💾 Archived View for cwave.site › gemlog › 2024-06-09.gmi captured on 2024-06-16 at 12:23:23. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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Taking the day off for a full-day tattoo appointment Tuesday.
It's bad form to ever retell your dreams, they're usually not that interesting to everyone else. But this one is pretty funny, and it's the start of this whole story.
Some years ago I had this dream where I went to my local mall and discovered an absolutely amazing tattoo shop in there.
I chose a design of intertwined snakes on my shin and lower leg, front and back. On the front was a diamond-shaped inset frame for the snake's head; on the back a diamond shaped inset of a cartoony baby snake hatching out of an egg.
The tattoo continued from all of the lower leg to include the foot, it was a full "sock". I sort of know bottom-of-the-foot tattoos are probably a bad idea, will hurt a lot and will wear away quickly. But I was getting this design on the bottom of my foot: a dramatic illustration of an ogre, think shrek, who is holding a microphone because he is the announcer at a wrestling match. But he has forgotten his lines, so the text banners around him say something like "AND NEXT UP WE HAVE ... UHH I DON'T KNOW".
This dream had some absolutely amazing tattoo design ideas that apparently just came to me in my sleep, and some not-so-good ideas. You can guess which is which.
So some years later I'm finally getting around to getting snakes on my shin. This will be my first sleeve-like ("leg warmer"?) full-limb fill tattoo, of the whole lower leg.
I found a good tattoo studio : where they actually have time for a consultation appointment, instead of telling you to go via instagram.
I found a good tattoo artist in it, who tends to fill things with interestin gpatterns.
But I couldn't say exactly what I wanted, so things are a bit iffy. We ran into a problem when "snakes" is not enough material to fill the whole area. (Plus other constraints and considerations redacted)
So I got signed up for snakes plus generic geometric mandala (I chose seven-fold roational symmetry). I have had some great success from letting the tattoo artist do whatever, but it's a gamble. I was not happy with this one. I think geometric and mandala tattoos look great, in general, but I wasn't feeling good about getting something I didn't exactly choose or design put on me by default.
It's getting very close to the deadline to send in any better ideas before the day.
I have hit on a much better geometric pattern, bringing in some math/geometry knowledge from my PhD (but not too closely related).
I'm getting (one of the more star-like centers) from an aperiodic tiling. Aperiodic tilings are neat and a great solution to wanting a geometric tatoo but thinking tilings are boring. I found a good design which works with all the needs of the area, it is perfect.
Now I'm excited.
There is a lot to do. I expect a full day of getting tattoed will feel about as bad as a marathon, and am bringing the same things.
✓ Email new design
✓ prepare money
✓ online consent form
✓ ID
✓ Buy cream
✓ Buy juice & snacks
✓ Emergency energy gel
✓ Prepare shorts and comfy sweater
(By the way, the checkmarks got here by : vim insert mode, Ctrl k, type "OK".)