A while back, while talking with the girl at Jiffy Lube who was always getting a new piercing or tatoo, the other old guy in the waiting room got in to the conversation about "ink".
"You know, I was a marine - in two different "conflicts" - and somehow avoided getting a tatoo. Then my son became a tatoo artist and I got this." He pointed to a small chinese character on the inside of his forearm.
"What's it say?" we asked.
"Ouch!" was the reply.
That's when I started thinking about getting something like that done.
So the day before my 63rd birthday I started searching the web for the chinese character for OUCH, wanting to make sure that what I THOUGHT the character I was going to go with was in FACT the character with the meaning OUCH.
Never did find it, but did find the character for TREE, which can also mean WOOD.
For "only" $70, and about 20 minutes of having a black pigment poked into my skin - with a small, rapidly vibrating needle - ta da! - TREE - in chinese - in my forearm. By next year - with some luck - I'll have found the chinese character for TURNING.
I see this as a commitment to wood and woodworking. Other's may see it as justification for having me committed.
Fun way to mark, literally, a day in my life.