Because of my essentially reclusive and misanthropic ways I am not much of a joiner both online or off, but I recently joined a pool on flickr called 3 sixty 5 that basically challenges its members to post a single photo every single day for a year. The year started today, September 1st, so there's one down, 364 photos to go. This group appealed to me the same way that 100 steps challenge appealed to me, which was to force myself to stop and look at things and not be in such a rush all the time. It's not much of a challenge to take pictures I guess, but it will be challenging for me to find new things to look at, in that I really don't go anywhere particularly photogenic day to day-- my Monday through Friday existence is basically walking from my home to the train to work and then reverse order again. But who knows, we are moving to a new neighborhood, maybe there will be all manner of exotic fauna to look at there.
Speaking of which, on a completely unrelated topic, on my way to work this morning I passed by a gigantic dead possum in the road. I think it was a possum. OK, tell me if this was a possum: it kind of looked like a big raccoon, but it was greyish (I think, it was dark) with kind of a pointy snout, and it had that kind of thin, bald rat tail. It was truly horrifying, and lying in the middle of the road down this semi-side street/dark alleyway that I walk through at 5:45am to get to work because clearly I want to die. Seriously though, I don't much get worried about being mugged walking down the street, but walking by that dead possum (opossum? Not really dead, just playing possum?) I was honestly freaking out that the thing was going to jump up and start chasing me around as I passed. Because that tail is disgusting.
Above, my submission for 3 sixty 5 today. (It is a drain pipe on the curb outside my building.) Below, some other photos that didn't make the cut. It is tempting to save them to post another day, but I think the spirit of the thing is actually to post new pictures every day. They are, in order, 1.) the Georgia Tech shuttle waiting outside the subway station, 2.) the leaf-strewn hood of a pickup truck on my block, and 3.) some vines spilling over the fence lining Dead Possum Alley. (The possum carcass had thankfully been cleared away by the time I walked home.)
