How was your weekend?
This weekend was kinda crazy, but the weather was nice.
On Saturday, the hubby woke me up at 5 am to drive to Billings (a town about 2 hours away) so that he could get certified to overhaul scuba regulators. Needless to say, it wasn't a class that I wanted to sit through, so I ended up wandering the town for the day.
To start the day off, I had an overly sweet vanilla caramel latte at a place called Off the Leaf.
While the coffee wasn't great, I did have fun playing on the internet and chilling. Unfortunately, that got old after a few hours and I wandered over to an exotic pet store. While it was fun to see a bunch of different animals, I did get a little bummed out that there were three feed bins, each with one single, lonely puppy of a different breed crying their heads off. The store had a no touch policy, which I understand as it is super easy to spread infections in young puppies, but to have them so isolated just didn't seem right to me. (I wish I took a picture so you could see the epic sadness...)
Plus they had tarantulas. I don't like spiders. YUCK!
While wandering around some more, I had the bright idea to re-pierce the cartilage on my ear. I've never had good luck with any kind of earrings and seem to be allergic to most metal. However, I wanted to talk to an "expert" and get their opinion about redoing it as I've had my belly pierced for over 10 years and that sucker has been fine.
I looked on Yelp and a few other sites to figure out where to go. I went to the most highly recommended place, but it turns out that they had stopped doing piercings a few weeks before. They sent me over to a place called Bodyworks and told me that Shane was the master. I had no idea where the place was, but just continued wandering the city, figuring if I found it, I might be "meant" to get the piercing. I stumbled across the place and it was certainly hopping. I talked to the girl at the front desk and she thought I might have more luck with the piercing if I got it done with a needle instead of the gun this time (what can I say, I think I got it done like 15 years ago) and if I tried a hoop instead of a stud. It sounded like fun to me, but the place only took cash and I don't own an atm card so I once again wandered off, this time in search of some food.
I ended up getting some Pho at a random Asian place next to an Albertsons and decided to go into the store and get some cash back for writing a check. I bought some Altoids, but the cashier told me that I could only get $25 back. There was a bank branch open, so I took the $25 and figured I could get another $15 at the bank. WRONG. It turns out that if you have nothing to do with Wells Fargo, they won't cash a check you write them for $15. I went back to a different line and eventually got the remainder of the cash I needed. I really should have taken the difficulty in securing $35 as a sign not to do the piercing, but I didn't.
I made it back to bodyworks and filled out the forms they wanted. Each of the forms referenced "Shane" doing the actual piercing. A girl started doing the piercing, and I figured out a few minutes into the experience that this girl was not Shane. It turns out that this girl had watched Shane pierce and that I was maybe her 2nd ever piercing of this type. Of course, I found this out right about the time that she stuck the needle through.
So many things went wrong after that. It was tragic, and really painful.
Let's see, in my 45 minute torture experience the following things happened:
- She called for help from the front desk lady 4 times
- She dropped the ball to close the hoop 3 times
- I'm not sure, but I think she only re-sanitized the ball two times
- I found out she stuck the needle through backwards
- She attempted to close the hoop for approximately 30 minutes, losing her grip with the pliers and stabbing my poor swollen ear ~ 5 times
- I don't even know how many times she reefed on the needle sending shooting pain through me
- I got all shocky, shaky and sweat through my clothing
- Once the hoop was finally closed, she then asked if she could take a picture of it to add to her portfolio. I said fine, I really just wanted to get out of there.
Then they charged me full price for this torture. It was only $35 but I really feel like it was just adding insult to injury. At least give me $5 off for suffering.
I like to think I'm pretty tough, and I'm pretty easy going when it comes to practicing on me. I let the beauty school practice waxing on me all the time. But, there's compensation. I get the services for free and they get to learn. Plus, I know what I'm getting into.
To say that I am irritated about the experience would be an understatement. Someone did not get a good review on Yelp or any other place I could possibly review them.
The good news is, it's cute. It's still swollen and annoying, as one would expect, but I like it.
At least Sunday was relatively uneventful, we took the dogs to the pond and played in the sun. I may have gotten a little sun burnt.
I hope you had a good, and slightly less painful weekend!
