I like ink

Breaking news for those who have either never met me or didn't pick up on my oh-so-subtle clues in other blog entries: I AM AN INK JUNKIE.

I love tattoos. I love having tattoos, I love getting tattoos, I love seeing other people's tattoos. When my friends get tattoos, I react in the way most people reserve for the birth of kids. "Oh my GOD can I SEE IT? I LOVE IT! When did you GET it? Do you love it? You are AWESOME! Let's have a PARTY!"

I don't really have the cojones or personality to be one of those amazing ladies who cover themselves with fabulous tatts, all of mine are easily concealable and I have no desire to get any that wouldn't fit that criteria. I love people who are brave enough to go all out, but I'm just not one of them. I also try to pick spots that are (relatively) resistant to dramatic change, my abs are awesome right now but time has a way of stretching/flubbering/sagging that particular area and I personally am turned off by that possibility. Back/ribs/legs/wrists are more my style.

That having been said, I think one of the most ridiculous things people can say about tattoos is, "they'll look so ridiculous when you're old." Newsflash: you are not going to be a supermodel when you're 70. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but when we're old we are going to LOOK old. It's not like the non-tattooed folk will be running around looking like spry 19 year old bikini models while the inked crowd will be wrinkled and gnarly and covered in horrible amorphous blobs. Ever seen old marines? Their anchor tatts still look righteous and hardcore, so those nay-sayers can go suck an egg. (The same egg? One egg per nay-sayer? I don't care.)

I think the permanency of tattoos is the biggest draw. It's something that you can decide to do to your body that will be there forever, it's a constant reminder of certain times and feelings in your life that can't (easily) be erased. I think there's something beautiful about that. People talk about regretting tattoos as your personality changes, but I just don't see the need for regret. Even if you look back at your tattoo 20 years later and think the design or sentiment is a little silly it still represents a part of you that was very real. We are all products of our collective experiences, and to me a tattoo is just a visual representation of that fact; no more ridiculous than the scars and laugh lines that follow us into old age.

I went to see my man Jon Reed at True Blue Tattoo here in Austin last night to get my last tattoo for a while. I'm about to go on some medication that makes your skin go funny for quite a long time, so Anu decided that for my birthday he'd get me one last hurrah. I now present to you what will possibly be the last tattoo of my 20's:

Why an elephant? Because Elephants never forget, and this little fellow on my leg is there to remind me that I love, that I am loved, and that even though people may leave your life (through death, distance, what have you) love marks us forever. I've lost a lot of people in the past few years, and waking up to this happy little guy every morning helps me focus on what their presence in my life did for me instead of the pain left by their passing. Is that corny? Yeah, probably. But I don't corn-up that often, so I think you'll be alright. ^_^


Love and Kisses,
Dana

I found a bug.

There must have been something in the air a few weeks ago that made lots of moths and butterflies feel very amorous, because recently I feel like I've been surrounded by big fat caterpillars. That's not a bad thing mind you, I really like...pretty much anything that's alive, to be honest. And caterpillars are definitely way up on the list of things that make me happy. The problem is that I've most often run into them while they're trying to cross the street, and even though they're fast little goobers they don't quite outstrip cars yet. I try very hard not to run them over when I see them scuttling across the road, but I can never tell if I've succeeded or not because it's not like squishing a caterpillar is going to make any noticeable chance in the smoothness of your ride.

Anyway, on three separate occasions I've seen them cavorting around on our outdoor breakfast nook, and this morning I was lucky enough to have my camera nearby so I could snap a few pictures of the fuzzy little dude for you. He's very cool, and from what my google-fu has uncovered for me he seems to be a Saltmarsh caterpillar. Here he is:

What a cool guy, right? I wanted him to eat a leaf in front of me because I like watching their little mouths move, but he was clearly in a very big hurry to do something and had no time for my shenanigans.



Anyway, after I followed him around for a little bit I decided to give him a hand and help him up on to a plant. I hope he appreciated it.

I also looked up his future online, and now I really do hope he and his friends stick around because if they do we should have some of these pretty fellows fluttering around in a month or so:

Hooray! OK, just thought I'd let you know about him. You care about caterpillars, right? Of course you do.

Love and Kisses,
Dana

Updates, bacon not included.

I'm going to skip the apologies that normally accompany a late post because...I'm sure you have them memorized by now.

It has been crazy busy around here! This past weekend was the first we were able to spend at home in Austin in quite a while and we still found ourselves hustling from place to place. Mind you, I'm not complaining. I much prefer busy weekends to the ones that feel like a waste of a perfectly good set of no-work days. You know the ones, you sit down on the couch for just a few minutes to watch the end of Lord of the Rings (playing on TBS for the 19th consecutive weekend) and when you look up again 7 hours have gone by and you've watched every romantic comedy produced in the late nineties. Yes, we all love You've Got Mail, but for real. Zero productivity and you can't even say that you had that much fun, plus now all your snacks are gone and you've gotten crumbs all up in your cushions.

The weekend before was split between San Antonio and Austin. My parents came up Friday evening because they had gotten us all tickets to the Revival Fest (a rockabilly multi-headliner concert) at the Nutty Brown Cafe. We had a lot of fun, the music was neat and the atmosphere was really laid back and relaxing. I was on ink watch, of course, and yet again was blown away by the tat quality here in the ATX. I swear, the itch for more ink will never go away as long as I'm living here. It didn't help that the current scene in rockabilly music is the 50's black/navy dress with white polka dots, red belts, red lipstick, and coiffed hair topped off with plenty of visible work...everywhere I looked I was bombarded with people who looked cooler than me. Le sigh. Pictures!

On Saturday Anu and I went out to celebrate his new promotion (PS: Anu got promoted. Hooray!!!) at Eddie V's and it was amazing as usual. I forgot to specify that we wanted a table by the band, but it was still a lot of fun and we had a really great server who gave us a free dessert in honor of Anu's accomplishment. Free Bananas on Fire? Awesome. Also, I wore a new dress that I'm sort of really obsessed with. Everybody look at it:

Sunday was mother's day so we made the trek down to SA town to take our mothers (and my grandmother) out to celebrate. We went to Paesano's which...I hate to say, but I was really disappointed with. The prices were insane for the quality, I've had better food at trattoria style joints and didn't have to pay nearly as much. Also, the waiter was an ass. I'm sure it had quite a bit to do with the fact that it was mother's day, but that doesn't excuse flat out rudeness. I've been tired too, my friend. That doesn't give you the right to roll your eyes at someone for not knowing that salads don't come with every entree, especially since the way the salad/no salad meals are divided up is pretty damn bizarre. Pics!

The week itself was full of subbing for me and work for Anu. I had my last club meeting with my Girlstart girls, that was a sad day. We signed each other's shirts and talked about the future, they told me they wanted me to be their teacher in high school and they all traded phone numbers with each other. They are amazing kids and I know they are going to lead wonderful lives. I will miss them so much, I already do.

This weekend was Austin weekend, hooray! It was nice to be able to do all the little things around town that we're so in love with. We went to Mt. Bonnell Saturday morning and stared at the wealthy folks' houses for a while. I saw a lizard. We were pretty much eaten alive by tiny gnats, but it was worth it. We ate lunch at Dirty Martin's (burger heaven omg) and then went home to get ready for a wine and cheese cocktail party one of Anu's coworkers was throwing. We had a lot of fun at the party, we brought a bottle of our favorite Da Vinci chianti and goat cheese rolled in sunflower seeds (try it, it's amazing) and both were liked by all. We met lots of interesting new people and even made friends with some people from Philly and LA. The time flew by like nobody's business, probably because of a little invention called "wine game" that I can elaborate on in the comments if you'd like. I only have pictures of the first part of the day, so here they go:

Anu came down with some cold symptoms on Sunday, so we didn't do anything too extreme. We did see a hotel on fire on our way to Java Noodle, so that was something. Nobody got hurt, no worries. Apparently some guy set his sheets on fire, left the building, then called the cops a few hours later to tell them what he'd done and then sat and waited for them to come arrest him. I don't even know, y'all, some people just don't make sense to me. But yeah, it didn't stop us from having delicious Indonesian food. Mmmm.

We also saw Iron Man 2 at some point...I can't really remember when. It was alright, definitely entertaining for a couple of hours but nothing special. I remember thinking the first one was super cool, though I don't exactly remember why. This one was kind of a let down, but it was worth seeing.

Alright, that's all I've got for now. I hope you all have had a lovely couple of weeks, and if YOU have a blog I want you to know that you're a lazy blob who needs to update more. Because dudes, my blog list has been so slow lately. Entertain me, y'all!

Love and Kisses,
Dana

My kingdom for a horse!

I'm glad that my Derby hat was such a success with you all, I will admit that I felt completely fabulous while sporting it this weekend. It helped that I also knew I was reducing my risk of face cancer.

Anu was able to sneak out of the office for the weekend so on Saturday he and I woke up at 5 AM to drive up to Weatherford and watch Maggie compete at the Greenwood horse trials. She has recently moved up to intermediate and this was her second event in that division. For non-horsey folk, you can think of it like video game levels. If you're competing in eventing, you will do dressage, cross country, and stadium jumping regardless of your level. As you move up in levels (based on the experience level of horse and rider) you have harder jumping courses, more demanding time requirements, and more exact and complicated dressage tests. The level sequence is as follows:

Beginner Novice
Novice
Training
Preliminary
Intermediate
Advanced

So, as you can see, competing at the intermediate level is a big. freaking. deal.

We weren't able to come up for dressage, but we did get to see parts of her cross country ride (most of it is off in the woods, so the average spectator can only really manage to run over and watch a few of the jumps) and her stadium jumping round on Sunday. She was such a rock star! It was so much fun to be back in that environment, and the cherry on the sundae was the fact that she and Dante brought home a first place ribbon! Hooray!

Those of you who are friends with me on facebook will have seen the pictures I took, but just in case...

I really do miss being a part of the horse world. I was never much in to competing (because I wasn't all that great, haha), but to this day I have never liked any activity more. It isn't even just riding, I miss BEING around horses. Lessons, cleaning tack, being around the barn, training new lesson horses, teaching beginners, all of it. The unfortunate fact of the matter, however, is that horses are just

REALLY

FREAKING

EXPENSIVE.

Even if you don't own one! Lessons are expensive, the gear you need is expensive, every single part of it is expensive. Someday I'll be able to be a part of it again, but right now it's just not in the cards. Now let's all look at some pictures of me with horses, haha.

(This is the broken arm I got from being bucked off of a pony that didn't like me)

*sigh* meeeemorieeeees.....

Love and Kisses,

Daner