Going North

I'm heading up to Dartmouth tomorrow for the SEAD reunion. SEAD is a summer program that I worked for the past two summers. I'm very excited to see the staff members I worked with and the students that we worked with. I bet it's going to be insanely cold. I heard there's already been a pretty big snow storm. Weather.com predicts it's going to be no warmer than 33 degrees the entire time I'm there. Still, I'm very pumped for this weekend.

I made an appointment today to give blood, double red blood cells. If you haven't tried it, it's definitely worth a shot. You have to be a certain size and weight I think, so if you qualify you should try it. The needle is smaller, which is nice if you're not into needles. It takes a little longer than giving blood normally because they take twice as much. They take a pint, centrifuge it, keep the platelets, give you back the plasma, take another pint, and repeat the process. One great thing about it is you don't really have to wait in the long lines. One drawback is you are not allowed to give as often because they take more. Do people really go to those shady places that pay for your blood? I don't think I could go to those kinds of places.

Anyway, my question of the day is why the Red Cross is so blood hungry? I understand there is often a blood shortage, but they have records of the people who donate, so they know not to call those people who recently gave because they can't give again for a certain amount of time. Yet, they call you anyway asking you to give blood. Luckily, they check the previous donation date when you go to give blood. Otherwise, someone might die from giving too much. I guess it's pretty tough for the Red Cross to compete with blood banks that pay people for blood, so they have to adopt this cut-throat recruiting agenda: call people all the time even if they aren't allowed to give blood at the time. I don't know, I see why they do it. They're just trying to get blood to save lives. However, I think they can be much more efficient in the way they call and could probably get more blood if they call people at a date when they can give.

And what's the deal with bow ties? What percentage of the population can even tie those things? Also, raisins are gross. Yeah, I said it.