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65 Questions You Aren't Used To

1. Do you ever doubt the existence of others than you?

2. On a scale of 1-5, how afraid of the dark are you?

3. The person you would never want to meet?

4. What is your favorite word?

5. If you were a type of tree, what would you be?

6. When you looked in the mirror this morning what was the first thing you thought?

7. What shirt are you wearing?

8. What do you label yourself as?

9. Bright room or dark room?

10. What were you doing at midnight last night?

11. Favorite age you’ve been so far?

12. Who told you they loved you last?

13. Your worst enemy?

14. What is your current desktop picture?

15. Do you like someone?

16. The last song you listened to?

17. You can press a button that will make any one person explode. Who would you blow up?

18. Who would you really like to just punch in the face?

19. If anyone could be your slave for a day, who would it be and what would they have to do?

20. What is your best physical attribute? (showing said attribute is optional)

21. If you were the opposite sex for one day, what would you look like and what would you do?

22. Do you have a secret talent? If yes, what is it?

23. What is one unique thing you’re afraid of?

24. You can only have one kind of sandwich. Every sandwich ingredient known to humankind is at your disposal.

25. You just found $100! How are you going to spend it?

26. You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere in the world, but you have to leave immediately. Where are you going to go?

27. An angel appears out of Heaven and offers you a lifetime supply of the alcoholic beverage of your choice. “Be brand-specific” it says. Man! What are you gonna say about that? Even if you don’t drink booze there’s something you can figure out… so what’s it gonna be?

28. You discover a beautiful island upon which you may build your own society. You make the rules. What is the first rule you put into place? 

29. What is your favorite expletive?

30. Your house is on fire, holy shit! You have just enough time to run in there and grab ONE inanimate object. Don’t worry, your loved ones and pets have already made it out safely. So what’s the one thing you’re going to save from that blazing inferno?

31. You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be?

32. You got kicked out of the country for being a time-traveling heathen who sleeps with celebrities and has super-powers. But check out this cool shit… you can move to anywhere else in the world!

33. The Celestial Gates Of Beyond have opened, much to your surprise because you didn’t think such a thing existed. Death appears. As it turns out, Death is actually a pretty cool entity, and happens to be in a fantastic mood. Death offers to return the friend/family-member/person/etc. of your choice to the living world. Who will you bring back?

34. What was your last dream about?

35. Are you a good….[insert anything you’d like here]?

36. Have you ever been admitted to the hospital?

37. Have you ever built a snowman?

38. What is the color of your socks?

39. What type of music do you like?

40. Do you prefer sunrises or sunsets?

41. What is your favorite milkshake flavor?

42. What football team do you support? (I will answer in terms of American football as well as soccer)

43. Do you have any scars?

44. What do you want to be when you graduate?

45. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

46. Are you reliable?

47. If you could ask your future self one question, what would it be?

48. Do you hold grudges?

49. If you could breed two animals together to defy the laws of nature, what new animal would you create?

50. What is the most unusual conversation you’ve ever had?

51. Are you a good liar?

52. How long could you go without talking?

53. What has been you worst haircut/style?

54. Have you ever baked your own cake?

55. Can you do any accents other than your own?

56. What do you like on your toast?

57. What is the last thing you drew a picture of?

58. What would be you dream car?

59. Do you sing in the shower? Or do anything unusual in the shower? Explain.

60. Do you believe in aliens?

61. Do you often read your horoscope?

62. What is your favorite letter of the alphabet?

63. Which is cooler: dinosaurs or dragons?

64. What do you think about babies?

65. Freebie! Ask anything interesting you can think of.

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MBTI types and Chibird Phrases

ISTJ

ISFJ

INFJ

INTJ

INTP

INFP

ISFP

ISTP

ENTP

ENFP

ESFP

ESTP

ESTJ

ESFJ

ENFJ

ENTJ

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sun down. 

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wondering. 

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dusk on the prairie

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winter was too long. there should never be a gap that long between sunset storms. 

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sometimes circumstance is more powerful than your will. I ended up behind this pretty super cell because it mushroomed right at dinner time and I thought I had enough time but turns out it was moving faster than me. So, the whole, lets stay out of the thick of it this year thing worked, by accident. 

There’s so much more structure to photograph from a distance and so much less danger when not being cored on a regular basis. I think maybe this year I will actually live up to my promise to try to stay out of the worst parts. 

That means more mammatus clouds and and probably more cheesy rainbow shots. but look at that form on the last shot, that sling of cloud. nature is amazing. 

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Storms & Land Mist in the Alberta Foothills

Just a quick reminder only a couple days left to follow me on IG and enter to win a free 8x10 print (see a couple posts back for full details). 

I’m only about 2 ½ weeks behind on editing now. I love this time of year. 

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and the dark comes to you. 

this slow moving hulk ripping its way out of the bottom of the cloudbase raked slow across the prairie fields. It gave me so much time to make time lapses (follow my IG if you want to see the time lapses) and get pictures, then it went a bit insane and shrouded the world in blinding straight line winds with mini vortexes swirling everywhere as it suddenly raced towards a populated city (airdrie). I was legit concerned about this guy hurting people but it passed just south of airdrie and never did throw. Still, a majestic prairie monster giving thrills and copious hail–which somehow, again, I avoided. 

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took the day off work to head up to what could have been a tornadic storm up north and the storm didn’t pan out on so many levels. it was a hail infested monster that beat the hell out of a lot of chasers (I avoided the hail, thankfully) and had incredible straight-line winds that made visibility pretty scary at times, and it was FAST. too fast to really get good photos, or at all enjoy the experience. I should have took my escape route quicker and let it pass because it was literally tearing the environment apart and there was such complex light. I raced past all the best pictures. 

I’ll never learn I guess, that I’m not really a storm chaser so much as someone interested in the weird light and beautiful oddities that happen around storms as they pull and shape the environment. a sort of environmental portraitist. 

Turned out, I got all these just 20 minutes from home, after chasing a much smaller storm for a bit and landing in my sweet spot, sunset. 

I also killed a beautiful bird. I tried to swerve away but he went the wrong way and that was that. magic. destroyed. his unimaginably light bones a pile of mess on the gravel. I went back to make sure he died (not laying there suffering) and also to just let him know I was sorry. That’s stupid. he’s dead, but stuff like that frustrates me. 

so, the moral is remember what matters. focus yourself on the things you care about not the hullabaloo. the spectacle is always distracting you from something just a little deeper, and if the costs of business are the needless deaths of amazing flying machines you best be coming back with something precious. 

yeah. 

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the smoke mixing into sunset storms is doing weird things with color. the sky is painted and alive. 

this storm had, for about 10 mins, the best structure I’ve seen so far this year. then it fell apart into a hail throwing beast like everything this year has. but, we’ll always have that 10 mins. 

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my eyes are burned sunset red. forever. 

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first really great October sunset since I got back. almost makes the nights of sitting praying the sun will pop out under the bottom of the clouds for almost a week–it didn’t–worth it. almost. 

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made it through the hottest day ever recorded in the place I was born (or near there). no awards were given for not giving way to the burning august sun though. instead we just shuffle from smoke filled coulee to smoke filled coulee and wait, and watch, and remember when storm season was pregnant and waiting, or better years when it ran headlong into august, or well, don’t fixate on any of that and pray for a bumble to appear on some thistle or stalky gold wheat, or the swirling smoke to settle some, for just one frame. 

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if the late July forest fire smoke is good for anything, it’s good for burning red suns going down always too quickly. 

July was so good to me. so full and rich and giving. normally I crave august all year long but this year July really made some marks on me.  

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Amber July / Alberta

I’m trying to be lighter. To find that shade maybe a hint above burnt amber. several shades and minutes before sun-cutting-incarnadine leaving terror red holes in my retinas. such tiny windows of time present themselves and I have so much I want. I’m slowing down some, now. pausing to watch the roadside grasses sway. Summer to me is when the weeds, tall as men, skirt the long rolling highways leading me off somewhere new and undiscovered.  My heart sags a bit when the tractors come dragging their cutters and make the roads safer again. safer, less wild, less beautiful. 

this past week my favorite old house which recently came abandoned (and I did not enter for some reason) fell to the wrecking claw of huge machines (and now never will enter no matter what). they even hauled the rubble out before I discovered it fallen. the bottom picture is the last of the structures that remain there and while I’m always happy to find a new view in an old place, I’ll miss that house with it’s tiny round window peering out from the attic. 

slowing down. watching for more birds. praying for owls and foxes and patient hawks who won’t fly away from me. everything is flying away. summer. the sunset. the hawks and tree line dashing great owls. the grasses wave and sway in summer winds and the mosquitos threaten everything that lives and breathes. I want to take it all in but the climax of it, the crashing, halting sunsets bring it all dark just as I’m getting warmed up. but then, there’s always tomorrow. 

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because it’s the weekend and I actually took both days off, I have time for TWO posts this weekend. 

bedlam.