Four Gallons

I hate needles.

And as anyone who knows me is well aware of, unless I’m really intrigued by or incensed about something, it’s unlikely I will get off my fat, lazy ass. I’m not a joiner of groups. I don’t have any friends I hang out with. I don’t do any civic good works.

I know that makes me a bad person, all around.

What I do to try to make up for it in my own small way, however, is bleed. So — more or less regularly for the past twenty years — I’ve given blood to the American Red Cross, most of the time at the Oregon Trail chapter’s headquarters on North Vancouver.

I say “more or less regularly” because today I donated my 32nd pint of blood, bringing me up to four gallons so far. You can give every eight weeks, and if I’d been really regular I could have hit four gallons in just under five years instead of twenty. But I really hate needles.

My first donation was while I was at Reed, and I was surrounded by petite female students chatting happily with their phlebotomists. I, on the other hand, started sweating profusely and going into shock, so they yanked my rig, laid me flat, and made me wait for thirty minutes before I left. I knew then I’d found my calling.

Apparently, my body really hates to give up its blood. My veins are always hidden somewhere. Rare is the time when I’ve had just a single person trying to mark the sticking point. About a third of the time, the needle has been inserted multiple times to find the vein. One time my blood just decided to stop flowing and it began to clot in the line. But I keep going and marvelling at the people around me whose bags seem to fill almost magically in a couple of minutes, arriving after me and leaving before me, while I sit there trying to beat the timer they use to cut you off, dribbling AB+ into mine.

There have been a couple of stretches of time when I wasn’t able to donate for one reason or another. The year after my pulmonary embolism while I was on blood thinners, I had to keep telling the volunteers who called: “Not yet.” However, years of donating blood by then actually helped during that whole incident, especially the forty-five minutes in the emergency room the doctor and nurses spent trying to find veins for the IVs. Everyone had to get in on that action.

It’s my minor penance for not doing volunteer or any other types of good works. I know it’s not enough. But I really do hate needles.

And they seem to hate me.

Bottom of the Pocket

Following on yesterday’s fortune, I ran across this from a couple of weeks ago as I was going through some receipts:

Your fondest dream will come true within this year.

I Should Have Parked Closer For the Photo

Xebra and Smart

I’ve had a soft spot in my heart for ZAP, an electric car company that worked for years to get the smart car into the US (despite the best efforts of smart GMBH and parent company DaimlerChrysler) only to have the rug pulled out from under its conversion market by the announcement of an official smart car launch this year.

ZAP saw the potential of the smart car in the US more than five years ago, in the halcyon days when gas was still in the $2 range. I followed their news releases assiduously, and if I’d been able to afford the price of the converted 450 model smart while they were selling them (and if I’d been able to get one) I’d have been driving it for a lot longer.

I’ve been seeing a lot of these little three-wheel, four passenger (sort of), electric Xebra sedans around. This one’s from today’s grocery shopping trip at the Grocery Outlet in the Hollywood district. Just under $12K. 98% fewer pollutants than gas cars (counting power plant emissions, they say). More power to ZAP!

NOTE: The links I had here to ZAPworld are dead, but there’s some history about the years following this post here.

The Horde

Prosecutors are trying to restrict the leader of the Oregon chapter of the Mongols Motorcycle Club from associating with his membership, based on his recent reckless driving and misdemeanor conviction. His lawyer cries foul:

[Justin “Mooch”] DeLoretto’s lawyer, Kelly Beckley, said he would fight to protect his client’s right to free association.

“The state’s attempt to vilify everybody associated with the Oregon Mongols, and to make them sound like some sort of a vicious outlaw motorcycle gang, is just wrong,” he said.

Of course, the name doesn’t help with that perception, either.