My First Tattooing Experience...

...was my best friend Megan's fourth tattoo. Megan just finished her second year of medical school, and is rightly very proud of her achievement. To celebrate, she decided to get a swoosh of colorful stars bursting from her waist, down around her back and onto her "hiney." (That's how Megan and her med school buddy Shali kept referring to this region of her body, and so that must be the proper medical terminology.)

Look how excited Megan is (above right) before the tattoo dude pulled out any needles!!! I thought I was going to be really grossed out at the whole process, and possibly pass out on the floor. But actually it wasn't so bad. The tattooist was very professional and listened to all Megan's design requests, and told her when he was about to go over the most sensitive areas (the little bit over her rib cage seemed to be the worst part). Even during those parts, Megan didn't scream or cry. Instead, she repeated, "fire, fire, FIRE!, fiiiiii-yrrrrre!!!" Apparently some of the colored ink felt a little like burning.

Here's some proof that I was there and had fun watching, and totally didn't puke or pass out:
And here's (maybe the upper two-thirds of) the finished product!!! Megan loved the way it turned out. Each of Megan's tattoos tell a story about the time in her life that she had them done. The exuberant design of this one reflects her feelings of accomplishment at this stage of med school. I am so proud of her for all the work she did to arrive where she is today. In the next 2 years of her school, Megan does clinical rotations, where she gets to actually interact with patients and doctors and learn in a more hands-on way. She kicked ass at the book-learning part, but I'm excited that she's onto a part of the process that she will actually enjoy. GO MEGAN! You are so awesome (and now everyone who sees your hiney will know)!

I Finally Take Advantage of Where I Live

A few days ago, I went on a road trip with two good friends to defray some post-qualifying exam stress. (No, I haven't heard the results of the test yet.) We drove about 6 hours, hung-over after a celebratory kegger, from Tucson to Lake Powell, which is smack in the center of the border between Arizona and Utah. It's a cool drive; you get to watch desert turn into pine forest as you drive up a mountain through Flagstaff on the way and the temperature drops 30 degrees. Then it gets friggen hot again as you come back down and drive through the Painted Desert, which consists of blobby dunes that look like some little kid's crayon set melted into the sand.

Lake Powell used to be Glen Canyon, yet another magnificent geological feature of the area carved out by the Colorado River. In the early 1950's, the Bureau of Reclamation build the Glen Canyon Dam under Eisenhower, which flooded the canyon for the purpose of creating a reservoir for the southwestern states. Environmentalists of the time strongly opposed the whole dam construction, but Lake Powell is still a very beautiful spot to visit. The water is a caribbean turquoise blue against the canyon walls-- totally unnatural looking, but gorgeous nonetheless. I have to say it's nice too that there's a body of water for desert dwellers to go in the summer to motor boat around, go swimming, and escape the heat.

Megan, Lori and I rented kayaks for a day, and did some awesome canyon exploring by water and our own arm power! We found some cool canyon walls to jump off of into the water below for an adrenaline rush.

On our way back toward civilization, we stopped in Page, AZ to hook up with a tour of Antelope Canyon with Navajo guides (access to this canyon is restricted to the Navajo tribe). This narrow canyon, carved out of sandstone by rushing floods, is gorgeous for the vibrant color of its walls, and for the smooth, awesome shapes of the walls. Some of the "rooms" of the canyon are shaped like a corkscrew from a whirlpool effect. We took some pictures of the canyon, but here are a couple taken by professionals, since ours don't really do the experience justice.

How cool is it that all of this was just a car ride away?