My body beat me.

My ribs got the better of me yesterday.

I was planning on trying to sit for 4 hours of tattooing my ribs.
I was ambitious.
Really just not smart.
I knew better, I really did.
I tapped out at around 2 hours and 15 minutes.
Oh my God.
At that point I could really feel that if I sat for too much longer, I would vomit.

On the plus side, I've started what will turn out to be a sweet tattoo. And I did get a large amount of work done on it. Two more sittings, I hope, will finish it. There is still a great deal of work to be done, but I'm happy.

The cold air comes in.

It was fairly warm today, but fall is on its way. The other day at work my coworker and I had to force work to get us new uniforms, starting with a sweater, because it was too cold to be standing outside in a just a shirt(A pink one at that). Of course this meant I was alone, and swamped with work, for a hour or so while said coworker was dragged away by the management to try on clothes.

Anyway.

I enjoy the cold. Fall is really my season, but the drop in temp really does nothing good for me. I am blessed with a fearless and ferocious case a dry skin. I'll give it to Sean that his is worse, but my hands and lips start cracking and bleeding once its hits 60. My hands look like poorly sculpted clay models left out in the sun to dry. I could keep a zombie infestation happy with the amount of skin that rips off my lips in a given season. It's really not a pretty sight. Thankfully, Burt's Bees exists, and Zombies aren't real.

Aside from exponential death of my soft and smooth skin cells, the cold brings on the aches of old age. Sure, I'm only 20, still a young buck. A young buck that's been shot in a few helpful joints. Seriously though, my bones ache like you wouldn't believe. My right leg begins to feel like a plaster skeleton with joints super glued into the classic skeleton pose; straight. My shoulder starts to pretend I've been a Major League Pitcher for 30 years, and has just got no life left. My messenger bag, containing a book or two, and possibly something else of an equally light weight, will begin to feel as if I'm the nerdy kid in school who carries his extensive rock collection with him for good luck.

Forgetting my body that seems to fall more and more apart on a daily basis, I really do love these up coming seasons. The cold is just....nicer. The colors are softer, sweeter, and not on overweight women in tube tops. It really just makes me enjoy things more. A good blanket, a burning hot cup of coffee, the company of others, it all just gets intensified as the weather begins to cool. And come on, it's easy to get warm. Be creative.




The point of this blog is about to be changed.

Amber has been urging me to blog once again, it has been a long time. The plan was for both of us to post a blog about our time spent together when I went back to Maine this summer. We. however, are both very similar and very similarly did not blog for a very long time. Now a blog about a trip home last month just seems silly. So in short:

I ventured home this summer, finally, for a short time. In which time I saw very few people, and managed to do a lot. I finally got to see my friend Amber again. Explaining our relationship is not yet something I have been able to do all that well. In far too many ways, we are the same. There was no real set up for our friendship, no real introduction, no real time spent together before hand, it just sort of happened, and it has yet to stop.

We spent a lovely day together doing what we do best, which is not much at all. We drank coffee, and walked through the Camden park, and finally took post on a bench by the harbor. We talked for hours about the same things we always do, and somethings we hadn't. We had a giant catch up on life, filling in the gaps for each other, and for ourselves. Eventually movement started again, and we toyed around in The Planet, a fantastic store for those of you who don't already know. This happened:
And afterwards we finished our excursion with some ice cream from a friendly little place that really liked my hat and had a place for us to sit outside and continue talking about this and that(pregnant high schoolers.) It was a day well spent.

New post.

I havent posted anything in a loooong time. I miss it. It's not that I have nothing to write about, its that I have no time. I have been having so much fun lately, it lessens my need to blog, and my time to do it.

Here are some likes and dislikes I have realized over the past few weeks.

James likes:

Letting off some steam Monday nights at jazz bars.
Staying out until 9AM with Pete and Jen.
Being out with good friends in general.
Meeting cute girls, that turn into new friends, if nothing else.
Reading, and or writing. I haven't come up with anything thats lasted lately, but the effort alone is worth it.
Work.
Meeting people I have waited ages to meet: Chan Marshall.
New comics.
$10 movies at Virgin.
The pasta specials from Fanellie's.
His new iPhone, that is not quite working yet. Just the idea.
When girls just don't seem to care about my tattoos.


James dislikes:

Waiting for people.
Being late.*
People who interfere with my routine.
The Jonas Brothers, and the hundreds of 12 year old girls who were screaming and waiting for them at the Apple store the other day/night/forever.
People who demand respect, and give none in return.
People who bring bikes on subways.*
People who ride bikes on sidewalks. Its a sidewalk, not a sidebike.
Having people rely on me.
Those who do not understand my sense of realism. It goes beyond most.
When randoms want to sit and talk to me about my tattoos in situations where I am clearly busy.
When people think that since I have tattoos, it's ok for them to grab my arm are start moving it around.



* This is a side note. But I really fucking hate being late. To work, for friends, anything. When I have things to do, I like to do them. It does not take me long to get ready and I don't understand when it takes other people longer than me. There are certain things I do, that I do all the time, and if I have to wait for someone else to get these things done, it just sets off everything about me. Even when I get to my destination, if I'm late, I don't have as good a time. When I'm late for work, I feel awful. When I'm late for friends, I just cant have as much fun. I'm always the first one ready. I'm always the first person there for dinner reservations. I just really can't stand being late.

*I'm sorry, but you brought your bike out. Why the fuck are you taking it on the subway? Did your parents never teach you how to ride it? I don't care if it started to rain, maybe you should have checked the weather before you came out with your fucking bike. The subway is no place for a bike. And please don't act like the subway needs to make room for you. Too many times have I had to squeeze in so some lazy d-bag with a bike can fit in. Hey loser, just ride it home, you'll probably beat the L train.

Tonight tonight.

I was exhausted. I did a back to back at work, 4 to midnight, and then back in at 7 until 3. With a not so brief stop at the bar, for some sweet free drinks, in between. I took a nap, and went back to work. So I intended on going to bed sort of early tonight. Maybe blog, read, and pass out. But then I couldn't think of anything to say in here.

I used to blog a lot, not so much anymore. I couldn't figure it out, so I went to myspace, where I did most of my blogging, and just sat reading old posts for like 2 hours. I read back over the last few years of my life. Going back to high school. And well, I think I've figured it out. I don't have as much to complain about anymore. I'm in a place with things to do, a sweet job, good friends. I just lack all the old problems I had. Girls, stupid people*, boredom, money, blah blah blah.

There are things I want to change, frankly, I would welcome some girl problems. But hell, I just really have nothing angry with, or even slightly annoyed. I'm doing fine.



* I will never actually be rid of stupid people. I'm just at a point in my life where aside the unavoidable times at work or on the street, I don't deal with them. I have little to no personal relationships with stupid people. And I like that.

I spoke the words...

...but never gave a thought to what they all could mean.

Some things leading to this post:

1) Talking with Kelly tonight, about nothing at all.

2) A section of the book I'm reading, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, talking about how bad hospital food is.

3) My growing awareness of my spotty memory.



After reading that part of the book (although it is listed above as "2", it was actually the last in the series of events to spark this post.) I began to think about what I thought of hospital food. I ate a great deal of hospital food during my stay, about three meals a day for roughly 3 weeks. Granted, I didn't eat for about a week, but I make up for lost time in the amount of late night ice cream I stole from the freezer while everyone else was sleeping. Honestly, I don't remember liking or hating hospital food. It doesn't really jump out at me as my biggest worry at the time, I was more concerned with finally regaining my ability to hobble to the bathroom with out my crutches. Yes, that was a process that took up a good deal of my time. Along with remembering if, and how, I had done it the day before. Anyway, hospital food was not really the point of this.

I began to think of Kelly, and trying to remember her during that time in my life. There are a few things I know for certain:

I know she came to see me, with Kait, and her mother. And I know her general reaction when she first heard what happened.

I really only KNOW these things because she told me later on, after I started to work again, during numerous talks about the situation. There are a lot more things that I THINK I know, but I really have no idea. And yeah, this kind of is The Diary of James Walsh. (Raise your hand if you get that joke.) I'm fairly certain that prior to her visit, I talked to Kelly, and many members of her family, possibly even friends of ours, on the phone in my room. I'm pretty sure I know this because I remember her father telling me I should get some food at this place down that street from the hospital, I guess it's pretty good. I'm also pretty sure at some point, I got food from this place, I think my parents brought it to me. But anyway, I think I vaguely remember talking to her father, and I'm just taking advantage of the obvious here, if I talked to Kelly's father on the phone, I probably talked to her.

More importantly, I'm pretty sure she cried when she came to see me. I don't, however, really remember her coming to see me. Like I said, I KNOW it happened, but that doesn't really mean I remember it. I do seem to remember this one part though, her having to leave the room at one point, due to tears. I've seen Kelly cry before, Kelly has seen me cry as well, blah blah, we are close. But this is different. This is something that through all the fog of my shattered memory of the time, I have stuck in my head. Just this image of her covering her face in tears, leaving the room, at what I can only assume is a shocking sight of a best friend in a hospital bed. It's fucking terrible, I know, but it's a fucking beautiful, in a poetic sort of way, moment in a friendship. Looking back how many times can you say you've ever seen someone breakdown in raw emotion like that, let alone over you. She has told me over and over again how she broke down when she heard what happened, but hearing it is just so much different than just seeing it.

This is just, what I think to be, a landmark moment in anyones life. It's such a piece of literature I almost have trouble believing it's real. And no, not because of the head injury. But it just seems, I say again, kind of poetic. It's tragic, but it's beautiful. It's heartbreaking really, it's almost too much for words.

I hope I have done it justice, without over doing it. This is just something I have stuck in me forever, and I kind of wanted to talk about it.

The other morning

at work, a guest gave me a $15 iTunes card because he has an English account and it wouldn't work for him.

So, I'm looking for some music to download, legally. What would you recommend?

Southtown girls wont blow you away.

But girls from Montreal will.

I had an incredible night at work.

And I have a story to tell.

But I'm saving it.