To celebrate my 4.0 for the semester, here's Photo Dump #2: 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06.

Officially done with the semester now. There's a lot going on, including something that involves this, but a full explanation will have to wait.

Just got back from Home Depot, where a handwritten sign by the entrance extolled the wonders of "ARTIFICAL CHRISMAS TREES." I'm not sure which is worse: that someone managed to misspell two of the three words on the sign (one of them is "Christmas," for fuck's sake), or that it bothered me so much that I told the greeter lady, who, after going outside to see the evidence herself, promised to have the sign remade. It's a close call, I think.

I found this shirt before this incident, but it seems appropriate now.

It's a bit late for it, yes, but I went back and resized, color-balanced, and reuploaded the pictures in the post below. I'm basically just a girl taking pictures of her feet, like Charlotte said in Lost in Translation, but it feels satisfying anyway. I've lost all the reservations I had about purchasing the camera.

In tattoo news, it's been one week since T-Day and I'm still quite happy with the design. I'm still lotioning it about 4-5 times a day as suggested and about half of the old skin has flaked off, revealing the shiny new inked skin underneath. I hope it looks alright in the end. Billy offered us free touch-ups in case anything went wrong, so worse comes to worst it can always be... well, touched up.

I have a few employment opportunities opening up for me soon, some small and some major, but that's all I'm going to say about them for now. That, and the fact I'm excited.

On a somber note, Matt's mother was supposed to come tomorrow to visit for several days, but had to have her appendix removed on Sunday. I'm sad we won't be able to see her, but very grateful it wasn't something even more serious.

I'm prolific today. Photo Dump #1: 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06.

Here's something else that might be worth sharing, though. In order to cut the number of clicks needed to visit my favorite bookmarked sites down from two to one, I slapped together this start page for IE. I also inserted all the search functions of handy sites like eBay and Google, and remarkably they all work without a hitch. (IE gives an active content alert each time the page is opened, alas, but it can be ignored without complication.) I figured I'd put this here in the chance anyone else found it, or even the idea behind it, useful. So that it loads quickly, though, I'd suggest one downloads the page to his HD, makes any applicable changes (like the links to LiveJournal and any other ones desired), and loads it locally.

This quote is worth its own post. From Martin Gardner, in his Foreword to Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion, & Morality: "How many conservatives, who talk constantly about restoring America's Christian heritage, have you heard mention that Washington, John Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, and most of the other founding fathers, as well as Lincoln, were not Christians? It was Washington who insisted that no reference to God appear in the Constitution. "The government of the United States," he declared, "is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion." Jefferson produced a life of Jesus (still in print) from which he removed all the miracles to let the heart of Jesus' teachings shine forth. Not one of the first seven presidents professed the Christian faith."

As an aside, there is an Editorial Assistant position opening up next semester at the Red and Black. I have an interview Friday morning and so help me God, I am going to get this job.

The Tattoo Post, as promised yesterday. I'd say my turnaround time is getting much better.

Charlie and I met up after class around 5 o'clock and went downtown to Pain and Wonder, past a townie playing his guitar on a bench. Except for a girl who had just arrived before us, there were no other customers. We gave Billy, the artist, copies of the designs we wanted and worked out the specifics, then decided to get dinner and have a few shots to relax. I left my bag as collateral but took my camera in case dinner needed to be documented. En route to a restaurant we were stopped on the street by a homeless woman who couldn't speak and she gestured for my camera. Curious, I gave it to her and she took this picture of us for a few dollars of Charlie's (as usual I had no cash in my wallet-- sorry Charlie). We ducked into Roly Poly, completely empty except for us, and had some wraps. We had a brief problem finding napkins, which were ultimately stored in some sort of upright plastic dispensing monstrosity called, naturally, EasyNap. Afterwards we debated and decided against drinking, and walked back to P&W, now completely empty as well.

Charlie elected to go first and filled out some paperwork while Billy set up her station. It was an open, bathroom-sized room filled with what I guess are the typical freaky goth details-- plastic skulls, religious relics, Frankenstein figures, violent-looking paintings, etc.-- but also some snapshots of pets and a few yellowing pictures of Danny Glover that had been cut out of newspapers and decorated with little black hearts. When she was ready she called us in and put a carbon copy she'd made of Charlie's design on his back to finalize the placement. Here are Billy and Charlie with said copy in place. Then it was time to begin! I took pictures and we all talked while she worked. Billy is a sucker for cats, and talked about all the different stray cats she's rescued, as well as her mean Scorpio girlfriend whose handle is Sweat Hog. She also told us stories of some of the more ridiculous people who've come into the shop: a tough guy she berated for being unable to handle getting the initials on his forearm colored, a snotty girl who made a fuss over getting what Billy called "a pink freckle" on her ankle, and the throngs of girls coming in these days-- around 15 a week, she says-- to get tattoos of stars. Not stars with any sort of special significance, she pointed out; just... stars. An hour passed alarmingly quickly (for me at least) and then suddenly Charlie was done! Billy bandaged him up, went through the aftercare procedure and told us to give her a few minutes while she broke down the equipment and got ready for me.

Now that it was my turn I started to get a little anxious-- not over the tattooing itself, exactly, but other the minute possibility that I would freak out when it started. I knew this was silly even when it was happening, but nevertheless we went down the block, past the townie still playing his guitar, to a small bar named Room 13. Like Roly Poly it was completely empty. Some 80's movie was playing on a huge TV over the bar while we asked for something fruity and vodka-based. The bartender made us two shots of vodka and orange, cranberry and pineapple juices. They were surprisingly good, so we had two more. We left a good tip since he only charged us $8, then went back to P&W.

I filled out my paperwork and we followed Billy back to her station. She put the design copy on my shoulder, I gave Charlie the camera, and then it was time to start. The sensation was simply like a vibrating knife tip, about what I had expected, and nowhere near as bad as other things I've undergone in hospitals, a fact that probably helped as well. Here is the midpoint (the blue is the carbon copy). It was done in around half an hour, and after Billy bandaged me and went through the aftercare again, we were ready to go. We went by my job to show the pictures to my coworkers, the condition they'd stipulated in return for me taking the night off, and then headed home. Here's a picture of the final version once I'd washed it.

If this morning's swelling is any indication I have a good week of peeling and scabbing ahead of me, but I don't care in the least. I love the design and the entire process was even more fun than I'd imagined. As the Ouroboros has ties to the sun, and a reversed Eye of Horus symbolizes the moon, I think I already have a good candidate for a tattoo on my other shoulder. I can see how this could get addictive.