Be nice to me...

....I gave blood today.
(I know, there are political reasons to be unhappy with the Red Cross, but with a blood drive at work, this was the most convenient option.)

Things that struck me as different this time:

• I asked the nurse about this wording (from the New England Red Cross website, describing who can give):
  

  Tattoo within the last 12 months with clean needles in a licensed establishment in CT, ME, RI, or VT. Tattoos done in MA, NH and NY require a 12 month wait period before donating blood.

  
  Turns out it's due to the states regulating (or not) tattoo places. I hadn't realized that when they became legal in MA they weren't officially regulated.
  
• No one asked me whether I had breakfast. That used to be very important to them.
  
• Being told to breathe in deep then exhale through my mouth when the phlebotomist took the needle out. It worked, too; I didn't notice it going.
  
• There's tons more cross-checking and reconfirming, now even more so with little hand-held things at the donation tables.

Snippetage

This weekend was the start of autumn. Not on the calendar, of course, but there was a chill in the air, cool undertones in the breezes. Yummy.

Other bits of the weekend included a wonderful Shabbat dinner with time to catch up (yay for new jobs!), reading a couple of new books, lots of errands, a clothing swap (I'd just intended to drop stuff off, but took at least as much stuff as I'd brought...), and a birthday celebration for someone still working through the single digit numbers.

I put air in the tire I still haven't gotten around to replacing, and this time there was a tiny red spider scuttling along it. I can't imagine what it was doing there. (Rolling tires gather no bugs?)

Thursday night I was walking over the BU bridge, and they'd blocked off a lane and were doing something-or-other to one side. This morning, I was walking over the Longfellow bridge, and there was a big Bridge Riggers boat doing something near the shore. I assume the timing isn't coincidental, that the bridge collapse in Minneapolis means that they're finally finding funds to repair some of the bridges that desperately need work around here.

Ratatouille was a fun movie. Of course, a food movie, what's not to like? I also kept thinking about The Triplets of Belleville (less food, more bikes, about the same amount of French accents :-).