allergies = copious run on sentences

hi! how are you? i feel like ass! dear allergies: FUCK OFF kthxbye.

no WWC today, alas. whining? complaining? moaning in misery? got all those. just no, uh, pictures. which is too bad, because the words this week were fun.

so i gave blood yesterday for the first time in about eight years. i used to give blood all the time, because hey, i can! and because i have a fairly rare blood type, and because i don't really do a lot for the General Benefit of Humanity At Large and donating blood made me feel a little better about that shortcoming. but then i went and lived in france during college and donated there, and once i got home, the blood-people got all bent out of shape that i would agree to stick non-american needles in my arm. they told me to come back in a year, which i guess was enough time to cycle the Potential Dirty Europe Diseases out of my body.

so i showed up a year later, except by then the red cross had changed the rules about who could donate, and anyone who'd ever spent more than 3 months in europe could no longer give blood because they might have mad cow. i asked the lady if vegetarians could still donate. no one thought it was funny OR a valid question, even though i thought it was both. oh well.

after that, i called the red cross periodically to see if they'd changed the rules, since one nurse had told me under her breath that there was no way the anyone-who'd-been-to-europe ban would hold up in the long run, since it knocked out such a huge percentage of their donor pool. and then! about a year ago, i called, and DOO DOO DOO DOOOOO!* they'd lowered the rule to a cumulative five years in europe, which put me back into valid donor land.

*that's a fanfare. just go with it.

i asked around my company to see when the next blood drive was, and found out that we'd never held one. so i called the local blood people, talked to some folks at work, put up a bunch of posters, and organized a blood drive. i harassed my friends and coworkers to sign up and spent the morning sitting at a desk in the entry to our building, trying to coerce other people to sign up and donate as well. the blood drive was a lovely success.

until, at the end of the day, i went in for my turn to donate. we went through all the normal questions (have you ever had sex with a monkey who has had sex with a gay man for drugs? have you ever had sex in africa with a prostitute who might have been a man at some point?) and then it came out that i'd been to the Dominican Republic about 8 months prior. which is apparently a malaria zone.

which is how i was turned down as a donor at my own blood drive. O, THE IRONY.

so anyway, it's now been enough time that i've cycled the Potential Malaria out of my blood stream as well, and now the blood people are finally (finally!) willing to take my blood. i went in yesterday, and when the adorable little pre-med student tapped my vein and put the needle in, i spurted blood all over the chair, my arm, and his (gloved, thank goodness) hands. oops. i guess my veins are happy to be of service again.