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Close of the Weekend

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This weekend and latter half of the week got away from me.  I didn’t mean to  go so long in between posts, but I can’t change that now.

Tuesday the 20th was my birthday, but I didn’t really do much.  I worked that night and the following night, Wednesday, but I took off Thursday night.  Add that night off to my normal Friday and Saturday nights off, and I got a 3-day weekend.  The weather was nice and I got to hangout with friends several times, so overall it was a good weekend.

Friday morning I had to drive to Dallas to finalize the eviction of a tenant.  This is never fun to do, but since she wasn’t paying rent at all and had basically moved out of the house, but left her stuff inside, we had to go through legal channels to get her removed.  It only took Emily and I about an hour to move out the remaining items in the house, and we stacked them in the front yard on the curb.  This is the practice authorized by the County Constable’s office.  Hopefully the neighbors came by and took all her stuff so that it doesn’t sit on the curb too long.

Immediately following the clean out of this rent house, I went and got a new tattoo as a birthday gift to myself.  This one is located on the outside of my left forearm.  I’ve been wanting a sword-and-shield tattoo for a while to signify the Armor of God passage in Ephesians.  I found this design online a couple of months back and decided to get it done as a tatt.  The next step will be filling in the area between my 3 tattoos on my left forearms to complete a sleeve.  I’m not sure what fill-in I want to do yet; right now I am thinking about a rose bush with an abundant supply of thorns, but I am not 100% certain.

Friday night we went to see October Baby.  This was a really good flic.  It was the story of a young girl who found out that she was adopted, and above all, that her birth mother had tried to abort her.  The main star had lots of health issues as a result of this, and its a story of her trying to find her birth mother and learn more about herself.  It was a good pro-life story.  It wasn’t in-your-face or overbearing in any way, it was just a true-to-life tale of people’s lives.  Its a good family film, I’d recommend it to anyone of any age.

Saturday I went to a gun show in Irving with my dad and also a friend from church.  The Irving show was somewhat of a disappointment, in my opinion.  They had plenty of tables there, but the number of pistol tables seemed skimpy.  Only 3, that I recall.  They had several AR15 and assault rifle tables, but other than these, it was mostly the outdoorsman-survival-kit-stuff that you always see at gun shows.  I don’t mind this stuff, in fact some of it I take a real interest in, but I go to a gun show to see guns.  This show just wasn’t the greatest one in this area.

Saturday evening we met at Boomer Jack’s in Bedford for my annual birthday get-together.  I’ve done this each year for the last 3-4 years.  I invited people from work and other friends, and we go to Boomers for cheap beer prices and because they allow cigar smoking on the patio.  The weather this weekend was perfect for it.

Sunday night was the Night of Worship at FOTP Keller.  They did this last year and it was a huge success, so this was the 2nd show.  It was 45-minutes of rockin’ worship music, played by members from all 3 campus bands of the FOTP family.  I can’t wait until we get our Grapevine building finished and we can host one at our location.

 

Branded with a Needle

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I got my 5th tattoo today.  I got it on the top-side of my left forearm, just over from the cross which is on the inside of the same arm.  Thanks to Smitty over at Randy Adam’s Tattoo – he really out-did himself this time, in my opinion.  The idea of the image, which is the Ixthus Fish, was to make it look like it wasn’t tattooed into my arm, but branded like a cattle-brand.  I think he did a fantastic job.  I got the idea from a photo of another tattoo that Smitty had hanging on his wall in the shop.  It was the state of Texas tattooed on someone to look like a brand, and it looked very authentic in the photo.  I’m happy with the way this one turned out.

After getting home, I had planned to finish the painting of the interior trim for the Cave.  However, I decided that I needed to go get the oil changed in the Pickup because I am going hunting tomorrow with a deer lease buddy.  It was around 3:30 when I finally got home from all the errands, and I don’t feel like dragging out the painter today.  I need to shoot the trim with 2-3 more coats, and let each coat dry for an hour or so in-between the coats, so it would be a few hours to complete the entire job.  It is so late in the day now, that I wouldn’t be done until after dark, and it would take longer to dry once the temperature drops outside.  So I’ll plan to get this painting done next week, probably Monday.

Tattoos

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I realized that I hadn’t written a post for the tattoos I have.  At the time of this writing, I only have 4.  As I get more, I will add individual posts to this blog for each one, detailing the thought behind them.

My first tat I got was on my left shoulder.  I got it about 3-4 years ago from a studio in Arlington – It is the symbol of a Tetragram – I’ll take another photo of it and post it here soon, but for now, here is an image I found online.  The Tetragram represents the name of God, Yahweh; literally “YHWH”, which was considered too holy to be spoken, so they would write in this way in ancient texts.

 

My second tat was the FOTP logo.  FOTP is Fellowship of the Parks, which is the church that I currently attend.  This church has been an inspiration to me.  It is a smaller church, filled with people from many different walks in life, and they are all God-loving people, with a willingness to accept anyone as we are.  This is the church I’ve wanted to find and become involved with for many years now, it just took me this long to find it.  Even if I were to leave the church tomorrow (which I have NO plans of doing…) the symbol is still something that represents a significant time in my life, and a significant place, with great people.

My 3rd tattoo was a cross, on the inside of my upper-left forearm.  I had the tattoo artist just draw it from hand.  I went into the shop and told him what I wanted, and he just drew it free-hand.  It isn’t a complicated piece of work, but I still was impressed with the way he captured almost the exact image that I was thinking about.

 

My 4th tat is really just an addition to the 3rd one.  I had a base drawn of skulls, which represent Golgotha, which translates “place of the skull”  Above the cross I had the letters I N R I written, which represent the sign above Jesus’ head when He was crucified.  The acronym INRI represents the Latin inscription IESVS·NAZARENVS·REX·IVDÆORVM (Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum), in English reads as “Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews”  To the side of the cross, I had the word “RUGGED” written, in the hopes it would look like a shadow of the cross (taken from the old hymn ‘The Old Rugged Cross’)  However, this image didn’t turn out as I was hoping, so I might cover it up with another add-on to the tattoo later on.  I haven’t decided on that yet.

 

To date, all of my tattoos are on my left arm.  I have plans for several more on this arm, and I have an idea for some artwork on my right arm as well.  I’m putting this post up today because I have possible plans to head to the tattoo shop on Friday the 30th and get my 5th one :-D