When the needle pierces flesh... ::sigh::
Jun. 3rd, 2002 08:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osarabaSo yesterday Angelica finally got her tattoo. Of course, "Saturday night, 7 pm" changed to "Sunday night, 7 pm" changed to "Sunday night, 5 pm" changed to – with 3 hours notice "Sunday night, 3 pm." I don’t know why I was surprised. By all rights, I really shouldn’t have been.
But in any case, her "takai ran" (expensive orchid) turned out very nicely. It’s quite a bit smaller than mine – 3 kanji to my 5, and about half the size. She also had hers done on the outside of her left ankle. Well, I got to her house at 4 and Chris had been preparing for Angelica’s mom’s tattoo. She was getting a small fairy and a few butterflies added to her existing rose & vine tattoo on her ankle. The fairy and the butterflies were drawn courtesy of Liz. Isn’t that kakkoii? That my sister will have her artwork immortalized forever on the ankle of Angelica’s mom? In any case, Chris started doing the tattoo and apparently, it was hurting a bit, so Lisa (that’s Angelica’s mom) flinched a little. So Angelica got a little upset ‘cause she expected her to… take it without flinching, I guess. When it was done it looked so kawaii!
Next was Angelica’s turn. I got to trace out the kanji onto the carbon for transfer to Angelica’s ankle, so in addition to it being me who paid for the tattoo, it was me who traced it out for Chris. ::rubs hands together:: It’s so pleasing to be able to leave your mark on someone; I can totally sympathize with Koji’s insane claim-staking. (Not that I couldn’t before, mind, just that it’s even easier now. ^_~) So then Chris started on her. By this time it was about 5:30, I think. Poor Angelica. It really hurt her. Which didn’t surprise me as much as when Lisa said it hurt ‘cause Angelica has like, no tolerance for pain, and thin skin to boot, but Lisa has a higher tolerance for pain like I do. But I really didn’t think it hurt all that much when I got mine done. I mean, it hurt a little, but… not enough to flinch, not enough to really bother me.
Angelica’s tattoo took about 15 minutes, I think. It certainly wasn’t too much longer, if at all. I was really surprised. I mean, I knew hers was half the size of mine, but for some reason I just didn’t follow that thought through into the amount of time it would take to complete. So I was kind of surprised... and then I (mentally) hit myself upside the head and thought, "of course!"
Then Joe (Angelica’s stepfather) got his tattoo touched up (his skin apparently doesn’t take the ink too well) and got a really small dove added to it. The dove in one of the books was perfect but too big, so Liz copied it free-hand onto a piece of paper and made it smaller, then I traced it over for Chris. So Liz’s artwork is now immortalized on both Lisa and Joe. It’s too funny. I asked her later if she wanted to get a tattoo and she kinda shrugged and said yeah. So I said, "You don’t have to get one, you know, if you don’t want to." And she said, "I do, but I don’t know what." Then I said that she should take her time and work on her artistic ability and then come up with something completely original for her own tattoo. That would be so cool – to have your own artwork on display on your skin, permanently.
Oh, and Chris has a digital camera with which he takes photos of the finished tattoo and prints them out and puts them into a binder he carries with him. Last time, we got to see Lisa’s rose & vine tattoo in the book (the rose was done by someone else, I think, but the vine was added about a year ago by Chris), but this time my tattoo was in the book, so I took the opportunity to scan the photo and save it to disk on Angelica’s computer. So, even though I still haven’t found my stupid camera, I can still upload a photo of my tattoo – just after it was done! Yay!
shinigami no koibito TAT
At one point Chris said something about tattoos being like potato chips (how you can’t have just one), but Angelica completely shook her head… when I asked her, she said she’d always thought of getting just one and being satisfied with that. That, along with how much it obviously hurt her, I tend to think she probably won’t get any more, unless there’s something that really catches her eye – but I think it’d have to be something really amazing. But when I heard what Chris said, I found myself nodding eagerly and practically holding myself back from leaping into the chair and saying "Do me! Now!" or something like that. o.O*
I know for sure that I want to get another one – I’ve always admired tats – and I’ve long-since decided on the body parts I’d feel comfortable with having a tattoo on (ankles, back, wrists, back of neck, neck behind ears). I really like tattoos that go around the wrist, like a bracelet, although I’m not sure if I’ll ever get one because they’re not so easy to hide as the ankle and the back, and it’s a possibility that the field I work in will discriminate against things like that. So I really have to think about that sort of thing. I’ve become really captivated by large back-pieces recently, and I will probably get one in the future, when I’ve decided what I want – probably some sort of dragon, but I wouldn’t want it to be too typical, so I’m going to try and see what I can find before settling. And I know for sure that I want a faerie – not a childlike, playful one like Lisa got, but something more… something. Adult? Evil? Sensual? Knowing? I suppose a mixture of all of the above, but not to a great extent. I guess I’ll know it when I come across it. Ever since high school I’ve had this image of a faerie with her back turned toward the viewer, her hand, holding a dagger, held behind her back, and with her head turned back toward the viewer. But I don’t know if I’ll ever find someone to draw that image, so I don’t know if I’ll end up getting it. Maybe Liz can do it… eventually. Then again, maybe I'll make an exception on the childlike faerie and get the image of Usagi (from Sailor Moon) as a faerie from the last SM artbook (the Materials book). She's so adorable. And it's anime (well, manga), so how can I go wrong? I'll have to scan that one too...
In high school I knew a really great artist named Patti, and I asked her to draw me a faerie once, and she drew a pixie-like faerie, with multi-colored, almost-see-through wings, green hair tied off in pigtails at the top of her head, wearing a sort of short green tube-top that just covers her breasts and a brown sort of loin-cloth. Her hands have 4 fingers each; in one of her hands she’s holding a brown cloth bag that presumably holds pixie dust, because her other hand is splayed out, as if she had just flicked some out to her side. When I find my scanner software, I’ll have to scan it and upload it. I’m seriously considering having this drawing as a tattoo, but I have to think about it a bit more. I saw her again a few months ago – around March, I think. It turns out she moved back to NY from the college she was going to in MD, and I happened to bump into her. I got her email, so I suppose I could email her and see if she would draw me another faerie, but I think it’s sort of rude to just contact her out of nowhere and for no other reason than to ask if she’d draw me something.
The only other thing I’m considering as a tattoo right now is something by my favorite dark fantasy artist -- BROM. His stuff is really dark and beautiful and amazing and I absolutely love it. I’ve been looking through his stuff lately and trying to figure out if I can make any of his works into a tattoo that I’d find attractive.
But that second tattoo is not going to be anytime soon, anyway. First, I don’t really want to spend the money right now. I’ve certainly spent more than I had planned to already. Remember that estimate I had made about trying to save several hundred dollars per UNDP paycheck? Well, jeez, that was a complete bust! I got my first paycheck of $560 and it completely went to pay off my checking overdraft (which is sort of my credit line on my debit card)! Right now, what I have in cash will last me for food for the next two weeks, until my next Leeper paycheck, but I also have a few things that are going to have to be paid for soon and it’s going to go onto my credit line (which I hate… I’d much rather pay for stuff with money that I actually have, rather than put it on credit and then pay the credit off).
I just bought a pair of shoes from Hot Topic. They’re really cute and they were only $37, so I couldn’t resist. This is what they look like. Then there’s another auction I won on ebay which was $20 – not bad, but it still adds up. Then there’s a book I’m really considering getting that costs $30 – it’s an art book and really worth it, and I thought I was undecided, but I think I’m going to give in and get it. Then there’s a doujinshi off of Yahoo! Japan that I won which came out to around $20 and another Yahoo! Japan auction that I agreed to split with Angelica if we won: it was of 2 Weiß Kreuz cels, one of Aya and one of Youji. She really wanted the Aya (which is really kirei, so I completely understand), so I said I’d take the Youji up to $45, and we won it. My share of the complete payment (including the doujinshi, cel, and shipping) comes to $80, so there goes that. Then Angelica’s been itching to have Dawn (the woman who does our cosplay costumes) do our Youji and Aya trench coats, so there’s another $135 I’m going to have to come up with sometime soon.
And I have to buy another 30-day unlimited Metro Card tomorrow. $63.
Oh, and another box of blank VHS tapes, $15. ::sigh::
This week at GCS our bosses have gone on vacation, so Angelica and I are working more hours because they’re not there, so both of our paychecks will be a bit more next payday, but I’m not getting that much more. At least Angelica will pay off what she owes me, pretty much, and I’ll have a little breathing room before my next UNDP paycheck. Hopefully that one will be hefty enough to pay off my credit line, and have some extra to save. o.O*
Book of the Moment:
But in any case, her "takai ran" (expensive orchid) turned out very nicely. It’s quite a bit smaller than mine – 3 kanji to my 5, and about half the size. She also had hers done on the outside of her left ankle. Well, I got to her house at 4 and Chris had been preparing for Angelica’s mom’s tattoo. She was getting a small fairy and a few butterflies added to her existing rose & vine tattoo on her ankle. The fairy and the butterflies were drawn courtesy of Liz. Isn’t that kakkoii? That my sister will have her artwork immortalized forever on the ankle of Angelica’s mom? In any case, Chris started doing the tattoo and apparently, it was hurting a bit, so Lisa (that’s Angelica’s mom) flinched a little. So Angelica got a little upset ‘cause she expected her to… take it without flinching, I guess. When it was done it looked so kawaii!
Next was Angelica’s turn. I got to trace out the kanji onto the carbon for transfer to Angelica’s ankle, so in addition to it being me who paid for the tattoo, it was me who traced it out for Chris. ::rubs hands together:: It’s so pleasing to be able to leave your mark on someone; I can totally sympathize with Koji’s insane claim-staking. (Not that I couldn’t before, mind, just that it’s even easier now. ^_~) So then Chris started on her. By this time it was about 5:30, I think. Poor Angelica. It really hurt her. Which didn’t surprise me as much as when Lisa said it hurt ‘cause Angelica has like, no tolerance for pain, and thin skin to boot, but Lisa has a higher tolerance for pain like I do. But I really didn’t think it hurt all that much when I got mine done. I mean, it hurt a little, but… not enough to flinch, not enough to really bother me.
Angelica’s tattoo took about 15 minutes, I think. It certainly wasn’t too much longer, if at all. I was really surprised. I mean, I knew hers was half the size of mine, but for some reason I just didn’t follow that thought through into the amount of time it would take to complete. So I was kind of surprised... and then I (mentally) hit myself upside the head and thought, "of course!"
Then Joe (Angelica’s stepfather) got his tattoo touched up (his skin apparently doesn’t take the ink too well) and got a really small dove added to it. The dove in one of the books was perfect but too big, so Liz copied it free-hand onto a piece of paper and made it smaller, then I traced it over for Chris. So Liz’s artwork is now immortalized on both Lisa and Joe. It’s too funny. I asked her later if she wanted to get a tattoo and she kinda shrugged and said yeah. So I said, "You don’t have to get one, you know, if you don’t want to." And she said, "I do, but I don’t know what." Then I said that she should take her time and work on her artistic ability and then come up with something completely original for her own tattoo. That would be so cool – to have your own artwork on display on your skin, permanently.
Oh, and Chris has a digital camera with which he takes photos of the finished tattoo and prints them out and puts them into a binder he carries with him. Last time, we got to see Lisa’s rose & vine tattoo in the book (the rose was done by someone else, I think, but the vine was added about a year ago by Chris), but this time my tattoo was in the book, so I took the opportunity to scan the photo and save it to disk on Angelica’s computer. So, even though I still haven’t found my stupid camera, I can still upload a photo of my tattoo – just after it was done! Yay!
shinigami no koibito TAT
At one point Chris said something about tattoos being like potato chips (how you can’t have just one), but Angelica completely shook her head… when I asked her, she said she’d always thought of getting just one and being satisfied with that. That, along with how much it obviously hurt her, I tend to think she probably won’t get any more, unless there’s something that really catches her eye – but I think it’d have to be something really amazing. But when I heard what Chris said, I found myself nodding eagerly and practically holding myself back from leaping into the chair and saying "Do me! Now!" or something like that. o.O*
I know for sure that I want to get another one – I’ve always admired tats – and I’ve long-since decided on the body parts I’d feel comfortable with having a tattoo on (ankles, back, wrists, back of neck, neck behind ears). I really like tattoos that go around the wrist, like a bracelet, although I’m not sure if I’ll ever get one because they’re not so easy to hide as the ankle and the back, and it’s a possibility that the field I work in will discriminate against things like that. So I really have to think about that sort of thing. I’ve become really captivated by large back-pieces recently, and I will probably get one in the future, when I’ve decided what I want – probably some sort of dragon, but I wouldn’t want it to be too typical, so I’m going to try and see what I can find before settling. And I know for sure that I want a faerie – not a childlike, playful one like Lisa got, but something more… something. Adult? Evil? Sensual? Knowing? I suppose a mixture of all of the above, but not to a great extent. I guess I’ll know it when I come across it. Ever since high school I’ve had this image of a faerie with her back turned toward the viewer, her hand, holding a dagger, held behind her back, and with her head turned back toward the viewer. But I don’t know if I’ll ever find someone to draw that image, so I don’t know if I’ll end up getting it. Maybe Liz can do it… eventually. Then again, maybe I'll make an exception on the childlike faerie and get the image of Usagi (from Sailor Moon) as a faerie from the last SM artbook (the Materials book). She's so adorable. And it's anime (well, manga), so how can I go wrong? I'll have to scan that one too...
In high school I knew a really great artist named Patti, and I asked her to draw me a faerie once, and she drew a pixie-like faerie, with multi-colored, almost-see-through wings, green hair tied off in pigtails at the top of her head, wearing a sort of short green tube-top that just covers her breasts and a brown sort of loin-cloth. Her hands have 4 fingers each; in one of her hands she’s holding a brown cloth bag that presumably holds pixie dust, because her other hand is splayed out, as if she had just flicked some out to her side. When I find my scanner software, I’ll have to scan it and upload it. I’m seriously considering having this drawing as a tattoo, but I have to think about it a bit more. I saw her again a few months ago – around March, I think. It turns out she moved back to NY from the college she was going to in MD, and I happened to bump into her. I got her email, so I suppose I could email her and see if she would draw me another faerie, but I think it’s sort of rude to just contact her out of nowhere and for no other reason than to ask if she’d draw me something.
The only other thing I’m considering as a tattoo right now is something by my favorite dark fantasy artist -- BROM. His stuff is really dark and beautiful and amazing and I absolutely love it. I’ve been looking through his stuff lately and trying to figure out if I can make any of his works into a tattoo that I’d find attractive.
But that second tattoo is not going to be anytime soon, anyway. First, I don’t really want to spend the money right now. I’ve certainly spent more than I had planned to already. Remember that estimate I had made about trying to save several hundred dollars per UNDP paycheck? Well, jeez, that was a complete bust! I got my first paycheck of $560 and it completely went to pay off my checking overdraft (which is sort of my credit line on my debit card)! Right now, what I have in cash will last me for food for the next two weeks, until my next Leeper paycheck, but I also have a few things that are going to have to be paid for soon and it’s going to go onto my credit line (which I hate… I’d much rather pay for stuff with money that I actually have, rather than put it on credit and then pay the credit off).
I just bought a pair of shoes from Hot Topic. They’re really cute and they were only $37, so I couldn’t resist. This is what they look like. Then there’s another auction I won on ebay which was $20 – not bad, but it still adds up. Then there’s a book I’m really considering getting that costs $30 – it’s an art book and really worth it, and I thought I was undecided, but I think I’m going to give in and get it. Then there’s a doujinshi off of Yahoo! Japan that I won which came out to around $20 and another Yahoo! Japan auction that I agreed to split with Angelica if we won: it was of 2 Weiß Kreuz cels, one of Aya and one of Youji. She really wanted the Aya (which is really kirei, so I completely understand), so I said I’d take the Youji up to $45, and we won it. My share of the complete payment (including the doujinshi, cel, and shipping) comes to $80, so there goes that. Then Angelica’s been itching to have Dawn (the woman who does our cosplay costumes) do our Youji and Aya trench coats, so there’s another $135 I’m going to have to come up with sometime soon.
And I have to buy another 30-day unlimited Metro Card tomorrow. $63.
Oh, and another box of blank VHS tapes, $15. ::sigh::
This week at GCS our bosses have gone on vacation, so Angelica and I are working more hours because they’re not there, so both of our paychecks will be a bit more next payday, but I’m not getting that much more. At least Angelica will pay off what she owes me, pretty much, and I’ll have a little breathing room before my next UNDP paycheck. Hopefully that one will be hefty enough to pay off my credit line, and have some extra to save. o.O*
Book of the Moment:
The Excaliber Alternative by David Weber (SF)
This one’s not another in the Honor Harrington series, much to my disappointment, but not to my surprise. It’s another of his sort of sci-fi/alternate history stories. It starts out with a knight in the English army (in the 1400s) caught in a storm at sea while trying to get to France. They’re headed for certain death, but a technologically advanced alien space ship lifts them out of the ocean and saves them. The "commander" of the alien ship has not come in peace, however. He’s looking for a "barbaric" army in order to fight another "barbaric" army on a different world in order to defeat them and have them consent to trade rights with the "commander’s" guild. Basically, the story – what I’ve read so far – follows the thoughts of the English knight in adjusting to his new surroundings, keeping his troops and civilians in line, and walking the fine line between being an "indispensible" aide to the alien "commander" and being too good – and therefore, a threat – so that the "commander" must get rid of him.
Although I typically don’t like to read sci-fi stories about "aliens," this one – and Weber’s other "alien-centric" books in general – are good enough to keep me entertained without being annoyed by the aliens. The aspect that I really like about sci-fi in general, isn’t the technology, but the military fiction part of it. I love military fiction in the fantasy genre too, but it is more rare to find it in fantasy than in sci-fi. And Weber is such a good writer that I would read anything he’s written (and am only about 5 books away from that goal).
Some other sci-fi/fantasy authors I highly recommend.
