Vignettes of the past 24 hours, or: The Vin-yeti

No post last night due to migraine. God, I fucking hate those things. They really unseat you.

All right. So after work yesterday, I took M to the tattoo parlor for his birthday. (I am mildly amused that two of the comments on the last post wished me happy birthday--while I appreciate the sentiments, it was actually M's birthday and I must have typed some random crud implying that it was my own. Actually I typed "M's" which must have looked like "My" onscreen. At any rate, M is now all old and shit and I am still a spring chicken at 27. At least until next month.) The tattoo parlor was up in Mason, which is approximately five miles from where we live. But we attempted to navigate to it during rush hour--which worked out okay right up until we tried to get off the highway, which took half an hour. Ugh.

So we finally get there and we go in. And the place is like, twelve feet by sixteen, or so. Very small. And there are about eight people in there, plus some dude hollering from the back room. And there are two dogs in there playing with a girl all done up in "I'm so goth I shit bats" gear and pierced to the nines and tattooed and actually really cute. She is smoking and there's no circulation in the place and all her smoke is going right at me, no matter where I stand. M and I start looking through all the tattoos in the display poster whatsits. Then I notice that the bookshelf next to the flip-through display posters doesn't have books on it; it has piles of guns. Like, just laying there. Some of them were in holsters. Some weren't. The TV suspended from the ceiling was playing a western. One of the dogs left and another one came in with some dude with a shaved head. Some lady with perforated-paper ear piercings asked the dude what made him shave his head. "Alcohol," he said sheepishly. Someone else in the back yelled, "Yeah, that was the night I found his Jeep parked on my front lawn!" A lengthy discussion between various people ensued about the best way to train dogs to hunt pheasants.

After we'd looked through the designs for a while, the guy who owns the place came out to talk to M about what he wanted. Dude was: about 5'6, dressed head to toe in black, wearing pointy-toed cowboy boots and the little string-leather cowboy tie with silver tips, had an unbuttoned button in the middle of his shirt where his voluminous, wife-beater-wrapped beer belly bulged out, and wearing, strapped to his belt, a single-action Colt .45 and a clip of six big fat .45 slugs. Niiiiiice. He and M hit it off instantly. They talked for a good while about design, about the difference between Chinese and Japanese dragons, about blue and orange being complimentary colors and which should fade into which, about dogs, about medical training for being a tattoo artist, etc. My head was killing me and two dogs were wrestling like mad beasts and kept knocking into me. The tattoo dude and M worked out a time next month for M to come in and have his tattoo work done. It's going to be pretty extensive, about ten inches of fully-colored dragon curling over his shoulder and bicep.

I was relieved to get out of there; it felt like a rod was going through my head behind my left eye, and the cigarette smoke was really kicking my ass. We drove down to Su Casa, this little dive by our house, and had dinner. I drank about six cups of water and took some drugs for my headache. Then we went to Half Price Books where I bought M a monkey marionette for his birthday (you can never have too many monkey marionettes about the place, you know) and a shitload of books, breaking the household rule that if books come in, books have to go out (we're seriously being overtaken by books in our house). I'll have to get rid of some this weekend now.

By the time we got home from that I was in agony and couldn't do much more than give M the other two small things I'd bought him (a pair of pants with a cartoon of a dog farting, with the words "blame the dog" across the butt, and a t-shirt with Cartman on it that says "I...am...so...pissed...off...right now!" and crawl into bed and try not to vomit. I laid there for hours with that burning sensation all through me that I was about to puke. The slightest movement by the dog lying on the bed with me (I don't even know which one was in there with me) was enough to make me stuff my hand in my mouth and bite.

Needless to say, that all sucked, and I was bummed that I couldn't hang out with M, it being his birthday and him being off work the next day and all. I really wanted to spend some time with him and finish the drunk that the Sangria at the Mexican joint had started. No luck.

The headache is mostly gone today. I woke up this morning with a bit of it still lingering, but at least I can function and don't have to be constantly thinking about where the bathroom is in case I gotta hurl. Big relief.

Next story. I work at this company that, as I've mentioned before, is more laid-back than most. This is the last Friday of the month, and when that happens, we do this thing called "Final Fridays" where at 4:00 we quit working and all go drink a shitload of beer and eat candy and junk food in the big meeting room. Today some dude came in for an interview. This happens fairly often, as we're a growing company (growing out, anyway--everyone who starts here puts on like fifteen pounds in their first three months because of the excess of free, excellent food that's always around). So this skinny little dude was in the lobby area sitting on one of these artsy-fartsy chairs we have out there that were not designed to be sat in by humans, at least not ones of normal proportions such as this poor dude, trying to read one of the marketing magazines we have out there. He is all dressed in his suit with his little briefcase and his little marketing-school business haircut and his little tie and shiny shoes and all. And I walk by him and I'm wearing my ratty jeans and my flip-flops and my t-shirt with the hole in armpit and my hair all messed up because I had bedhead this morning and was too lazy to take a shower, and then S walks by the other way dressed in her if-Fidel-Castro-were-a-buff-black-female getup, carrying a paper plate piled high with rice-krispie treats with M&Ms in them and talking with the receptionist about her mad ninja skills, and then around the corner you could hear someone's cell phone going off at 90 decibels with the theme song to Super Mario Brothers. The look on the dude's face was priceless. Such is the nature of our company. About ten minutes ago, the company president sent an all-employee email about how much he "fucking hates losing."

Side note: My boss, who is wearing a Bengals jersey today, just stood up swearing about the "infernal racket" being caused by the car alarm going off nine stories below us on the street, and said he was going to shut it off by pushing it into the river.

I love this job.

And believe it or not, I've actually done quite a lot of work today.

Since no post of mine is complete without at least one image, here's a shot of my little city that I took yesterday while I was out skating. The PowerShot has this "My Colors" feature on it, and one of the options within that is "Vivid Blue." You don't think it's obvious or anything that I had that feature turned on, do you?

It's actually not that much of an exaggeration; the sky was gorgeous yesterday, although lighter than this picture makes it out to be. It was the perfect day for skating--eighty degrees, low humidity. I took full advantage of it.

All right. Final Friday starts in about twenty minutes and I have to go finish my burrito. Y'all have a wonderous weekend now, y'hear?