glee at downsizing, I had decided to not do a tree like this Ghost of Christmas Past version:

I sort of like the idea of having a tree. I was just going to skip so many lights. And the houses under the tree. And the fence around the tree unders that my dad made umpty-ten years ago. And most of the ornaments. And the falling needles. And hauling through the front door.

I hadn’t quite worked out what that left, tree-wise, when DF came home. Girlfriend wanted a tree. Of course she did. Nineteen isn’t quite so much into downsizing as 54 is.

I told her to knock herself out finding a tree. And, one day, I came home to this:

Is that not the cutest little perpetually green tree you’ve ever seen? And all the ornaments I didn’t dispose of fit perfectly on it. It also has the endearing quality of being pre-lit, which means that I never again have to struggle with those endless strings of lights, only to find out that, once again, I’m two strings short of a fully lit tree.

Some people have a star on top of their tree. We have a toilet paper tube reindeer, which I’m sure you’d like a closer look at.

Dancing Fairy made Rudolph in kindergarten. Or preschool. I don’t remember which. She used to wince when I got him out of the box and slipped him over the top of the tree, but even he was in place, gazing goggle-eyed at the splendor of a downsized Christmas.

As are we all.

{ 3 comments }

Yesterday was Dancing Fairy’s nineteenth birthday. The last of the ‘teen’ years.

She came home for winter break on the 8th of December and we’ve been cheek by jowl in the apartment ever since. It’s been interesting, because 1100 SF isn’t that much space, especially when it also includes a very needy vizsla and a cat who’s hellbent on expelling hairballs at every opportunity.

But I’m delighted to have her here. I’m really enjoying her company–and also the opportunity to call her up when she’s away and ask, ‘Where’s the…?” and also, “Did you remember to…?” because I haven’t been able to do that for several months.

Mostly, I’m really proud of her. The transition to college has been really smooth for her, she’s enjoying the heck out of the experience and doing well in her classes. She’s definitely matured, and, as I always have, I enjoy her company.

I’m a lucky, lucky woman for many reasons. Dancing Fairy is one of them.

{ 1 comment }

We waited all weekend to skydive, but the clouds never lifted enough. Monday, though, was spectacular.

Having seen my new canopy up close and personal, you’ll recognize it in the sky.

This picture illustrates why skydiving is not a spectator sport. Half of Hoffman Bros. was standing on the ground, having landed before me, picked up his camera, taken it out of the case, turned it on, pointed it at me, and focused by the time I descended to about 400 feet. (He flies much faster than me for a million reasons related to the difference between my 200 jumps and his 8,000.)

We exited the plane at 13,000 feet, so only the last 3% of a skydive has any spectating potential.

But let’s continue. One of the many things I love about my Christmas present is that it does what I want it to when I want it to do it. My intention was to land due west of him, and I’m only off by about 20 degrees. Ish.

Thinking about putting the brakes on at about rooftop height…

In half-brakes about six feet above the ground…

Full stop 2-3 feet off..

And touchdown.

Nice, huh?

We could stop right there. But let’s just check out the next frames, shall we? Because, sometimes, I develop legular amnesia during canopy flight. This is a self-limited condition in which I forget that I have any appendages below the hips. And then this happens.

I’ve figured out a fix for legular amnesia. During the last few seconds, right before landing, I kick my feet a little bit. Just enough to remind my brain that they exist. Then my legs work and I stand up or gently run out the landing.

I forgot to kick my legs this time. Which allows you to see that even dorks can downsize.

{ 0 comments }

Then half of Hoffman Bros. taught me how to put my new canopy into my rig. This isn’t particularly difficult, but you want to pay close attention to making sure the lines go to the right places.

Along the way, a time or two, half of Hoffman Bros. said, matter-of-factly, something like, “If you’d like to leave your (insert name of something parachute-y here) like that, you sure can. But most people prefer it (insert a description of the correct way here).” He totally cracked me up.

But I eventually got it hooked up correctly and ready to be packed.

My old canopy has about 1000 jumps on it. Maybe a few more. The fabric was limp. If I folded it, it stayed folded. The lines were a little grimy.

My new parachute is so clean. The lines are bright white and the fabric is a little crisp and pretty slippery. It is a thing of beauty.

And a little more challenging to pack. Halfway through, I shed about three layers of insulation. Take a look in the previous picture at the size of the thing; it has to fit into a bag that’s about 12 inches wide and 8 inches deep. That requires using your body to get the air out, like so:

And then so:

Then once it’s flat and narrow, you have to very quickly fold it in a particular way, keeping one knee on it, and slip it into the bag. I say ’slip,’ but what I really mean is ‘wrestle one corner in and try like aitch ee double hockey sticks  to pull the bag around the other corner before the whole thing explodes.’

It’s a pretty physical activity…

…that involves squeezing the bag between your knees and jamming the tail of the parachute deep inside.

And, actually, the way this first packing job went was that I ‘packed’ it, meaning I got most of the fabric into the bag, then I unpacked it and half of Hoffman Bros. packed it for real, then he unpacked it and gave me two excellent tips about how to control the fabric right before I get up off it, then I packed it myself.

Then, a few days later, I unpacked it and packed it again, just to practice.

{ 6 comments }

In skydiving, ‘downsizing’ means flying a smaller canopy. Downsizing is sort of a scary thing for a not-quite-so-newbie like myself, because smaller canopies fly faster and turn more quickly–and there are a whole lot of bad things that can happen if you downsize to a canopy that you don’t have the skills to fly.

The canopy I’ve been flying since I got my license is 150 square feet, which is about .85 pounds of me plus gear per square foot of canopy. Just for reference, really, really good canopy pilots with thousands of jumps load their parachutes at around 2-2.5 pounds of them per square foot of canopy.

A while ago, half of Hoffman Bros. brought up the subject of downsizing. To which I said, “No, I think I’ll fly my 150 for a long time.” There was nothing awful about my parachute, although it did take me a loooonnnnngggg time to get down to the ground. Oh, and it turned kind of slowly. And I could rarely land it exactly where I wanted to.

Half of Hoffman Bros. didn’t disagree with me. But he called a friend of his in Southern Oregon, who had a 135 square foot canopy she isn’t using. He made arrangements for her to ship it to his house. Then he encouraged me to put it in my harness and just try it. This is about .93 pounds of me plus gear per square foot. Plus, it’s a different design, so it has different flight characteristics.

I was pretty nervous. I was sure hoping it wasn’t more canopy than I could fly.

Oh. My. Word. It turned briskly and flew more quickly. While I was still the last person down on the ground from the load,  I got there more quickly, and the accuracy of my landings bumped up immediately. (This is because the vagaries of wind have less effect if a canopy is carrying more weight.)

I realized that my 150 was just a way to get down to the ground after freefall. But the 135 was SO MUCH FUNAfter the second time I flew it, I told half of Hoffman Bros. that I didn’t ever want to jump my 150 again.

I loved flying that 135! I started thinking about buying my own smaller canopy. And a new harness, but that’s another story.

Then, one day, a couple of weeks ago, half of Hoffman Bros. told me that he’d found a used 135 Sabre (the name of the specific parachute) with 200 jumps on it, and he wanted to give it to me for Christmas. He wanted it to be a surprise, but, more than that, he wanted to make sure it was something I wanted.

Um, yes, please!

(I said that like it was instant. It wasn’t. This is a very generous gift. And it took me a day or two to really let it in. There was a lot of breathing along the way.)

So, last week, I received this picture by email:

Those are the feet of half of Hoffman Bros., risking life and limb to take a picture of my new canopy.

Isn’t it pretty?

{ 2 comments }

Buster went to adventure camp this past weekend. This is the second time he’s gone there. His most favorite adventure camp is with Aunt Amy and Kira, because that involves LOTS of snuggling. But this is his second favorite place.

It’s a cage-free boarding facility in an undisclosed location (to prevent dog abandonment), and they pick up the dogs at two locations in Portland and take them out there, to romp around on acres of land. Witness romping:

[Note: I send double rations with Mr. Ribs.]

Then they drive them home again on the bus. Witness homecoming:

Sam, the bus driver, gets off and says hello. Then he gets your dog.

Who is, after three days of romping, completely relaxed and nonchalant about coming home.

Leading to the required practice of dogjitsu to avoid full body contact.

{ 4 comments }