Anchors Aweigh

"So, Heather's worried her anchor is going to be too butch, so you need to gay it up a little for her.""Too butch? It's an anchor for crying out loud! It can't help but be butch." "I know. Throw some flowers or swallows on the thing or something."

That's a conversation I had with our family tattooist, Fish while Ed was getting his greenman. So, yeah, as you may have gathered, The Wife is getting a new tattoo today.

Sadly, I am unable to attend the inking, and will have to wait until I get off work to see the latest masterpiece to come off Fish's needles.

Pictures to follow...

In the meantime, here's a little history on anchor tattoos (courtesy of Sailor Jerry):

The anchor has become quite the staple in the tattoo world but was originally associated with young sailors first trip over the Atlantic. The anchor tattoo has become a symbol for stability and a strong foundation. It can also symbolize a lover and the stability that lover has brought to their lives. In ancient times the anchor was a symbol with ties to the early Christian church. An anchor tattoo can also be thought of as holding one steadfast, like an anchor holding a great sailing ship safe in harbour, against winds and currents that might carry it astray. How Romantic.

Damn right.

Update (12:28pm): Just heard from The Wife -- apparently the anchor goes through a heart and there will be a life preserver inside the arm. And there's a banner that will be left blank for the time being (Feel free to submit suggestions. My current favorite idea: SINK OR SWIM). She's super excited and says it's beautiful. She also says she needs to start working out so she can be as badass as her tattoos seem. ;) I also reminded her that her phone has a camera and should be able to post to my Flickr account, but we may have to depend on Miracle Ed to figure that crap out.

Congrats! It's a Vedvik!

My CL350 wrenching buddy (and coworker) Erik Vedvik and his wife Taara welcomed their brand new baby boy into the world on November 26th at 10:23pm.

Tale of the Tape:

  • Weight: 8 pounds, 2 ounces
  • Length: 21 inches
  • Name: Ian Andrew TBD (This isn't really a surprise to us.)

Mother and child (and Papa) are doing well according to reports. Congratulations to the three of them!

Jake Sutton: MIA

So, yeah... I'm still here. Here's a little catch-up:

  • My efforts at work on the superultramegaubercrazy-high priority project have come to a rather frustrating result so far thanks to interoperability problems between ColdFusion 5 and Oracle9. Every time we hit the Oracle9 database it causes the memory usage of the ColdFusion server to climb, with that memory never being released. This eventually causes the connection to the database to die with an S1001 Memory Allocation Error, which requires a ColdFusion restart to fix the problem (until the memory allocation builds back up again). Super-fucking-duper.
  • The Big Blue Couches rock. While we are trying to keep the pets off them, it's obviously futile. At least the puddles of Mingus hair come off the ultra-luscious blue microsuede without a problem. I'm just extra-pleased with the fact taht I can lie completely prostrate on the big sofa without touching either arm.
  • The Wife and I have been to the hotbox yoga a total of three times so far. I am enjoying it quite a bit, though I think I may have overstretched my back the last time out. We hope to squeeze a couple more classes into our two week trial period.
  • My motorcycle wrenching buddy Erik and his wife are inches away from having their baby boy. Very exciting times for them!
  • I'll be brining the second turkey of the month for Thanksgiving festivities starting tonight. If you haven't brined a turkey or at least eaten the product of said process, I can't even express how much you need to try it.
  • I'm almost done with the Tales of the Otori trilogy. I highly recommend all three books.
  • Now let's turn the lens outward a bit:

And thus concludes today's category smorgasbord.

Trickeration III

Oh, good. Holzie wrote up the party, so I don't have to (I could barely think where to start). Heather and I took Erik along and only managed to hang for a couple-few hours, but man was it fun.

There were some great costumes (and yes, naked girls with body paint == "great costumes", but nothing beats the Donnie Darko bunny hanging out with the Noid), good music, and something like a million people there (which makes it surprising that I enjoyed it so much).

There's a profile for the party on Match.com and there was supposed to be someone from DenverMix.com there taking pictures, but I'm not sure about that.

Madness (aka The Dangermen)


Madness
Originally uploaded by Jake Sutton.

Sure it's a useless picture, but it represents one of the super-funnest moments of my recent history.

Last night we saw 80's ska masters Madness at a relatively tiny club called the Troubadour in LA. The marquee only listed the opening band, the Aggrolites, and some group called The Dangermen. (As it turns out that's the name of the new Madness album.)

What a show! The Aggrolites were a perfect opening band -- high energy "dirty reggae" was just the thing to get the crowd in the mood. Then, after a frustratingly long wait beween sets, Madness came on stage looking like a flashback to two decades ago. The group still kicks out the mad ska jams, even though they're a bunch of (at least) forty-year-olds.

This was also my first "secret" concert, so that adds to the cool factor a bit. The only celebs we saw, though, were Dicky Barrett from the Bosstones (he's on Kimmel and LA radio nowadays) and Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols (he's also a fancy LA radio jockey now).

City of Angels

At first light tomorrow, The Wife and I are off on a road trip to see her brother et al in LA. We'll be stopping off at Vegas for Saturday night at the Tropicana, but don't expect much material for FtN, as we will probably be just as likely just get a bite and hit the bed as we would be to spend time at the gaming tables.

Was this space for camera phone pics, but don't expect much more.

We'll probably be leaving the gang at Los Feliz on Wednesday and getting back in time for me to hit the ABATE class Friday evening.

Good times!