Longklaw.com

I got a new tattoo the last weekend in April.  Lacey at Tron City Tattoo did a great job.  I’m very pleased with how it turned out. A while back I started thinking about getting a wolf or a pair of dice for my next tattoo and ended up settling on a wolf.  I found a design online and Lacey gave me 2 more options based on that design.  One showed the wolf snarling, but I decided I didn’t want it to be aggressive.

The wolf wasn’t meant to be a reference to anything in particular, but many assumed that it is Ghost from A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones. I’ll go with that.

What next…

I’m pretty sure I never showed off my tattoo that I got last October. It’s an ouroboros. I like the design. In a sense I was going through kind of a reinvention last year, so that’s what it symbolized to me. It took a long time to finish. I may have gotten it in a different spot if I could do it over again. It’s in a pretty safe place if you’re concerned about aging and weight changes, but I think it looks a little odd with my other tattoo because of the differences in length. Maybe I’ll get something else to fill it out, but I did say no more back tattoos…

It’s been over a month, but I got a tattoo! I’ve thought about getting one for a while, I just didn’t know what to get and where to get it. Since I moved I’ve been doing a lot of things that I’ve been putting off, so it was a good time to go ahead and do it. I came up with an idea and went to a tattoo artist to see if it would be possible and to get an estimate of the cost. I made an appointment for the following week. I got a Longclaw tattoo, just without the wolf’s head hilt. He would’ve had to make the tattoo a lot bigger to get the detail in the wolf’s head right, so he designed his own hilt and liked it. Yes, it did hurt, but after the first few minutes I didn’t really notice it anymore. My artist is a fellow fantasy nerd, so we talked about books the whole time.

Now I understand how addictive tattoos are because the next day I was already thinking about my next one.

Man, I’ve been neglecting this blog again. I meant to write something after I had been in Portland for a month, but I never got around to it. Things are so busy. I never even finished unpacking. I’ve been here a little over 2 months now, so I figured I should say something.

I love Portland! Yes, it’s rained a lot, but I’ve gotten used to that. I actually like the rain. Lately, we’ve had some really great, sunny weekends though. I’m sure I’ve made many mental observations about what I like better about Oregon than Mississippi, but I didn’t write them down, so I’ll probably miss a few. I like that there’s no sales tax here. That’s saved me a good bit of money. I like that there’s a lot of places to shop. I’ve done a lot of shopping. I like that there’s a comic book store and a Best Buy nearby. I saw a Facebook post from this time last year where I was complaining about not having either one. I like the beautiful scenery. I like the nice people. I like that doctors, dentists, and vets are open on weekends. The biggest complaint so far is that I haven’t found any BBQ that’s as good as Southern BBQ. From what I’ve seen, a lot of the stereotypes about Portland do have at least a little bit of truth to them. Just watch an episode or two of Portlandia and you’ll see what I mean.

I also love my job. The work is a lot more interesting here than at my last job. I get to work with cutting edge technologies and I’m learning a lot. We move at a much faster pace and that took some getting used to. We have a small office and I’m probably the youngest and most inexperienced person there. Things are going well though.

Because of all the long hours I’m putting in at work on this project that’s ending, I haven’t met people outside of work and I haven’t done much in Portland yet. I think that will change soon. In my free time, I have gone to a Greg Rucka book singing, gone to the Spring Beer & Wine Fest, gotten a tattoo, gone to a screening of the new Morgan Spurlock movie after which he did a Q&A, and gone to a Marc Meron comedy show. Except for the tattoo, I couldn’t have done any of that in Starkville.

I’m glad that I made the decision to come here. Maybe I can get some friends to visit soon.