This Title is Not Relevant to the Story

Yesterday I was talking to MikeWJ and bitching about my lack of inspiration for blog posts.

MikeWJ: Write about something serious and personal.
Ziva: I hate serious and personal.
MikeWJ: Okay, so write about something not serious and not personal. 
Ziva: Like what?
MikeWJ: Write about the time you fell in love.

And so, I did.

It was a beautiful spring day. It could also have been fall, or winter, or even summer, I can’t really remember, but it’s not important to the story anyway, so just go with it.

It was a beautiful spring/fall/winter/summer day. Of course, since I can’t even remember what time of year it was, I can’t really say for sure that it was a beautiful day. It could very well have been raining small popular mammals or snowing or even just been overcast and dull. Finnish weather isn’t very predictable and I can’t really be expected to remember what the weather was like that beautiful spring day. Let’s just get on with the story.

Small popular mammal.

It was a beautiful/rainy/overcast/gray/snowy spring/fall/winter/summer day. Come to think of it, it probably wasn’t even day, what with the time zones and all. It was probably in the middle of the night and I should have been in bed hours ago and I probably had to work the next day and I probably spent all day at work yawning like the proverbial sloth that ran the marathon. What was that? That’s not a common saying? Well it should be. Anyway, what I was saying is that I was probably very tired, and spent all of the next day yawning, and then I probably took a nap after work, which shifted my internal clock forward to make me more internet-adapted, but at the same time making me less work-adapted and less Finland-adapted, which eventually resulted in the permanent black circles I have under my eyes now as a result of living on four hours of sleep every night.

Back to the story.

It was a beautiful/rainy/overcast/gray/snowy spring/fall/winter/summer day/night/evening/morning. You know, it probably didn’t even happen in one day or night at all. Now that I think about it, it happened over time, slowly but surely, like the sun slowly growing and expanding until it eventually kills everything on this planet in a raging inferno of fire and brimstone, souls screaming in agony and babies crying for their mommy, but less gruesome and more sweet.

I think it’s best if we just start over completely, don’t you think?

The first time she commented on my blog, I thought she was a man. She spelled her name weirdly, like a man, and she grabbed her balls a lot, too. Or so I thought, but as it turned out, she didn’t have any balls so I guess she mostly just grabbed her man’s balls. Or maybe she didn’t grab any balls at all and that’s something I made up just now. I really don’t know, I’m writing this at work and I think my brain is still asleep because I stayed up too late reading her blog again.

 Magic 8-ball, shown here with small popular mammal. Not relevant to the story.

I’m really not doing the story justice.

I have a crush on Nicky, okay??

And she wrote me a poem in her sleep, so I’m pretty sure she likes me, too. *

This Title is Not Relevant to the Story

Thirty Days of Photographs: The Rejects

I bet you thought this would be over by now. If you did, you’d be 100 percent right. Yesterday was my first day as a free woman in a month, and boy did it feel good. This project has been a lot of fun for me, and it’s really helped me look at the world differently, from an artist’s point of view. I’ve taken some really good pictures, some really bad pictures, some really strange pictures, and a whole lot of really mediocre pictures. But it was also very challenging to try to keep up with the pace of one picture every day, and some days I cut it extremely close to the deadline.

Anyway, I'd like to thank you, Michael, for agreeing to share this project with me, and for kicking my ass every day with your fantastic photos, making me want to become a better photographer. Let me know when you feel like going for round two. And thank you, my dear readers, for not groaning out loud when you realized this thing would go on for thirty freaking days. Well, thirty-one, as it turns out. Because today I’m going to post some of the pictures that I took this past month and that didn’t make the cut the first time around.

These were the last ones, I promise. *

Thirty Days of Photographs: The Rejects

Thirty Days of Photographs: God

God. Allah. Yahweh. El Shaddai. Deus. Gandalf. God has about as many names as P. Diddy, and is known in one form or other by literally dozens of people. When I was little I was sure that God was an old man with a long white beard, living in the clouds. And even though I'd like to think I know better now, I can't help but wonder if this is where God takes his vacation. It looks like a pretty laid back cloud, after all. *

Thirty Days of Photographs: God

Thirty Days of Photographs: Night

I live within spitting distance of the polar circle. This means that our summer nights last for about 30 seconds and never really get dark. But the sun does set, and sometimes you’re lucky enough to catch a sunset that sets the sky on fire.

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Thirty Days of Photographs: Night

Thirty Days of Photographs: Weather

I’ve spent the last couple of days hoping for some extreme weather for this shot, but we’ve had a suspicious lack of weather lately. 70 degrees and cloudy. Every day. Yesterday we were supposed to get some rain and thunder, but it was 70 degrees and overcast, and not even a pretty kind of overcast, just boring overcast.

This picture is from a few weeks ago when the weather gods actually delivered on their promises and gave us rain and thunder. Muschu and I were sitting on the beach, I was taking her picture when the wind suddenly picked up and we heard thunder. In the far distance we could see the rain, and I forgot all about taking Muschu’s picture and instead tried to capture the ominous-looking cloud on film.

Edited 7:15 pm: 15 minutes after posting this, it's now raining. *

Thirty Days of Photographs: Weather

Thirty Days of Photographs: Two

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Thirty Days of Photographs: Two