Monday, December 19, 2011

Tattoos and the Geek

I've been called a Geek, a Nerd, that dude that knows stuff and even the one I, for some odd reason, am proud of,  "Egghead".  When you really think about it, having a head shaped like an egg or easily cracked and have all this gooey stuff inside unless you stick it in a fire is kind of an odd thing to be proud of, but well then, there it is.

In a normal day I'm usually working in my home office which for most people I imagine consists of a nice desk with a computer or maybe a laptop and even perhaps both.  A land line phone and perhaps a blackberry for work calls ect.

Not mine.

Here let me show you:



In any case I use a few computers.  I tend to fix them for friends and family and help out in general technical matters of all kinds.  Oh ya and I work in IT for a company that I've been with for 11 years.

I mention all of this because believe it or not, I traded my services to fix and upgrade a laptops memory for my first tattoo.  I'm a bad ass *flex*.

I had wanted a tattoo for many years but I never really had found one that I wanted.  See I had an idea in my head and I wasn't going to just get any old tattoo because it was cool to have a tattoo.   If I was going to mark my body permanently, well it had to have some serious meaning for me.

At the time when this opportunity came up I was in a deep state of flux in my life and finding my own spiritual path.  I was finding balance in my life and meanings, concepts and thought patterns that were beyond the biblical / Catholicism I was raised with.  I was being challenged by feeling of rightness in things that had been planted in my brain as a teen in reading some books about the "New Age", the first being Shirley Maclaine's "Out on a Limb".

So when I was done fixing this tattoo artist's (Diamond Dave was his name) laptop he looked at me and said "Well how about I pay you with a tattoo?"

As things are wont to do, I said yes and we started in on a short conversation about how I've wanted one but never knew what I wanted.   I explained to him that I was looking for symbolism of  male balance as it was something I was growing and striving to have;   Balance in myself as a young man.

An hour later and with surprisingly minimal pain, I was the newly marked man with following Tat on my left shoulder:


It's faded over the years and I've thought about having it touched up but there are 6 colors in the tattoo and it took about an hour to get.  The symbolism for me in this tattoo is that we have balance, male and female (the ying/yang) with the prevalent aspect being male (the sun surrounding the ying/yang).

I've been extremely happy with it to this day and I've never regretted it.

******************

I was told that once you get your first tattoo, that your going to want more and that was immediately the case with me.  I had so many thoughts and images running through my head that if you could have jacked into my brain, dropped some acid and hung on, it would have been one hell of a major trip!

All that settled down and once again I started to think about what I really wanted to express next through art on my body.

I thought and I thought.

The sun rose and set and many more full moons passed as I lived my life, every once in awhile stopping for a brief few moments in the passage of time to ponder what it was going to be.  There was no doubt I was getting another one.

......10 years passed and I had grown from a young man searching out his spirituality to an adult on his journey along paths he never dreamed.

Then one day I was talking with my future wife about tattoo's and she mentioned an artist that a friend of hers had gone to in Venice Beach and before you could blink, we were there at INK INK tattoo and talking to Karina about what I had in my head that I wanted on my body.

Once again the time was just right and my words spilled out of my mouth and into Karina's ear and on to some paper.  We agreed on a general design but she wanted to work on it a bit more before something final was presented so I paid her a deposit and back to Anaheim we went.

Two weeks later we were back at INK INK Tattoo and Karina brought out the tracing she had done.  I immediately knew that it was exactly what I wanted. Don't change a fricken thing!   That's when Karina said "Ya know what, I actually have this tracing paper wrong side up".  She showed me the proper orientation but we all agreed (my future wife had come with me again) that the way it was shown to me the first time was it.


As my first tattoo symbolized balance with a male aspect, this tattoo symbolizes balance with a female aspect.  It is a take off of the Man in the Moon, but the face of the "MAN" is really a blend of a female to male face as can be seen in the eyebrow, nose and lip structure as it moves from left to right.  This face set in the moon (a common pagan symbol for Goddess/female) and completed for me a balance between the left and right sides of my body.

This also speaks to my ever evolving understanding of the importance and roles that both aspects of life play in my spirituality.  To put it in simple terms and without delving into philosophical discussions what is a man with out an understanding of a woman?   The converse is true as well and both are needed, in my opinion, in order to have a firm foundation of balance in ones life.

It's been 6 years since I've received that 2nd tattoo and I've got the idea of my third in my brain.  Now for the universe to present me with the artist that can pull it out of my head.

Oh ya and the money to get it done because I don't think it will be cheap.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Tuesday, Tuesday....

Thank god your not Monday.

That is all...

Sunday, December 11, 2011

A smell is in the air.

No it's not THAT smell!

The wife and our tenant (maybe more on who he is some other time) went and got our Christmas Tree from the Christmas Tree farm.  I insist on getting trees that are growing in the ground at the time we cut them down.  This is a left over from when I used to work on a Christmas tree farm so I suppose you can say I've become a snob about it.

bite me, it works for me :)

So after doing the normal things that have to happen when the tree comes home, it's up and being decorated right now and the smell of pine is permeating the house and it smells good.  Now I can fart up a storm for the next few days and not worried about the wife complaining that she "..can't go into any room in this house with out it smelling like ass!".

I've learned awhile ago about the struggles of putting up a Christmas Tree and making it seem straight.  I've had books under one side of the stand among some of the things utilized to make the tree seem straight.   Then I found  THE STAND!

Yes it was expensive but oh how it has saved the headache.  This year it took a little trunk manipulation due to a very crooked trunk on the tree, but with in 15 minutes, the tree was in the stand and straight.  The beauty of this is that I wasn't down on my knees with needles getting in my back and that one needle trying to give me a colonoscopy!

It wasn't this particular one I bought http://amzn.to/uuAeP3 but it's the same concept and I'll never go back!

I also made an automatic watering system this year with some tubing, a bucket and some use of science!
I put one end of the hose in a full bucket filled to about the same level as the top of the tree stand then slowly submerged the rest of the tubing in the bucket so all the air was out of the tube.

Once the tube was in the bucket and submerged with no air in it, I partially filled the tree stand with water and put the tree in it.   I put my finger over the end of the tubing in the bucket so no air would get in and quickly put the end of the tube into the water in the tree stand and let my finger go.  Since water will find it's own level between the two containers, the tree stand filled up to meet the level of the water in the bucket.  That turned out to be about 3/4 of an inch from the top of the tree stand.  I marked that spot so when I go back to check the water level in the bucket I know how much to fill it up to with out over filling it and having water spill out of the tree stand.

Next I'm going to wrap a box with wrapping paper and put it over the bucket with water so it just looks like a present :)


Friday, December 9, 2011

Well today is another day.
duh

The goal for today is to start eating healthier and lose weight. Well not just today but for everyday following this day too.  I'm currently 284lbs and tired of it.   I find myself snacking... strike that, it's to nice a word, Pigging Out through out the day for no good reason.  Heck the other day I was FULL and I kept eating.

Figure that one out.

Today I'm taking a different approach and while I want to eat something right now, I'm going to limit it and if I snack, do it only 2 or 3 bites and wait 30 to 45 min.  We'll see how that works out.

Oh ya I scheduled a lunch with a friend today.. good day to start huh?

:D

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Erase Erase Erase...

Well it's been over a year and like many blogs out there, this one sat collecting dust.  I could say that life just gets in the way or I was busy with , but the truth of the matter is that I got lazy.  To quote the comedian Ron White "I forgot.  Has it happened to you, well it happened to me".

I mean in reality, a blog for the most part is a self-serving thing.  People write stuff down for the "Interwebz" to read and when "they" don't come in droves, we essentially just let it go.  Yes I'm generalizing , but I'm right and your wrong so lets just get that straight right now.

So I'm going to tackle this blog with a new candor.  IF some poor soul comes across it, well I hope that they have health insurance with a good dose of coverage for therapy, for I'm going to treat this as my place and my place alone.  What I'll put here, I'm not really sure yet, but I'm willing to bet that it will be a rambling hodgepodge of meaningless blather to others, but in some way it will be a big deal to me.

I'll advise you now to check out and not come back!

You have been warned!

More to come

Maybe

Possibly

Tomorrow

or next week...