There once was a guy named James Teh
Who disliked the start of the day.
He hated awaking,
Was bored by fast-breaking
And wished it would all go away.

On Saturday, for my buck's celebration, Michael (my best man) arranged for my groomsmen and me (minus Mick, who's in Melbourne) to go skydiving. I think Michael was more nervous about doing it than I was initially. That was to change a bit later. :)

I awoke at 5:35 (yuck) to get to the skydiving office by 7. Jen helped me fill in the paperwork and was horrified by some of its content, including something along the lines of "accidents can and do happen". :) Meanwhile, Matt slept in and didn't make it to the office in time, but thankfully, an arrangement was made and he was able to join us. We met our jumpmasters and were shown how to move our bodies upon exiting the plane.

Soon enough, we were harnessed and taking off in the plane with our respective jumpmasters. Even being in the plane was a bit of an experience; I've never taken off in a small plane before. I was a little nervous by this stage, but it wasn't until maybe a minute or so before the jump that I truly began to get nervous. What the hell was I doing? I was told later that Michael's jumpmaster looked back at me at one point and noted in amusement to Michael that I was starting to look rather worried. :)

Time to jump. Michael went first and then it was my turn. The wind swirling around me, my jumpmaster (Steve) at my back, I had my feet out of the plane, I got my body into what I hoped was the right formation... and then we were falling, belly first, the wind rushing by me with awesome speed. For a few seconds, I had a bit of a freak out. Holy crap! I'm falling! Belly first! Is this okay? For some reason, I hadn't imagined we would fall belly first, as the formation is taught upright. It makes sense in hindsight, but it just hadn't clicked. My technician mentality set in. Was my body in the correct formation? Am I doing this right? Moving my body in that state was so... different. My control freak mentality couldn't do anything about this either. Steve corrected my arms a bit and then I relaxed slightly. Wow! Incredible! The wind rushed by; it was pretty much impossible to talk, though Steve managed it somehow. Unfortunately, my ears didn't like free-fall so much. Eventually, Steve deployed the parachute. We were jerked upright and then...

All was calm and still. My legs were dangling in mid air! Wow... again! But there were even bigger wows to come. After a bit of floating, Steve turned the parachute... and then we were soaring through the air. This was probably the most amazing, elating part for me, this feeling of literally flying as the wind rushed around me and then coming to a graceful stop. The fall was exhilarating, but this was incredible in a different way. Steve let me have a go at steering the parachute, which was pretty cool.

Too soon, it was time to land gently on the beach. Throughout the day, I kept wishing I could do it again. We spent most of the rest of the day (about 12 hours!) celebrating in more traditional ways. :)

The next day, Michael called to tell me of a headline in The day's Sydney Morning Herald: Skydiver dead after 13th jump. Nice. Later reflection led me to think about how it would have been if things hadn't gone so well, particularly thinking about that feeling of free-fall. <shudder> Jumping out of a plane really is pretty insane. Funny that I didn't think about that so much before. I've been thinking about the experience quite a lot in the past 24 hours, both in wonder and a bit of trepidation. I think I'd still probably do it again... probably... :)

It was certainly an extremely memorable experience and I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to do it. Thanks guys!

So Jen left yesterday afternoon for two weeks to attend the International Kodály Symposium in Poland. This is the first time I've had to survive entirely by myself for longer than a few days without some pre-cooked meals. It's been less than a day and I've already made several blunders...

I was going to cook chilli basil chicken, but due to the meat not thawing enough and after procrastinating until about 8:30pm, I decided that crumbed steak, chips and veggies would be a better idea. Of course, the crumbed steak was frozen too, but I figured that wouldn't be so bad to defrost in the microwave. Frustratingly, it refused to defrost nicely (as is far too often the case), but I finally got it to a point which was sufficient. I then rubbed some oil on the electric grill and managed to spill a decent glob of it in the sink. Bah - a bit of a pain to wash down, but no harm done. I whacked the steak on the electric grill. So far, mostly good. I probably left it to cook a bit long, but it seemed to be okay when I took it out.

As I was eating, I noticed that the breadcrumbs on the steak tasted pretty crappy due to being rather soggy. That happens sometimes, I guess, so I peeled them off. But it still tasted like soggy breadcrumbs! It was only then that I looked more closely and realised that the sogginess was between... the two pieces of crumbed steak. FAIL!

Thankfully, I'd cooked it (them?) long enough that the meat was fine. They're not that thick, so the thickness hadn't seemed odd to me. However, I didn't even *think* to check that their might have been two pieces and not one in the plastic bag. I suspect they had partially frozen together, but nevertheless... idiot!

(By the way, it's highly likely that Jen told me there were two pieces in the one bag, but I don't remember.)

I'm sure there'll be more foolishness like this in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!

So we're in the process of finalising the purchase of our house, which is all very exciting. However, the administrivia is quite the opposite, as illustrated in the following series of events:

1. A few weeks ago: Our mortgage broker sent our First Home Owners grant documents to St George, our bank. Our mortgage broker then called to confirm that they had been received.
2. A couple of weeks ago: I called NRMA (our insurance company) to ask them to raise the building insurance amount to the amount specified by the bank. (My original figure was obviously an underestimate.) They told me that this was all done, no worries.
3. Early last week: Jen sent the insurance documents to St George. She also emailed our solicitor with a request to settle a few days earlier.
4. Last Friday: No contact yet from our solicitor, so I called his office to confirm that the request was received and actioned. He's not in the office; apparently, he'll call me back on Monday morning.
5. Monday afternoon: No call from our solicitor. I called him late afternoon. I noted that he mustn't be receiving our calls and emails. He noteably neglects to mention the email, but was surprised about the call on Friday. He told me that St George apparently haven't received our insurance documents (see 1), nor our First Home Owners Grant documents (see 3).
6. Tuesday: Jen had to drive to visit our mortgage broker to sign new First Home Owners Grant documents.
7. Wednesday morning: Jen called NRMA to ask them to fax our updated insurance documents to St George. She discovered that apparently, our record states the old insurance amount instead of the updated amount (see 2). Our solicitor called me to tell me that the received fax was missing some information. Jen subsequently called NRMA and they said that the information was correct in the records but that the fax was somehow incorrectly generated.

All is now finally sorted, but.... aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrggggg!

Jen and I noticed a fascinating glitch in the laws of probability recently. If we are eating something containing pitted olives - home made pizza, for example - I end up with all of the olives which mistakenly contain pits, while Jen encounters none. We're not just talking one, here. It's usually at least three or four. This has happened a few times now. To prove the point even more, after happily enjoying pizza free of olive pits (while laughing at my somewhat less peaceful pizza experience), Jen gave hungry me a piece of her pizza... and guess what I found when I ate it? Yup... more olive pits. I guess a more logical explanation might be that Jen is consciously or unconsciously doing this...

Actually, this title is rather unsuitable. If I am the lord of olive pits, surely I could convince them to cower and run away or something...

I slept terribly last night. How unusual. Anyway, I felt pretty awful and as a result, the following conversation ensued between Jen and I:

Jamie: "<sighs heavily> I feel like a dried out turd."
Jen: "Well I'm sorry, but we only have toast."

It made my morning seem so much more bearable. :)