(no subject)

Okay, so, tattoo.

Let me just say this first: oh my god does it hurt to get a tattoo right over the really veiny part of the wrist. On the bright side, I know now that I am correct about why it hurts so much. I don't get tattoos often enough and I'm not accustomed to the pain. I don't have coping skills for it, because by the time I get the next one I've really forgotten how much the last one hurts. I don't know what level of frequent you have to achieve to get to that, but at this point, it's a lot higher than I'll ever manage. So I settle for singing along, which may have annoyed the artist, but it was better than freaking out, and I think he was all right with me - I get the very clear sense that I'm something of a dork, tattoo-wise, and not really all that interesting - I'm not saying "hey, go for it, do your thing," so much as "I want this." Plus the appointments clerk was an idiot and didn't understand what I was asking for or how hard it would be to place it, so there was something of a time crunch.

HOWEVER. It is very cool, and I'm narrowing down what I want on the other wrist. If I'd had time, I would totally have already gotten the second one, but the artist might want to kill me - it seriously took over an hour to place the thing on my wrist. Every time it was in the right place, it was too short. He wanted to move it down (I wanted it right under my hand because I wear a watch) because where I want it is really really really hard, topographically, but every time it moved down it was too long. When we actually got it placed, something would be wonky, but the sentence couldn't be cut in half because the other half never ever lined up with the first half.

After I suggested that I hold my hand up and he walk around it to place it, it went a lot faster. We just had to cut out and reapply the your, and then the is, and it was fine. And the tattooing itself was super fast - like forty five minutes, maybe. It was pretty cool, and I'm pleased with it, though it's an interesting pain. I can definitely feel that this is bruised, though it's not showing, and I KNOW when I move my wrist (at all, on the first couple days; later when it's just an odd movement). Over all, this is the most cutaneous pain I've ever had, but this is also the tattoo that I have that actually has to move. The one on my ankle is above the flex joint, and the others are all on tissue that doesn't move, though I might have noticed something with the one on my back, were I bending over a lot or something - even then, that one's not really on a flex joint.

Also, it totally wound up being where I wanted it, so that was cool.

All of which makes me sound like I'm saying that I like to get tattoos that suck in some fashion in terms of pain/application/everything else, and that's not what I'm saying, just that this one and the last one seemed kind of "blah" to the artists, and combined with the amusing clusterfuck of the rest of the situation, I thought I'd detail it.

( Pictures )

I don't seem to have a good pic of the side of the wrist, but believe me, it does in fact say "as if".

Everyone who sees it and is a font wonk (ie, my coworkers) says it looks like my hand has been typeset. The artist did a really good job with the detail, and it's in a font that I have heard pronounced variously Tandara, Pandara, and Candara, and I don't know which one it is, as my coworker has it. But it's a very nice san-serif font with a tilted top edge on the v, and a little bit of stroke widening on the ascenders of the h and the d. I like it.

Pictures taken approximately 12 hours after the fact, then lost to the ether for two days before finally clunking into my inbox when the person who took the pictures resent, and many thanks to her for her work at taking the pictures!