All the world looks up to a skydiver.

'Excuse me while kiss the sky.'

It had been about three years since I last did a real honest to goodness skydive. I had a wonderfully gifted high wire bungee/bungy jump experience when in New Zealand last year that was pretty cool, but I still missed the feeling of a longer freefall even if it didn't have quite the ground rush. So this week I decided to just pull my rig from the closet shelf, check for spiders, moths, and small families of rodents or marsupials, and head to the drop zone. Since it had been so long since the last jump I had to go through a quick recertification class, but some things in life you just don't tend to forget, especially stuff that's suppose to help save your life. The weather sucked most of the day so I sat around talking to my buddy Jason waiting for it to clear up. The jump was normal, and it felt great. Even after a good bit of an absence it felt like I hadn't left. I burned through the testing skills, opened up, and enjoyed a decent canopy ride, even though I did land slightly off the DZ due to high winds.

After packing the parachute, which will be the real test of my memory on the next jump, I headed over the the hash event. I've been out of the activity for a few months while I reevaluated a lot of stuff, but this was supposed to be a pretty big event with some out-of-towners coming in, so I decided to make it out. Tattoo is infamous for his last trail that was a shot trail that saw the pack barely making it to the end due to the numerous shots provided on trail. We met in the Westchase area and boarded the rented bus that took us to the various colorful and cultured sites in Tampa for the pub crawl. It was nice to see some old friends and I actually started to enjoy myself again, which I actually didn't expect. I got to see Mams and Shop Teacher and hear all about their three week honeymoon to Turkey, Jordan, Israel, and Egypt. The after party was at Tattoo's place and was complete with jello wrestling food, lots of great food, and plenty of remaining kegs. I ended up staying the evening since I wasn't about to drive 40 minutes so late at night after such a party evening. I'm actually thinking of getting back out to some more events sometime if time allows.

Paying income tax is voluntary, but it's mandatory that you volunteer.

Part of the process in starting with the new company with whom I am working is taking part in the organizations programs, including fund raising. Volunteers of America, Florida is a non-profit organization that provides many needed services including housing for elderly and veterans, training, and other services. Unfortunately with the severe decline of the economy, corporate and state funding has all but dried up, so fund raising activities are even more critical. The administrative side (each program does their own annual events) of our organization had set up a fund raising event at The Fox Jazz Club in Tampa. The venue had allowed us to set up a table outside and sell admission armbands for $10 (the normal cover anyway) to all of our invited guests. The staff also had been at work getting donations for the raffle and auctions and came up with great prizes such as American Idol and Cirque De Soleil tickets to spa packages and artwork. All of the money collect during the event goes directly to the program, so it was critical for the event to be a success. For the past couple of months I had been involved with various social and activity groups and worked with the organizer of one of them, Tampa Socials, to make this an official event. Overall we had a pretty good turnout of probably 70 people. Besides the general purposes of the fundraiser, I enjoyed getting an opportunity to get to better know many of the others with whom I work in the office. I ended up staying quite late in the evening just enjoying the live band, fellow patrons, and drink specials that were organized for our event. This is the first real jazz club that I've had the chance to visit outside of New Orleans and I had a great time.

http://picasaweb.google.com/mblitch/TheFoxJazzClubVOAFundraiser#

Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes, work never begun.

After about a month, I've finally gotten to finishing the blog and photography entries regarding my trip to Italy. Overall, it was a worthwhile trip and I am glad that I was able to at least experience so many things I had heard about, learned about, or thought to checking out throughout my life concerning anything in Italy. Overall it will be a good lifetime experience and hopefully it'll continue to be fuel in my interest in future travels. so if you've missed some of the entries, just search for the 'Italy' tag, or click here, in order to easily go through them. All the pictures are clickable in order to get a higher resolution shot through blogspot, however I'm now downsizing them to a size that is more easily viewable on most monitors as opposed to the previously over sized shots I had been putting up.

If anyone has questions, concerns, complaints, comments, or criticism, then I'd be very open to hearing whatever one has to say. After all, communication is always a key to happiness and is something we all can strive to improve. If anyone ever needs any information regarding travel through Italy, then feel free to ask.

Misspelled? Impossible. My GPS is error correcting!

A couple of months ago I made a trip to the Las Vegas area to accompany a once close friend on a business trip while I did some hiking in the area. A little before I left, I exchanged a few emails with someone that had posted a lot of pictures on Panoramio of the area called Devil's Fire in which I wanted to hike seeking some information. I really enjoyed the area (here is my blog entry of that hike: http://mikeblitch.blogspot.com/2009/04/i-am-not-devils-advocate-i-am-devil.html), so once I got back home I sent him the GPS tracks and links to some of the pictures I took during the long hike.

He e-mailed me recently and mentioned that he had made his own blog post of my trip back then and even made a screencast (basically a how-to video on certain subjects; in this case how to use Google Earth to view some GPS tracks) and included my trip as part of his lesson.

You can see Dr. Robert Jarrett's screen cast (and blog site) here; http://offroadinghome.blogspot.com/2009/06/getting-google-earth-50.html

He also made a general blog entry that also probably better describe my hike than the entry I made when I got back; http://offroadinghome.blogspot.com/2009/04/devils-fire-hike.html Here is the Google Earth file that was created from my trip and hosted on his site; http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/567495/submitted/Devil%27s%20fire%20hike.kml I generally don't have time to make the Google Earth files for all of my trips, and am not sure how many people would be interested anyway, but it is nice to have some unique sites available for others to check out. If you have Google Earth installed, try opening up the file listed above and check out some of the features available to users and some of the neat aspects of what can be done with the program.

One aspect that has always interested me regarding the Internet is the free sharing of ideas and information, so it is nice to have been able to get some information, give some information, and then have the combined efforts made available to any one else out there that just might be interested in learning about it as well.

If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, pound the table and yell like hell.

.... wishes his head and his heart would stop arguing with each other ... in fact would you both please SHUT UP!!!

A man attempting to walk around the world, drowned today.

I had some time before attending a business networking meeting, so took a few pics of the storm coming into Tampa and did a short walk around. I wasn't able to set up quickly enough, so missed some good lightning shots when the rain and clouds caught up to me at the port garage. The downpour was short, but torrential enough to cause water to splash out of the second story drain plugs as all the roof water came through the pipes faster than it could enter the storm system. I also took a couple of shots of distance lightning on my way home that evening, but by the time I set up the camera once again at a clearing, most of the light show had been dissipated. Pics aren't that impressive, but it was something to do at the time. I need to remember to carry my remote trigger around to prevent camera shake even on the tripod.

Falling in love is easy; climbing out is a pain

After running 7 straight miles yesterday, a personal record for a single running distance in one stint, I decided to physically punish myself a bit more by joining the Tampa Adventure Group for the monthly meetup at the Vertical Ventures indoor climbing area. It had been a long, long time since I had been here, so I really had to dig to find my old harness. Most of the participants had never been climbing, so they took the class that "showed them the ropes" regarding safety and technique. It is amazing how just an hour or so of climbing can deaden one's arms; well at least my own. After the climbs, I had to visit a few tile and flooring places so I could find the materials I needed for the remodeling project and finally purchase everything and get it loaded. I finally got everything unloaded at the house (I don't even want to think how much 580 ft^3 of tile with the accompanying cement board, thin-set bags, and grout may weigh). Guess I know what I'll be doing over the next few weeks, but it'll be nice to have a decent house available for rent once again.

Cartoons: music played in an automobile?

I hadn't been to a concert since attending a fairly grand show at the Ice Palace in December and decided to hit to Matisyahu concert at Jannus Landing. I cannot believe it had been so long since doing something like that, silly monkey I suppose. I missed seeing him preform at the Warped Tour last summer by just a short while, so I was glad to have had a chance to make up for it. He was an opening performance for the headliner, Les Claypool. A group of three of us hung out in St. Pete for a while at a friend Ryan's house for dinner before heading out to the venue. The show was pretty nice and the weather actually fairly tolerable, but even at 8 o'clock it was obvious that summer and the accompanying humidity was here to stay. I enjoyed the music as well as the mix of reggae, hip hop, and rap for which Matisyahu is known, though the sounds of Les Claypool were definitely something to which I had really been exposed too often. I suppose that happens when listening to too many podcasts and audiobooks.