For Your Viewing Pleasure...

... my brand new tattoo.

First off, I must admit to having been a little apprehensive today before going. I was able to discern my apprehension by the fact that my general speech was heavily peppered with expletives. ("Has anyone seen my f***ing sneakers?", and that kind of thing.) It was totally unconscious.

However, once I got there, it was all butter. The artist was a very nice, pleasant man who set my mind at ease immediately. He was happy for my 16 year old to be present and take a few pictures.

He showed me what he was going to do, and what he was going to use.

He showed me my own design that he traced on some kind of stencil paper. He put some gunk on my arm, then laid the paper on my arm, which gave him a design on my arm to work with.

Then he started tattooing.

And it was TOTALLY fine. It, like, stung a *tiny* bit... no, even stinging doesn't do it justice. It was a bit like *scraping.* I was completely impressed.

In less than an hour he was done.

Take a look at these:

Here's the stencil on my arm...


Here's the artist, Merle, working...


All done!


Isn't this cool?


Oh, and here's an interesting anecdote as a follow up:

I went to Thursday night volleyball as usual, three hours after the tattoo was finished. One of the other players, I knew, had a new tattoo just a couple of months ago. So I showed him mine.

He almost slapped it! He said, "That's not real! There's no way that would look like that if you had it done today! If you said you had it done a week ago, I would have believed you!!"

It looked so good, and was so well healed, that he really didn't believe it. Chalk it up to clean living and good health(and a nifty little homeopathic remedy called Arnica... which I've used on my family for years now...)!

One possible problem, though:

The artist warned me that they might be addictive.

And I see what he means.

I *love* my new tattoo.

What should I do for my other arm? ;)