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Waiting is the norm.If you want something from an artist, then you wait. Let them know if you are flexible if a cancellation comes up, so they can add you to the cancellations list. No, this isn't a Birkin bag...it's your body. Make good, informed decisions and if you have to wait, you wait.

Got it at Ace's High West Palm. I didn't realize he was on Ink Master until after I made the first appointment. I'm in love.

Oh, yes. We always try to avoid the sneakers and fannypack crowd.

@Devious6 I had no idea about Bidding for Good. I LOVE the idea. @SStu I think NOT being where the cruise ships are is EXACTLY where I'd want to be!

@Gingerninja and @SStu We love to go to Antigua - will be making our 5th trip to Galley Bay Resort in November. It's an all-inclusive, under 100 rooms, amazing food and secluded beach, 3 great restaurants and bars with a Rum Shack and walk-up sandwich shack, no kids and no casino. They have a band every night, a movie on the beach night and several other evening events each week. It's an amazing place just to relax and enjoy the beautiful beach. If you want to hit other night spots they are close at hand by taxi. This is a pano I took last year on our trip - that's Lynn with the camera. This was taken after we ate breakfast - the restaurant is to the left of Lynn, open to the ocean. Notice the lack of people - the resort was full yet there are many times when you feel totally alone. Even when there are people on the beach, you never feel crushed in like many other resorts/beaches. We've also found a great way to reduce the costs, as well. Most of the resorts provide reduced cost vacations to their resorts for not-for-profits to use in auctions. You can find them many times through your local PBS stations and on a site called Bidding For Good. You bid for the package and that money gets paid to the not-for-profit. Generally, you bid on a 7 day stay for up to two rooms. Then there is typically a per-person, per-day up charge you pay to the resort. For Galley Bay, we pay between $140 to $180/person, per/day depending on level of room to cover your food and drink costs. We stay in one of the luxury beachfront room - walk out the back door and into the sand; into the surf in 30 yards so we're in the 180 price range. That rate turns out to be approximately 40% of the normal cost and even with what we pay to the not for profit and airfare we are under 50% of the retail cost. Here's the really cool thing we finally realized we could do - split the weeks between two different years. If you watch the "must use" dates on the packages, you can many times find one that spans a year+. The one we got last Fall covered both our trip last November and this November so our bid price was spread over two trips. Elite Island Resorts operates out of Florida and has several properties on Antigua and St. Lucia as well as others. Galley Bay is now one of the more exclusive...wasn't that way when we started going there back in 1999 - we just love the local and the level of service. Check out the auctions! It's a great way to help out a NFP and still save a tremendous amount on a dream vacation.

Animals smoking pipes = amazing. Here is mine. :-D

UPDATE: Well, today was the day! What a long, but great day! It began a little before 11:00am. I was the first one in the shop with Scott (most of the day, there were 10-15 people there, and at one point six artists were tattooing simultaneously). He had been working on a few designs based on the sleeve length I wanted. Over the week between today and our consultation, I had decided to ask him to put the dragon's head somewhere on my arm instead of with the head in the more traditional chest area. I was a little worried to be asking for this, as Scott has a relatively new sleeve with the head in the center, and the last thing I wanted was for him to think I was trying to copy his own tattoo. Luckily, when I got there, he informed me that the last several dragons he had done had the head on the chest, and he was dying to do something new. Perfect! His sketches had just what I wanted. It was a really good sign. However, getting it right took some time. Using thin paint brushes, he created the design over four separate layers. The dragon's head had to be moved several times, and the unique swirl of the dragon we decided on what difficult to get right without looking like the head was plopped onto the center of the body... but Scott is a perfectionist, and after a lot of erasing and revising, and then relining, and revising, etc... we were finally done with a design ready to be inked at 2:40. With only a few short breaks, it took a lot longer than I expected. But the result is something that works specifically with my body as opposed to just slapping a template onto my arm. I love it. Here is a quick snap of Scott somewhere between layer 2 and 3 of sketching on me: I haven't had a tattoo in nearly 20 years, so I had no idea what to expect from the pain, especially over so many areas. Tattooing in the ditch was no treat, but not as bad as I had come to expect from reading. The outside of the elbow lived up to expectations. But the worst was around my collarbone, where any wincing or tightening of my face would risk pulling the skin under his needle. And there was one spot on my chest where I could clearly feel the vibration on my pec, but the pain was in my neck. I could have sworn at the time he was tattooing my upper-middle neck. Long story short (yeah, right), we finished up the linework a little after 5:00pm. I am absolutely thrilled with the result... and was getting tons of compliments on it by the many artists and clients in the shop throughout the day. Here is a front shot: It is a little difficult to see from this angle and with only linework, but the dragon's body actually goes out the back of the head and swirls up and around the shoulders through the clouds and comes out belly showing under his head before turning again towards the end of the sleeve. It makes a little more sense visually if you can see the back. I also have the dragon clutching a pearl with his talons on the back on the sleeve and will actually be filling the pearl with a significant flower logo in the next session. Overall, a fantastic day. I couldn't be happier that Scott got all the elements I wanted into the design, was able to keep it very traditional, but also with a great deal of uniqueness built just for me. If any readers are in Austin, Triple Crown Tattoo on Chicon Street (right around the corner from Franklin's BBQ!) is a must-visit.

I have seen too many knuckleheads on message boards. I suppose it depends on their lack of brain power and Neanderthal value system.