fresh.... ink

listening to the news on tuesday night i expected to wake up yesterday morning to thick blankets of snow. i laid in bed a bit longer than usual expecting there to be unfathonable amounts of snow on the ground the way they were talking, i was going to be late anyway, so what the heck. instead i looked out the window to rain. more rain.
it was pretty nasty out with low visibility, rain, slush, blah blah blah. i kept hearing on the radio about how bad it was up north. they went on and on about the storm that was to come. i ignored it, there was no way i wasn't going into the city. i had been waiting months for this day.
pulling out of the neighborhood the e slid a bit from previous snow having turned to slush from the rain. half way into work visibility got worse. there were thick lines of slush from tire tracks. switching lanes was something that required concentration.
morning radio shows and thoughts of tattoos made the drive seem super fast.
i walked into work. almost a ghost town. on my side of the building i think there were a whole 5 of us. i sat at my desk antsy. kept looking at the time. i wanted to leave in enough time to grab some lunch and with the weather in the city, who knows. i was a little nervous. i still had yet to see a drawing, what if i hated it? spacegirl, raygun, skulls, stars- how could i hate it, but still.
got in the car. the snow was starting to come down pretty good. i didn't care if it was going to take me 3 hours to get home. i wasn't missing this. made a stop at subway for a turkey sandwich.
found a parking spot around the corner from deluxe, finished up and walked over.
everyone was moving back into their spots. they had just had the floors redone. harlan walked over with his sketchbook and opened it up. WOW. it was just what i wanted.
i made two changes. waited a bit for him to clean up the sketch and got to work. when he was checking out the size of the sketch to my arm to see if he needed to shrink it i was like no way, he's gonna have to shrink it. it looked huge. he put it on my arm and said actually it's perfect. cool.
the only thing i regret is not taking a picture of my arm before he started.
it took an hour and a half to do the outline. two sensitive spots... top of my shoulder (bone) and where my armpit meets my chest (ouch).
i had mentioned that harlan, my tattoo artist, was a mountain biker. it was nice to chat about bikes and riding to keep my mind off of the needle. he prefers palos over kettle. my kind of guy. we agreed palos, peoria and THEN kettle for riding.
two more visits and it'll be done.