oh man, school's almost done!!! aaahh!!! I'm all emotional.

OK. SO. Wow. My last freaking day. It almost makes me tear up. Although I am PMSing so that probably has a lot to do with it, hah! Speaking of, I almost totally went off on Lisa's partner's daughter at the very end of the day at the shop last night. Was never introduced to her, and she's been there all week, so I don't know her name. I refer to her as Bristol Pailn. :lmao Because she's 19, in the Navy, freshly pregnant, and is a Bush fan. Her dad is a racist Bush fan, too. (Fun times :um) Anywayz, yeah. She's been starring at me ALL FREAKING WEEK and I was finally able to just ignore it. Last night there were 9 of us standing around at the shop, Jane and Matt in conversation make a few comments about pennies. Bristol Palin says "they're talking about getting rid of pennies". I chime in saying they've been talking about that for years. Bristol says Obama was just talking about that this morning and then suddenly turns fucking psycho and for the FIRST TIME, ALL WEEK, looks me straight in the eye, bobs her head all around, raises her hand (like, 'talk to the hand') and says all loud and angry "OH, but Obama's going to "Change the World". This from a pregnant teenager who likes George Bush.

Now you see, I'm not a big fan of such a situation. :lol That, on top of PMS.... :um Well let's just say it could have gotten ugly. I was so taken back. I just said "Geeze, don't be such a narrowminded, angry Republican." There was enough going on in this small circle of 9 people that noone seemed to hear me. A smart little voice in my head said "Geri, just leave. JUST. LEAVE." So I did. I mean, there's no arguing with stupid.

Why did I just put that all into my blog? Because it's my blog, and I can. And I've been dealing with Lisa's partner, Jeff, fairly well the past 2 weeks, knowing that he's a war happy republican (hell he's got a bumper sticker that says "Give war a chance") (gag), and hearing that he doesn't like black people. Lisa, on the other hand, is FAR more intelligent than to let anything, I mean ANYTHING, but positivity radiate from her. And it's sincere, genuine. She's one of a kind. I love her to pieces. Does she agree with Jeff on politics and such? I don't know, because she's smart enough to avoid all that crap. We had a brief conversation early last week and I would venture a guess that she is far more middle of the road, a nice blend of conservative and liberal. Which is ideal

SO, back to tattooing bliss reporting :)

Yesterday I didn't post much because man, long day of tattooing, then a couple hours of getting tattooed followed by dragging Matt out with us to Dunzys for a drink or 2 and late dinner.... the 4 of us just hit the hay soon as we walked in the door. Four of us you say? Yeah man, dig this- one of Lisa's very very first students, long before she even got this gorgeous studio she now holds school in, visited for an overnight. Her name is Jane and she's on the Jersey shore. I have her business card, I'll link to her stuff soon. She is SUCH a cool chick!!! She works at 2 shops, and her work is amazingly tight and fresh. She brought her portfolio to share. She was SOO helpful; she hung out at the shop all day yesterday and gave us all pointers and was super impressed with our work. Both Wed night and last night she had dinner with us a Dunzy's and we talked shop with her 99% of the time. She was soooo sharing of anything we asked, from the technicals to the human side of it all to anything in between. MAN what a blessing!!!! I mean right?? :)

So, Wed I did 2 tatts. One was this crazy skull thing on this guy's left pectoral. One big skull with 4 little ones, with flames, black and grey. I suggested the eyes be red and then added yellow pupils, telling him we could just go over that in red if he didn't like it. He loved it! Yay! I was very happy with how it turned out:

The other one was this boring tribal piece. But, the dude had drawn it up himself, as he drew all the other tribal on his arm and he drew it to match. Plus he has it all filled in with color instead of black, so at least there was that. OH and he had me write in his daughter's name. Lisa was going to do it but she was all super busy, so I was like, well let me give it a try (in pen) and see if you like it. I wrote it out and he said "That's it! Go for it!" :) So that was a cool festive little thing. :) Here's the tatt:

Yesterday I only did one tattoo. :( It took me almost 4 hours. It took me an hour just to prep this guy though, between the stenciling of the drawing he brought in, to the hair cut and shave I did on his skull (I am not kidding. I had to clear out a huge section of inch long hair! I mean what do people THINK when they pull that? :lol), and drawing in parts of the drawing that were just not there. It was fun tattooing a skull, I mean literally tattooing on someone's head. This is the same guy who I thought was returning on Wed but instead came in yesterday, he's the guy who I tattooed a vampire chick on his thigh last week in black and grey. Here's what I did yesterday, it measures about a foot long (from my fingertips to my elbow bottom):

Cross your fingers and ask the Universe to pllleeeease have Matt be able to finish the phoenix. :) I want to revisit the school... but not till June on our trip up to New England. Otherwise it's a return visit for him to finish- 13 hours of driving in a weekend... oye. kwim? Lisa's supposed to tattoo me today, too, but the priority is for the phoenix to get done. I would LOVE LOVE LOVE LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE a tatt from Lisa. Her specialty is animals and that's what I want. If I could have tatts from both of them, I could have show and tell for people, and I LOVE to talk about this school, about Lisa, Matt, and how motivating it all is. Lisa raged against the outdated norm, followed her own bliss, and if she's not inspiring, well, noone is. :)

OK.
Last day, coming up. I'm so sad, so excited, so happy. And teary! :lol Damn PMS.