"...My city's there, My city's gone..."

3 days...
I hope I have everything packed. Well, actually, I know I don't have everything. I walked out of work today without biz cards...fuck. I think I've got a small stock pile of them somewhere. I have 4 appointments up there already, but I'm not sure what to expect as far as walk-ins. I'm sure I'll be a-ok.
Tonite was rather...wierd. Today was busy with lookers and walk-in traffic. I had a guy come in who was pumped about a firefighter patch tattoo. He was all but zipping around my room about it. He lost his nerve somewhere after the outline, and decided to come back for the rest of the shading. It was a huuuuuuuuge tattoo that took up his entire forearm, so I guess I don't blame him. Everything was quiet for a little while. I decided to start packing my stuff, and in doing so, unintentionally attracted some rather shady characters. I'm not sure if it was a family or just a whole hoard of friends, or both, but there were about 10 of them. They were just non-stop running back and forth, getting into everything. We kept telling them that no one is allowed back with the person getting tattooed, and they would ignore us. They even made up excuses like "Can I use your bathroom," then stood in the hallway and started talking to the client getting tattooed in the room (you have to pass Landon and Ryan's room to get to the bathroom). Aleesha and I had to keep all our eyes on them. They kept taking magazines out, and I didn't see them put them back. I think they knew we were watching them. They got all shifty-eyed when we looked in there direction.
Brian eventually got the shits of their frequent movement and blatant disrespect for studio policies, so he locked them out of the studio once the 'friends' walked out for a moment. We were close to closing time anyways.
We've had some wierd ones these past couple of days. The other day, a dude walks in wanting to look at tribal. I direct him to the flash and he starts looking. I don't like to stand over people while they are looking, so I walked back behind the counter. Next thing I know, Brian jets over to the dude and starts yelling. This guy was taking pix of the flash with his cell phone. Brian makes him delete the pictures and gives him a verbal warning. The guy leaves shorty after. A little while later, Brian gets a call from another tattoo studio. The other studio says they have a dude there that was caught taking pix on his phone, and that he still had pix from our studio, and that they had deleted EVERYTHING from his camera. That was pretty cool of them.
The next day, it was just Brian and I, and both of us were tattooing. I heard the door ring, and waited for whomever to walk around the corner. No one did. Next thing I know, Brian jets out of his room and screams "HEY, what do you think you are doing?"
I asked him what happened, and he said some chick came in and made a bee-line behind the counter to the phone and starts dialing. WTF! To top it off, our 'photographer' from the day before came in AGAIN! Some people are UNBELIEVABLE!!
That was way too much ridiculousness packed into 3 days. I hope MA is a little more chill and private. I'm actually looking forward to sight-seeing up there. My hosts have agreed to show me around up there. I hope I can find some sweet souvenirs to bring back for people.

I tell ya, this life style sure is strange. I love what I do, I love the flexibility, I love being an artist, but sometimes it makes you want to become a hermit. I've been having more frequent aspirations to become a pilot. I've always had re-ocurring night-time dreams and daydreams of flight since I was a kid, and they are starting to become a little more persuasive. I think it's because I have an 80 minute drive to think about it everyday. I also have aspirations to learn a few more languages. Yes, more than one. I have no interest in American culture. The only way to submerse myself in something other than my own heritage is to adapt another language so that I can partake of another's culture. It should be fun, especially since it involves travelling!
Once I consider myself established, I'm going to drop back to 4 days a week. I might actually accomplish one or more of my aforementioned goals!
Welp, this is tooo long already, so until tomorrow...Adios!