Foolish gibberish
Once upon a time I met a really cute skateboarder. I fell in love with him  the moment I met him. I fell in love with the way the skin around his eyes would wrinkle when he smiled. I fell in love with the sparkle in his eyes.  I knew on that night that I would marry him someday.
5 years later we were married. And now we have stayed married for 17 years. He is my best friend and favorite person.  And I still love that smile.
Happy anniversary, my love.
I scheduled this to post while I was in Spokane for my mom’s wedding and then forgot to reblog it. So here is some blog fodder.
Since I was going to Amsterdam for WPPD, I brought a pinhole camera. Specifically, my Zero 2000. I have written about this day several times in a few different places. You can read about the day on both Pinhole Obscura and Blatherskite, if you wish. In short: it was a fabulous day. One of the best. A day to remember!
I shot two rolls of film over the course of our vacation in this camera and here are my favorites. One of them is a shot of me pinholing myself drawing a picture of my pinhole camera for a stencil at the Rembrandt House museum. That was kind of an epic Amsterdam moment. You can read about it here. Also, I had the honor of being interviewed by Alex  Yates for the Pinhole Podcast while shooting the hot dog stand photo. You can hear me nerd out about…
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Here is my latest post on 52 rolls. Happy Friday!
It seems we are on an Olympus XA roll on 52 rolls! So I will continue the trend. 🙂
Inge mentioned in her Week 10 post that she picked up an XA for me at “Analogue Heaven.” Well, she delivered it to me in person when we visited her in Rotterdam! AND It was loaded up with some Afga Precisa slide film! I immediately started playing with it that day and used it during  our trip in Amsterdam.
I have completely fallen in love with this little camera. It’s the perfect size to carry around with me and have on hand at all times. You’ll probably see much more of it this year!
The two rolls that I took in Amsterdam and Rotterdam were Afga (as I mentioned) and Tri-x. The Tri-x was developed at home in Diafine.
If you want to read more about my trip you can do so…
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I have decided to go through a Jukai ceremony. Otherwise known as “taking the precepts.” Otherwise known as (according to Wikipedia) the Buddhist Initiation ritual.
One person asked if this was like a “come to Jesus” thing. No it isn’t anything like a “come to  Jesus” thing. Not even close. I have had one of those experiences, too, and it was way more exiting (to be honest).  However, here I am doing a ritual in which I declare that I am now Buddhist. I guess that should tell you everything you need to know about my “come to Jesus” experience.
I didn’t really realize I was going to go through with this until last week. It kind of suddenly hit me that this was something that I need to do. This is the next step. I have been practicing Buddhism for 4 years and I really feel like I need to make a real committment to it.
So what does this mean? It just means that I am declaring to a bunch of people that I am Buddhist. That is it. And I’m not even Zen Buddhist (Declaring yourself a Zen Buddhist is a whole other ritual, apparently). Â In the ritual you declare that you are going to live your life by following the Buddhist precepts – a code of ethics.
I feel like I could write so much more about this but I think I will save my thoughts for future blog posts. Let’s just leave it at this for now. I think it is enough.
I am excited. Like I said, I feel like this is the direction I need to go. It feels good to go in the direction your heart is telling you to take.
Our time in Amsterdam was unforgettable for many reasons.  But I think the thing that will stick with me the most about this vacation was the experience of meeting my internet friends in person.  We come from far-reaching corners of the world and it was really incredible that we somehow were able to make this meet-up happen. And it seemed so effortless! I have known some of these friends for longer than others but the friendship that has grown with each of them individually via Twitter, Flickr, & Facebook means something to me. However, one can only know a person so well online. I think in general I had a sense that they are all good people – that I think a person can figure out pretty quickly online. But there is something missing about the person you get to know online. Meeting these wonderful people in person filled in those missing blanks. Kind of like coloring in a comic or something.  Or maybe even animating it and bringing it to life. It’s nice.
In short: I highly recommend meeting your internet friends in person, even if you have to travel thousands of miles to do it. It’s worth it!
Amsterdam was incredible too. I didn’t fall in love with the city like I did with Paris, but I really really like it a lot. I think about it a lot and I want to go back and experience more of it.
Finally, here is a video that I made about our trip. Amsterdam in 48 seconds:
Blatherskite 