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Scents and memories and Burning Man (oh my!)

14 Apr

I’ve heard it said that the sense of smell is the one that’s tied the most strongly to memories, and I think that’s accurate.

I was putting a tarp down on my garage floor so I wouldn’t get all filthy as I was working on one of my car speakers – the damned thing rattles and I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that I listen to my music way too loudly. As I picked up the tarp from the corner of the garage to lay it out next to the car, I got hit in the face with a plume of playa dust from my time at Burning Man last year. Just catching a whiff of it made me think back to the entire experience: the uncertainty of what to expect, the realization that it was better than anything I had imagined, and an intense longing to return. All this before the tarp hit the ground.

I can’t wait to go back.

 
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Posted in Awesome, Happened To Me

 

Business as Usual

10 Apr

A prophet’s job is never done.

Fortunately, that meant lots of overtime for Bart.

It’s a good job if you can get it. Full benefits, medical, dental, vision, 401(k), and a generous salary. All that’s needed is level 5 clairvoyance – high enough to be useful, but not high enough to be considered gifted. Well, that and-

“Brian, my man!”

-that and the ability to put up with all manner of incessant interruptions.

“My name isn’t ‘Brian’ sir, it’s…”

Tad waved his hand dismissively. “No time to chat Brad. We need the projections on the Rehnquist acquisition. How’s it looking?”

“Well, I just got finished with the internal audit. Johnson’s been embezzling. Again. You might want to look int…”

“To hell with Johnson!” Tad interrupted. “We need that buyout price, and we need it now!”

“I’ll get right on it…shouldn’t take more than a few hours,” Bart replied.

Yes, the overtime was nice, but not nearly as nice as knowing what would happen to Tad in 36 hours. Smiling, Bart got back to work.

(originally published at 12:14AM on Thursday, May 08, 2008 over at Ficlets which is now archived here at ficlets.ficly.com)

 
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Posted in Non-Sequitur Nano-Novel

 

Tweezers, yay!

29 Nov

Tweezer spam? Really?

Tweezer spam? Really?


There are no words for all the things that are wrong with this, but I’ll try:

  • First off, is the traditional tweezer market so saturated that they have to resort to tweezer spam?
  • Then there’s “Buy Online and Save”. While this is true for nearly everything, how much are you really saving by buying tweezers online?
  • “The most popular sites for tweezers are found here!” Now, I know that this is the internet, and I’m quite possibly invoking Rule 34 by even thinking about this question, but really? Popular sites for tweezers? Frankly, I’d be more interested to see the sites that didn’t make the cut, y’know?
  • Lastly, why does the girl in the ad look so damned terrified? Is it because she just realized she’s the new face of “tweezer spam” forever and ever? That’d be enough to make me make a similar face.

And the worst part about this is, if even one person buys tweezers as a result of this, the whole marketing campaign will have been considered a success.

Sometimes I think HatfulOfHollow had the right idea. Bonus points if you know who that is without even clicking the link.

 
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Posted in Happened To Me, Spam I've Received

 

New Body Jewelry

28 Nov

Seamless Ring

Solid metal! However will this work?!


Went to the mall today, and while I was walking around, I stopped off at one of those kiosks that sell body jewelry. The selection is actually surprisingly good, and I stumbled on a sweet new piece – a seamless ring. It’s almost like a magic trick when worn – “how did he get that on?”

Ring Opening Pliers

Credit: www.painfulpleasures.com


The cool thing about these of these types of jewelry is that after it’s all “installed” it looks like a single, solid piece of metal. It just requires some custom tools to get set up. First, you need a pair of ring openers (pictured right). The rubber tips help to prevent denting or chinking the jewelry, which could be fairly painful. Once the openers are applied to it, a small section of the ring will fall out. On a properly made piece of jewelry, you really can’t see it at all until the openers are applied. And really – it’s cool as hell to see that seam just “appear”, almost like a magic trick.

Ring Closing Pliers

Credit: www.painfulpleasures.com

Then, once the ring has been inserted, you need a pair of…wait for it…ring closers (pictured left). They’ve got grooves on the inside of the pliers that the ring just settles into to allow for easier closing, again without denting the metal.

So I get this new ring, use the openers on it and grease it up with mineral oil. Thankfully, I’m healed up enough that I can just remove the old PA jewelry and put the new one in. Getting it closed was an experience in slight terror. First attempt, I placed the segment back in and used the closers to close around it. Unfortunately, that left the segment a little loose. And since the ring rotates, last thing I want is for something loose to…catch.

New tactic is to remove the segment and use the closers to close the ring way too much, and then user the openers to open the ring just enough to slip the segment in. Once that was done, the ring was solid again – no seams, no wiggling. Totally awesome.

Now the only concern left was the fact that it was ever-so-slightly smaller than my old 5/8″ ring, but thankfully it’s since been “tested out” and the fit is perfect.

 
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Posted in Happened To Me, Piercing

 

“A frenum what?”

14 Nov

Insertion Taper

So on Saturday (yesterday), I had an appointment to get a checkup for my prince albert piercing. They like you to come in after 30 days just to make sure everything’s healing up well. I was 99% sure it was, but since this is my first non-born-with-hole-in-my-wang, I figured I’d let the experts give me the all-clear. Well, I get there and after a quick trip to the mall to buy some body jewelry, I’m sitting there with my pants around my ankles. Again.

Since everything was healing up just fine, we decided to gauge the piercing up a bit. To those who are unfamiliar with the term, “gauging a piercing” basically means to stretch it so it’s wider. I couldn’t decide on a 12 gauge or a 10 gauge (it was a 14), so we decided to try out a 12 and see how it went. The way this is done is pretty simple – remove the old jewelry and insert what they call an “insertion taper” (shown upper left). The end of the taper is…well, it’s tapered. It starts off small, and at the largest end is the same size as the new, wider jewelry you want to wear. That way, there is less trauma to the existing piercing location and it generally makes for a much easier stretching experience. So I’m sitting there and making small talk, and then Jenn asks “Well…want to try for the 10 gauge?” Apparently, gauging up to a 12 gauge was a snap – I literally felt nothing. So of course I want to give the 10 gauge a shot. Unfortunately, we only managed to get that taper halfway through before the discomfort was too much. Yes, I might have been able to “tough it out” and eventually get the 10 in there, but…why bother? All I need to do is just wait a while and I can try again later on and there’s really no rush. So she re-inserts the 12 gauge taper and follows it up with the new captive bead ring.

Ta-da! New jewelry and larger gauge.

And since I already had my pants around my ankles and I was in a piercing studio, I decided I wasn’t walking out of there without a new hole punched through me. I had been kicking around the idea of getting a frenum piercing (NSFW). Actually, I’d been considering a frenum ladder (multiple frenum piercings), but really figured it was a good idea to start with just the one and build up from there. And hey, if I didn’t want to get the ladder, then the one piercing would be sufficient.

Frenum Loop

Come on, TELL me this doesn't look at least somewhat interesting.


SPOILER ALERT: Oh hell yes I’m getting the ladder – just gonna let this latest one heal up a bit first. And when I it heals up, check this jewelry out –>

So after getting the PA gauged up, I was told that it’s a good idea to let the area “rest” for a bit, so I got up and walked around a bit to make sure there were no complications or soreness or anything with the stretching. And there wasn’t. So, 30-45 mins later, we go back into the room to get everything underway. Now normally a frenum piercing is done relatively high up on the shaft, but since I have a PA already, it needs to be set a little lower – in my case, about 3/4″ lower than the PA.

The great thing about the place I go to get pierced – and more specifically the person who does my piercings (Jenn at Flippin’ Ink Tattoo – ask for her, she rules) – is that she basically measures and checked everything to death. You know that old adage, “measure twice, cut once”? Well, she’s like that, but on steroids. And that’s freaking awesome, because who wants to have a lopsided piercing?

Once it came time to do the actual piercing, we almost had a bit of a disconnect. See, she does the “breathe in, breathe out a few times and when you breathe out, I’ll pierce” thing. What’s left out of that sentence is exactly which exhale the deed is going to be done on, so I had to stop her twice just so I could be sure. I’m one of those people that needs to know when the pain is going to happen, or I jump or twitch or something. So once we got sync’d up there, I breathe, she pierces, I wince and deed is done. Oddly enough, this one hurt a bit while getting it done – a bit more than I expected it to. But within two minutes, there was no pain, no soreness, and as a matter of fact I went to the mall afterward looking for some tea tree oil (supposedly awesome for piercing aftercare) – something I absolutely couldn’t do after getting the prince albert.

Now that it’s the next day, there has been almost no bleeding which is a great contrast to the PA, where I completely destroyed an entire bedsheet set. There’s also very VERY little soreness, and the damned thing is perfectly symmetrical. Awesome.

I promise eventually I’ll do a blog post about something that’s not my johnson, but I really do have a boring life and this is the only thing of note that’s happened recently. =)

 
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Posted in Awesome, Happened To Me, Painful

 

Just call me…The Fish Whisperer

31 Oct

Or rather, don’t. If I’m gonna be remembered for saving a fish’s life, I’d really rather it not be this one.

So yesterday, I was at the grand opening of Sweet Bikes – an awesome bike shop in Canton, MI run by some good friends. If you drop in and mention this blog post, they’ll give you an awesome bike completely free [*]. I was unannounced and showed up as a surprise because hey, grand openings only happen once, right? So I’m wandering around, making small talk, the usual. One of the topics of conversation was the sweet fish tank they had in there.

Now, I’m a fan of fish tanks in general. You set one up, chuck some fish in it, and voila! You have pets! You are now automatically a lover of animals, a snappy dresser, and one helluva dancer. I am speaking, of course, about freshwater fish tanks. Saltwater fish tanks are another matter altogether. When you have a saltwater tank, you have to spec out which one you’re going to buy 14 months in advance. Then when the stars finally come together and Mercury is in retrograde with a 93 degree declination, you can set up the tank. Initially, the tank must be filled with 28% distilled water, 44% tap water and 28% unicorn tears and left to run untouched and unobserved for 37 days. Then and only then can you consider thinking about the possibility of introducing fish. Or maybe just one fish, since each saltwater fish seems to cost 87 times more than the entire cost of an entire freshwater setup so if it dies, you’ve taken out that second mortgage for no good reason.

So when I saw that they had a fish tank, I was intrigued. When I saw that it was saltwater, I was impressed.

Several hours and lots of chit-chat later, someone mentions that the pufferfish (note: I believe it’s actually a porcupinefish, not a pufferfish) was puffed. Now that’s kinda cool, because it’s an interesting self-defense mechanism: fish gets threatened, fish puffs up and gets all prickly. Not to mention it’s poisonous as hell so even if something does manage to eat it, chances are it’s gonna die. Only problem is that pufferfish do not stay puffed – they deflate when the threat is no longer there and they are no longer stressed out. Nor do they bob and float on their sides while their comically-small-in-comparison fins flap and twitch helplessly.

Not pictured: intelligence.

One call to the fish doctor confirms what we all though: something’s just a little messed up here. Doc says that when a puffer stays puffed with air for too long and can’t deflate itself, the way to help it is to wrangle fish so that its mouth is facing upward, so the air can get outta the fish. This involves whatever’s handy to reposition the fish – aquarium net, or….well, an aquarium net was kinda all there was. Since everyone else was busy either running the store, occupying the people running the store, or buying things since it’s a store, I offered to try and de-puff the fish.

Roughly 30 minutes into manipulating this fish, I notice that every time it loses some air, it adjusts and once in a while tends to float back up to the surface. Where it sucks in more air. Because it’s still stressed. This is the Catch-22 of the whole thing: fish won’t deflate until it’s no longer stressed, but me helping it deflate by moving it around is only serving to stress it out. Joseph Heller is a jerk sometimes. But the fish doctor went to fish school for 8 fish years, so who am I to second guess his advice?

I lost track of time, but I think it was about 30 minutes later when I noticed that the fish was starting to get quite a bit softer. Squishy, even. Once it hit a certain level of squishitude, it started to really move its fins and get a lot more active. I figured I’d gotten enough air out of it manually that maybe it had lost enough to un-puff itself. So I let it go and it dutifully bounces back to the surface on its side. But it didn’t automatically re-inflate, and after about 30 seconds, looked like it was doing its damnedest to kick its own ass – thrashing, twitching and belching all over the place. Sorta reminded me of college for some reason. But, lo and behold, a few seconds later it starts swimming away, all de-airified.

Seriously though, what kind of creature nearly lets its own self-defense mechanism kill it? If this fish ever swam in a school, it was most certainly riding the short bus.

[*] – what are you, crazy? You’re not getting a free bike for mentioning a blog post! But you should drop in anyway, as they’ve got a great selection and damned good prices.

 
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Posted in Funny, Happened To Me

 

This would get me arrested nowadays

26 Oct

In the town I went to college in, jobs were especially hard to come by. Or so I’m told, I have no real means of comparison. I remember when a new video store opened up, there were people lined up around the corner even before the store opened, just for an opportunity to drop off an application. A video store can only employ what…20? 25 people? And that’s pushing it. Yet there they all were – lined up, numbering well into the hundreds just for the slim hope of getting a job. It was like Black Friday, but without Wal-Mart greeters getting trampled or soccer mom knife fights over the latest must-have toy.

Suffice it to say that I didn’t find much work in this environment.

I was a student, and my only appreciable skill was being able to stay up inordinately long and screw off online. And despite the fact that I was completely truthful about this on all of my job applications, I still never got callbacks. Baffling, I know.

As one can imagine, I got a lot of “sorry, we’re not hiring” or some derivative thereof. I could never tell if they were saying, “sorry, we’re not hiring” or “sorry, we’re not hiring YOU” but either way, the end result was the same – I wasn’t getting a job. So to keep from getting aggravated, I would have a bit of fun with it. I’d be politely obnoxious. Case in point:

Guy Who Is Not About To Hire Me: “I’m sorry, but we’re not hiring right now.”
Me: “That’s a shame.”
GWINATHM: “Mmmm-hmm.”
Me: “Why not?”
GWINATHM: “…I’m sorry?”
Me: “Why aren’t you hiring?”
GWINATHM: “Oh, we just don’t have any positions open.”
Me: “Ah. All stocked up, got all the people you need?”
GWINATHM: “Yep.”
Me: “What if that changes?”
GWINATHM: “What do you mean?”
Me: “What if you didn’t have all the people you need? For example, someone doesn’t show up tomorrow or just sorta….vanishes. Would you have an opening then?”
GWINATHM: “I….suppose, yes.”
Me: “Great! Can I have an application please?”

I’d like to think I introduced a little bit of surreality to some middle manager’s existence. Of course now I’d probably be arrested or detained for making generalized threats or something.

 
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Posted in College, Funny

 

The worst thing about being a diabetic

20 Oct

Credit: diabetesinsider.com


As most people who know me already know, I’m a type 1 diabetic. For the uninitiated, that’s the insulin-dependent one. The one with shots. What’s really peculiar is that I developed it spontaneously in my early 20s. But the title of this post wasn’t “The worst thing about getting diabetes” so we’re not going to get into that.

Ok, screw it – the worst thing about getting diabetes was losing 40 pounds inexplicably, then being handed some insulin vials and needles and putting all that weight back. I’m not a particularly vain person, but losing 40 pounds was awesome. And the only trade off was a blood glucose level in the low 700s! For the uneducated, a “normal” blood glucose level is supposed to be between 75 and 125. Ah well.

Anyway, the worst thing about being a diabetic isn’t the fact you can’t eat what you want to. It’s not the fact that eating something that has lots of fat in it – like pizza – just throws your sugars all out of whack for the next several hours. It’s not even the fact that with the current state of medical advancements, it will take a number of years off the end of my life (although that part does kinda sorta suck). No, it’s the fact that generally, you are more educated than the healthcare folks that you’ll go to see. Doubly so if you’re a veteran.

With the exception of Jill Vollbrecht – the endocrinologist that saw me when I was hospitalized for diabetic ketoacidosis (story forthcoming) – I have had to educate each and every nurse and doctor about some aspect of my disease. I had a doctor lecture me for an hour, telling me that I needed to work on my exercise and diet and I’d be just fine, despite the fact I told him 4 times that I was a type 1. For those that don’t know, type 2 diabetes is the one that can be controlled with diet and exercise, while type 1 diabetics need insulin – period. It’s not gonna get better because I eat right and exercise. Yes, diet and exercise helps out everyone, but not in the way this guy was pushing. And when a nurse finally came in, looked at my chart, and said “Doctor, he’s a type 1, not a type 2″ he just looks at me and says, “Yes…I know…but exercise is still good”. Nice save. Ass.

And here’s one that no one told me for years, and most doctors still don’t know (apparently): eating fatty foods can affect insulin absorption. And not in a good way. When you eat a lot of fat, it slows the rate of absorption of insulin drastically. So let’s say that my numbers are good and in control all morning, but for lunch I go out and have some pizza. I can take the requisite amount of insulin, and my numbers will steadily increase for the next 4 – 5 hours because all the fat in the pizza will prevent all the insulin I took from getting to the carbohydrates. For years, I had no idea this was the case until a diabetic nurse in Orlando told me this – wish I could remember her name. Any other doctors I’ve seen, I’ve had to explain this to them. Doctors. Medical professionals. People that went to school for way longer than I did, and yet I’m educating them on something that is a relatively important thing with regards to this disease.

'Patient shows classic symptoms of diabetes. I prescribe large doses of apathy....for the doctor.'


And this is the worst one – the one that really gets me angry: many medical professionals will use my diabetes as an excuse to not do any goddam work. As a matter of fact, the phrase used most commonly to preface the fact that they’re not going to do anything whatsoever is, “Well, you do have diabetes…” A friend of mine who also has type 1 diabetes once said, “You can go into a doctor’s office with a freaking knife sticking out of your head, and the doctor will still say, ‘Well, you do have diabetes…’” and while I didn’t notice it beforehand, she was absolutely right.

The problem with this line of thinking is twofold:

  1. The minute they start thinking like that is the minute they’ve already decided that whatever you’re coming to them about must have something to do with diabetes, even though there’s nothing to indicate that. At all.
  2. At this point, critical thinking stops. Everything is tinged with the diagnosis of “diabetes”, so other things can go completely overlooked.

And it’s usually said with such an air of authority, that when you casually point out that maybe you have a stinging pain in your side because of what the police report lists as “a horrific javelin accident” rather than the generic diagnosis of “it’s your diabetes”, they look at you like you’re the crazy one. Which is why when I find medical professionals that a) don’t do that and b) freely admit that they don’t know things rather than try to blow smoke, those are the ones that I tend to stick with. For example, my current GP – Lara Madigan – rocks. Sure, we’ve had disagreements, and on a few occasions she’s called me out on what turned out to be bullshit, and she’s all sorts of insistent that I get a flu shot, but she’s never flat out lied to me or tried to pass off ignorance as authority.

Hopefully, once stem cell research takes off and there’s a cure for diabetes – stem cell transplantation has already cured diabetes in mice! – we won’t have to deal with this crap anymore. If you’re interested in new and emerging diabetic studies and products, Diabetes Mine is an great blog that consolidates a lot of information in one location.

 
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Posted in Happened To Me, Medical

 

“You pierced WHAT?”

15 Oct

Before I start, a few quotes from some people who I told about this:

“You really are a twisted person.”

“Did you pierce what I think you pierced?”

“You’re going all out with this shit, aren’t you?”

SPOILER ALERT: the answer to all three of those questions is “yes”.

Ladies and gentlemen, last night I got a Prince Albert piercing (wiki link, NSFW images).

I had decided to do it a few weeks prior to going to Burning Man, but various things kept me from getting it done. Don’t ask why I did it, because I don’t have a reason that’s any better than why I got my nipples pierced and the answer to that one is, “Why not?”

I’ve always been into body modification and I’m pretty much done with the tattoo thing for now. But recently I kinda got the itch to do something again. Piercings are quick and oddly painless, and if you don’t like them, you can remove them and they seal back up very quickly. And people who have been way more pierced than I ever will be have stated repeatedly that the nipples are by far the most painful out of all the ones they’ve ever had. Frankly, I doubt this includes an ampallang (wiki link, NSFW images) but I digress.

So on Tuesday, I decided enough was enough, and I’d just call to get some details about the procedure. Not the procedure itself, as I’ve done quite a bit of research as to how it’s performed, but rather how much it would set me back. I called the “good” tattoo / piercing place here in town (Flippin Ink) – there are several, but I’ve heard from different people that this is the “good” one – to get some details about cost. I was quoted $120 to get a Prince Albert. Ouch. I’m pretty damned tapped out monetarily lately, so that number hurt. But then they told me that the resident piercer is running a “portfolio special” and was only charging $10 for any genital piercing, and that includes jewelry! The catch? I gotta let her take a picture for her portfolio – hence “portfolio special”.

So wait…..in order to save $110, all I have to do is let someone take some pics of my junk? SOLD.

Unfortunately, nothing was available that same day, so I made an appointment for Wednesday after work at 7. Getting bored with nothing else to do other than think about what’s about to happen, I get there a bit early. I meet Jen, the apprentice piercer and her mentor Mason. Jen wasn’t ready yet since I was early, so I sat down and shot the shit with Mason for a bit. He’s got a PA as well, and asked me if I had any questions. I basically asked him to give me the answer to the same questions that every dude who gets a PA asks. In no particular order, here’s what I was told:

  • Get used to not being able to use urinals for a while. It’s possible, but it takes some skill as well as some manual manipulation of your junk while standing at a urinal.
  • First couple days, it’s gonna bleed, but it won’t hurt.
  • It’ll take 4-6 weeks to heal, maybe twice that for me (diabetic)
  • NO SEX. He relayed a story that really made me believe what he had to say on the subject (not that it’s a huge issue right at the moment =) )
  • Believe it or not, urination isn’t painful.

So by this point, Jen’s gotten things more or less set up, and I go back there, along with Mason as he’s supervising. She asks me if I’d prefer to sit or lay down, and I relate my earlier revelation that reclining seems to keep the vasovagal reaction at bay. Mason comes in, closes the door and says “Alright dude, best way to do this is for you to drop trou, hop in the chair and let’s get this started”. Keeping it light and informal was awesome, as trying to be too serious would have just been weird. Which is why I had absolutely no problem commenting on just how fucking cold they kept it in there and thanking them profusely for it.

After I de-pants and get in the chair, I see that they’ve laid out a couple of different sized rings and were determining which one to use. The largest was about the circumference of a penny and was the one they decided on. I asked why it needs to be so large, and they explain to me that since it would be somewhat awkward to ask a guy to get an erection right before someone jammed a metal needle through it, they have to choose one that’s large enough to accommodate flaccid as well as rock hard. Not doing so could lead to….tightness. Yow. I comment “Yeah, I think I’d have a hard time with that. No pun intended.”

In retrospect, maybe making the piercer laugh isn’t a wise course of action but what can I say, I gotta be me. And me gets all chatty when he’s nervous.

So they decide on the size of the ring, and now she’s measuring / marking exactly where the piercing is going to be placed. She told me later that she prides herself on “measuring twice, piercing once” and to my mind, that’s a really, really good thing. Now, I don’t know if you know anything about how this piercing is done, but I’m going to assume that you don’t and I’ll explain.

This thing was wider than I care to recall


What you see to the right is called a “receiving tube”. This thing is lubed up and then fit into the urethra and the beveled (is that the right word?) edge is pressed against the bottom of the penis to stretch out the skin and give the piercing needle someplace to go. The piercing starts on the bottom of the penis, and goes into the tube, rather than starting inside the tube and exiting on the bottom.

They started using the “holy shit that thing is huge” size but when positioning it, it slipped out, so I took that opportunity to ask her to use the “jesus christ that thing’s still huge but it’s smaller than the last one” size. That one worked out a lot better. I mentioned that I think this tops the list of Least Sexy Things I’ve Ever Had Done To My Junk, and she apologized for it which was amusing. I assured her it wasn’t her, and that I was just babbling as I tend to do when nervous. At this point, everything was more or less ready to go, and Mason had me start doing some breathing exercises: inhale through the nose, exhale hard out the mouth. Keep doing it, and then they started the countdown – on the third exhale, she was going to pierce. So I breathe, he counts down, and on the third exhale, I brace for the pain and…

Nothing.

Well, not really nothing, but it wasn’t bad at all. Just a small pinching sensation that lasted for ~1 second. Now, I had done my research, and I knew that this is what I was supposed to expect as the skin there is very thin and it’s not through any fibrous tissue or anything, but knowing a thing and experiencing a thing are usually completely different until after the fact. So this thing was really a great big non-event. Shame no one told my vagus nerve.

So they’re asking me how I’m doing, the same way they always do after you get pierced / tattooed / whatever, and I tell them that I’m fine. They say they’re going to wait until I’m ready to insert the jewelry, as right now the receiving tube’s been removed, it’s just the needle sticking through. I tell them that there’s no time like the present, and it’s not actually hurting, so go for it now. She gets the ring and threads it through the needle, then pulls it through and voila! Deed is done.

They offer me some water and cold air, and I gladly accept as I can feel the vasovagal reaction start. Now, sometimes it doesn’t go full bore and breathing, drinking water, cold air, etc help to head it off at the pass. Not this time though. It happened very slowly, so I was talking to them throughout it happening as the tunnel vision completely closed in and I just sorta went deaf. This was our next conversation:

Him: “…….smelling salts”
Me: “You don’t need smelling salts, man.”
Him: “We lost you for a few, dude.”
Me: “Yeah. Yeah you did, and now I’m back. Worst is over, I’m good now. Thanks.”

Which was completely true. When this happens, I tend to lose consciousness for about 5 seconds, but once that happens, it’s all uphill from there, so I knew I was fine.

After that, it was just a matter of finishing up. They had to pinch the ring closed so they could get the tension ball on there, wait to make sure the bleeding stopped, etc. They get everything taken care of and finished up, and hand me a mirror so I could get a good look at their work which was awesome. Placement was great, dead center and everything. Mason agreed, saying “Damn Jen, that placement is perfect! Way to go, your first Prince Albert came out perfectly.”

…..say wha’?

I actually didn’t care, I just thought it was funny that I was the first PA she’d ever done. But regardless of whether or not it was her first or hundred and first, it still came out great. Then they took some pics from a few different angles for her portfolio, as agreed.

After that, I got dressed, went out and paid, made some small talk, and went home. I then proceeded to completely destroy a nice set of sheets because I fell asleep in the middle of getting prepped and when I woke up, there was a sizable bloodstain.

And then the next day, I had to work from home because the damned thing kept scabbing, and I kept moving, and the scab kept ripping, and the bleeding would start again. It’s not a lot of blood, it’s just persistently there. Aggravating to say the least. They promised to get me copies of the pics they took, but I don’t have them yet.

So, the question of the day is:

Should I post (password protected) pics?

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Posted in Awesome, Happened To Me, Painful

 

My first foray into piercing

14 Oct

Not doing it, but having it done to me. It’s how I discovered that I truly and absolutely despise my body.

As some of you may know, I have what’s known as a vasovagal reaction (wiki link) whenever I have any kind of trauma inflicted on my body: giving blood, having blood taken, tattoos, piercings, etc. In the normal run of things, what happens is I get very clammy and all the color drains from my face. My hearing starts to get all cotton-y, like tunnel vision of the ears (pipe down, it works in my head). Then the real tunnel vision starts, to the point where I eventually can’t see anything. At this point, I’m still able to talk, and I tell whomever what’s going on, and that I should be fine if I get a little water and some cold air. Usually that’s the case. In the worst case, I’ll do the world’s slowest faint.

It’s so fucking masculine, people 3 blocks over are in danger of testosterone poisoning, lemme tell you.

So back on July 26th of this year, I was in Saginaw to see the diabetic folks at the VA so I could blah blah blah worthless fucking waste of my time and for once, I told them so. That didn’t go over well. Anyway, I digress. So I get the text message letting me know that my divorce was finalized as I was leaving the VA and I saw a body piercing place, and thought, “Fuck it, why not?”

So I swing in, and make lots of nervous, stalling chit-chat with the piercer there, talking about healing times, etc. Then I ask on a scale of 1 – 10, how bad the pain is supposed to be. Without missing a beat, she replies, “One to ten? About as damned close to ten as it gets, really.”

Lovely. At least she’s honest.

So, rather then pretending to decide – since I had already decided to do this a week or so ago – I told her to go set everything up. A few minutes – and a few text messages consisting of little more than “OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD” – she calls me back. I sit down, and start making nervous chit-chat. It’s something I do when I’m terrified out of my mind, you see. Lucky for me, the lady was a purist – no ice, no anesthetic, no nothing. And then she said something that I thought was complete bullshit: “You know, most people say that the actual piercing doesn’t hurt. The clamp hurts worse, all tight and uncomfortable.” SPOILER ALERT: she was absolutely right, to my surprise.

The piercing equipment used

This is the equipment they laid out prior to the piercing


So she explains everything she’s going to do, showing me all the equipment, etc because that’s actually the kind of thing that puts me at ease. Then she asks if I’m ready, applies the clamp (after the iodine and alcohol – we’re not savages up here!) gets everything positioned. Tells me to take a breath, she’ll count down from three and then push the needle through. I get ready, brace myself as well as I’m able for something I’m completely unfamiliar with, and she says “Three…..you’re looking, stop looking…..two….no really, stop looking, you don’t want to see this and breathe wouldja?….one….”

And just like that, the deed was done. It hurt considerably less than I ever would have believed, so that was a bit of a shock. Once it was done, the usual “Everything ok? Doing alright?” is said, and I told her that I could really use some cool air and a cold drink, things that normally help forestall the vasovagal reaction. She goes and gets me a drink and as she’s walking back, I hear her mention something to her co-worker about possibly needing her back here in a few. I tell her that I should be fine, cold water and air really help out, and I’ll be alright.

That’s more or less the last coherent thought I had for roughly 5 seconds.

Next thing I know, I’m being held up by two lovely women, with one of them yelling at me, “COME BACK TO US! WAKE UP!” with the other one waving smelling salts under my nose. Smelling salts! That crap REALLY stinks, by the way. My body went into full-on shock and skipped all the steps I outlined above and went straight from “fine” to “passed-the-fuck-out” in no time flat.

I AM ALL THAT IS MAN!

Afterward, I seem to remember telling them to stop shouting and giving them a weak thumbs up. The associate says, “Oh good, he’s getting color back now. I mean, it’s not a good color, but at least it’s color.” At some point, someone brought in a bucket – unused (go me!) So once I started to feel better, I lie down while my body recovers. Part of the recovery process is for every single pore to open up at once and dump massive amounts of sweat. It’s attractive. No really. At one point, we were joking that I might actually slip off the table that I was lying on.

Ten minutes later, I’m feeling better, go up front to pay, tip her well, and get into my car to drive away. What’s really weird is that sitting here now, 7 hours later, the piercing feels fine, as does the area around it (which is the area that was throbbing earlier, not the piercing itself). This is odd to me on several levels: I’m a diabetic and it takes me twice as long to heal than it does for most others, so….weird. Also, it’s supposed to be 6-8 weeks before preliminary healing takes place, not 6-8 hours. Weird.

Anyway, as a result of my body going into some weird form of shock, I was only able to get one of my nipples pierced. I can’t stand being asymmetrical. Fortunately, about a week or so later, I found a place here in town that does body piercing so I went in, paid my money, and had a very nice lady punch a hole in my non-mutilated nipple. This time, I had no issue with any vasovagal reactions. The main difference between the first one and this one was that for the first one, I was sitting up in a chair and for this one, I was reclined.

This is not foolproof as I found out when I went to get my next piercing. But that’s a story for another day. Seriously, I’m still writing it, so give me a day.

But, to all the people who’ve said “pics or it never happened”, there’s a pic. Fair warning though, you click on the “Show” link, you’re gonna see my nipples. But that’s why you’re gonna click on it and you know it.

NSFW (Not Safe For Work):   Show



 
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Posted in Awesome, Happened To Me, Painful

 
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