Bloodletting

I've been giving blood since, I think, sometime in 1991 or 1992.  I got into the blood donation habit for all the wrong reasons.  I had read a book by Charles Panati - either Panati's Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things or Panati's Parade of Fads, Follies and Manias, or maybe even the since-retitled Panati's Extraordinary Endings of Practically Everything and Everybody - that discussed the ancient and enduring fad of bloodletting, by which practitioners attempted to improve health by drawing off sometimes copious amounts of blood. This was based on the general observation that women, who lose blood regularly by natural means, live longer than men.  (Oddly, battlefield observations of the health effects of losing large amounts of blood apparently did not come into consideration.) Somewhere along the way I believe Panati pointed out that there were, in fact, health benefits to be realized from tapping off some blood, but that these could best be attained through the modern practice of blood donation.  So I decided to give it a shot.

My first donation wasn't a pleasant experience.  The blood drive I went to was at the armory downtown.  Donors lay on flat, uncomfortable, unstable-feeling gurneys while the blood was being taken from them.  Still, the donation went well, and soon I became a regular at the Red Cross donor center just over a mile from my house.  As of the end of last year, I had donated 97 units.

(My most memorable donations have been ones that didn't happen.  Once I was extemely stressed while donating, and something went wrong:  either the needle popped out inside my arm, or it actually passed through my vein.  In any case, the bag didn't fill, and I was left with a tattoo of blood on the underside of my forearm.  I gave blood once at work in 2005 or so, and once again experienced the flat uncomfortable gurney instead of the Star Trek: The Next Generation-style couches used at the donation center.  I decided to give blood again at work during another drive in late February or early March 2007, a drive which was mysteriously cancelled just before it was scheduled to take place.  It wasn't long before I found out why that drive had been cancelled.)

Near the end of last year I was contacted by the Red Cross about doing a platelet donation via apheresis.  I have seen the apheresis systems in action and have often wondered about them, but was never curious enough to investigate further.  Unfortunately, at the time I was contacted - mid-to-late November, I think - I was pretty sick with something, something that wasn't bad enough to keep me from work (mostly) but that was bad enough to keep me from Thanksgiving dinner with my family. So they contacted me again - this time in early February, when I was dealing with The Thing That's Going Around, a nasty weeks-long cold/flu/pneumonia/whatever which I believe I picked up at a zoning hearing in late January for a solar sales and distribution place that someone I know was looking to build on some land about a mile from my house.  (The immediate neighbors of this land, which formerly was home to a collection of culm banks, rose up in unified rage against the notion of a business of some sort coming to Nanticoke and ruining perfectly good mine-scarred wastelands.)

The Red Cross called again a few weeks ago.  I was completely recovered by then, and had no real reason to turn them down.  So I said yes.

I was a little uneasy about the prospect of doing this.  I hate needles, first of all.  And while I don't mind having my blood drawn off, I do have an issue with having part of it re-injected into my system.  The idea of being essentially immobile for two hours or more during the procedure didn't appeal to me, either.  But I steeled myself to the notion, and eventually the biggest concern was what DVD I should take with me.  At the last moment I decided on the J.J. Abrams 2009 reboot of Star Trek.*

Turns out my body had some issues with the apheresis process.  A "valve" in the vein in my right arm made me a poor candidate for the two-needle procedure. But there is a way of doing apheresis with a single needle, which alternates between drawing off blood and returning the separated blood components. I don't know if this procedure takes longer, but I expect that it does.  I strolled into the Red Cross building just before my scheduled 12:30 appointment, and dashed out close to 3:30 to change cars and pick up my aunt and my mother for 4:00 Mass.  The process was a bit of a chore.  I had an inflatable squeeze-ball thingy that I had to keep pumping during the "drawing off" cycle, but during the "return" cycle I had to not pump it (which was helped a bit by the fact that it deflated fully during the return cycle.)  Pump, don't pump, pump, don't pump.

The apheresis process itself took a little over two hours.  The rest of the time was waiting, and checking-in, and getting set up. Star Trek is 126 minutes long; unfortunately, I sat through about ten minutes of trailers at the beginning of the DVD first, and then discovered that the movie was not set up  to auto-play, so I needed to call someone to hit "Enter" on the remote for me to make it play.  After all that, I still had a good ten minutes of the movie left to go when my procedure was over.  The Red Cross staff were perfectly willing to let me stay through to the end of the movie, but as mentioned above, I had somewhere else to be.

This was a single unit collection of platelets, because my precise hematocrit levels at this time are unknown. Based on the results of this donation, I may be eligible to donate two or even three units of platelets next time.

I left the center feeling odd.  Euphoric, energized, amped-up.  Maybe this was a side-effect of the donation, or a side-effect of the movie, or a little of both.  I also found myself a much better driver immediately after the donation; my 1996 Tercel felt like a brand-new car, and my mother's much larger car handled just as well.  The feeling hasn't entirely dissipated yet, but I fear in time the general gloom which has hung over me for the past few months will return.  Maybe it will go away again after my next bloodletting.


*And, oh, my, did I have issues with this movie. (SPOILERS AHEAD!)  Three minutes from Earth to Vulcan, but who-knows-how-long to the Laurentian System?  Delta Vega is close enough to Vulcan that the planet looms larger in its sky than the Earth in the lunar sky?  A supernova that threatens to destroy the galaxy?  Nero has a mining vessel - even a refitted, amped-up mining vessel - that is capable of cutting seven Constitution-class ships to pieces without suffering a scratch?  And coincidences, coincidences, coincidences?  Thing is: all these problems could probably be resolved by overdubbing some dialogue.  The supernova can become a "strange matter supernova," sending out a shock wave lethal to all normal matter, which can only be countered through the use of "red matter" - or so the Vulcans believed; but the use of "red matter," delivered by Ambassador Spock, actually amplifies the explosion, causing the destruction of Romulus.  "Delta Vega" becomes the next planet out from Vulcan, and Spock is forced to watch - well, you know - which he is able to see through a fiendish projector set up by Nero.  Oh, and Nero's vengeance-ship has been retrofitted with time travel gizmos which create "lightning in space" when they run; he initially travelled back in time twenty-five years too far, and had to jump forward to intercept Ambassador Spock's time-travelling spin-dizzy, which, say, Spock was using to warn the Vulcans not to use the red matter in the first place, though he was thrown back in time  much farther than he had intended by the effects of the "strange matter" explosion on "normal" spacetime.  (Through his interference, Nero becomes responsible for the destruction of his own homeworld.)  Or is it easier to accept that he and his crew brought along enough food and fuel to last twenty-five years?

Big dangerous day

Last night was the last night of this rotation, and the end of another sixty-hour calendar week of work.  I go back on Monday night for overtime and then work a regular rotation of Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights for my last week of what you could call "easy sixty" - the following four calendar weeks will only have three workdays each, so I will have to work two overtime days in the same calendar week to get in sixty hours (and earn seventy hours of pay.)

I would have loved to go right to sleep when I got home, but that wasn't in the cards.  I absolutely needed to get out my insurance paperwork today, and before I could do that I needed to get one item notarized.  I finished filling out all the necessary forms, scanned everything and saved it as image files, made some pancakes, and started to look for Notaries Public who were open on a Saturday.

It's not that easy.  Some didn't answer their phones, and some didn't seem to have phones.  Ditto for the local post offices, but I was fairly confident that the Wilkes-Barre post office would be open into the afternoon.

I was going through the phone book and my eyes fell on one familiar location.  I looked at the address.  It wasn't nearby, but it was close to the comic book store, and I was planning on going there anyway.  I called them, and they would be open for another hour-and-a-half.  Just enough time for me to get ready, hit an ATM for some cash, and get myself up there.  And then go to the comic book store.

All with no sleep.

The pancakes helped, as did three or four mugs of coffee and a shower.  My car stalled once along the way, as the World's Longest Traffic Light finally changed from red to green with me at the start of a parade, but for all I know that might have been my fault - I may have accidentally knocked the car into neutral or something.  I made it to the notary with fifteen minutes to spare.

Along the way I listened to a new radio station.  92.1 FM has variously played easy listening, classic rock, oldies, and Christmas Carols in the past, but on the way back from taking Homer to the vet in Allentown, while scanning stations for something that wasn't playing solid crap or solid commercials, I stumbled across its new format: easy listening classic oldies alternative.

http://www.radiofm921.com/

I have to admit, I feel like a hypocrite listening to this station.  I can't stand the thought of alternative as a nostalgia act.  If this were a college radio station, I might be complaining that they're ignoring current bands and modern music, like "Bloodbuzz Ohio" by The National, in favor of playing stuff from the 90's.  But they do play some more recent songs by bands like Paramore and Finger Eleven.  Oddly, for just listening for a few hours, I've heard a lot of repeated songs - I'm listening right now on the online stream to "Dammit" by Blink 182, which I just heard this afternoon.  (Excuse me for a minute, they're now playing "Cherub Rock" by Smashing Pumpkins.)  On top of everything else, the station appears to be a robot station playing a satellite feed with no DJ's or other local presence beyond the occasional commercial.

After getting my stuff notarized and adding some oil to my engine just for luck (it goes through about a quart a month, but what do you expect from a fourteen year old car that still gets better than 40 miles to the gallon?), I made my way along Wyoming Avenue past the site of the Battle of Wyoming and into West Pittston and finally to the comic book store.  There was a sale going on there, but I couldn't rouse myself to spend any more money than what I had already committed to with my pull list. Then I remembered something else:  I needed a haircut.  Fortunately, Sam (the comic book guy)'s wife Rose has an attached beauty shop in the back, and she also does haircuts.  So I turned a twofer into a threefer, and got three things accomplished in one trip.

Having zinged east through the Wyoming Valley to do all this, I then zanged back west towards Nanticoke to get to the Wilkes-Barre post office to mail my packet of forms, receipts, and bills.  This went off without incident.  I then decided that while I was out already, I may as well make a few more stops at a Home Depot (which does not sell any sort of home security stuff, by the way) and a pet supply store to get cat food.  (All, still, without sleep.)

I somehow managed to do all this and get home without crashing my car or running anyone over.  It was a stupid and dangerous thing to do.

I slept from 4:00 to 10:00 and have been up since.  (Now they're playing "Six Underground" by Sneaker Pimps for the second time today - I heard it as I pulled away from the post office at about 2:00.  Ah, well, I am sort of in love with Kelli Ali, so that's a good thing.)  Tomorrow I'll go to church in the morning, then give blood, pick up some groceries for next week's rotation of work, and then do some stuff with the things I picked up from Home Depot.  And then start the cycle all over again.

Blood again

Tomorrow I am scheduled to give blood. It's a Sunday, not a typical donation day, but there's a special drive going on. I had gotten into a pattern of donating blood every eighth Wednesday, since this allowed me to combine donation outings with other Wednesday-specific activities. But that ended just before the date of my last scheduled donation, when the blood center suddenly cancelled its Wednesday donor hours. I could have switched back to a Saturday donation schedule, but for that to have fit in nicely with my work schedule I would have needed to do that last Saturday, and I didn't.

I don't know what the donation site's new schedule is, but I'm willing to bet it won't be open regularly on Sundays. If they have Mondays open, I'll try to schedule my next donation for Monday, October 11. Otherwise we'll just roll the dice and see. Besides, who's to say what their schedule will be eight weeks from now?

Paparazzi

Yesterday I pulled an all-dayer and planned to get to bed early, but then my badly sprained biological rhythms kicked in. I napped, briefly, while surfing the internet, but then found myself wide awake - more or less - all the way to 3:00 in the morning, about thirty-six hours after I had last slept. I then slept to nearly 1:00 this afternoon - so when I woke up I had to rouse myself in a hurry to make my 3:00 blood donation. (Made it at 3:30. They're willing to wait for my blood.)

After getting leaked I decided to check the oil in my car, which is a good thing, since it means I get to keep driving it. I won't be getting an oil change tomorrow because about a quart and a half of what's in there right now is fresh oil. Next days off for sure.

Stopped at a local candy store to get some stuff my mom likes, then went up to see my comic book guy. Business was good - there was quite a crowd of people there when I got there, and several more came in while we hung out and talked about his recent newspaper profile. Granted, it was in the "Good Times for Seniors" supplement, but you know what they say about publicity.

On the way back I started taking photos - and I didn't stop until well after dark. Nearly seventy photos, some of which will get their own blog posts. Here's a sampling:

The Eighth Street Bridge in Wyoming, PA, looking south to the Bear Creek Wind Farm seven miles away. This is basically a do-over of the photo on this post. It was an absolutely gorgeous day - note the family out on bicycles on the walkway ahead of me.

The Susquehanna was flowing fiercely around the pilings of both the current bridge and the replacement being built next to it. Here is one of the wakes being created.

Sunlight on choppy waters. The Susquehanna and Monocanock Island.

Vertical contrails. When I was younger and the world was under constant threat of total annihilation from an exchange of nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles, this sort of sight would have been terrifying. The verticality here is an illusion - these are three planes flying horizontally but all almost exactly toward a point directly overhead.

One of the planes on a collision course with the girders at the top of the Eighth Street Bridge.

The Huber Breaker in Ashley, PA. Slated for eventual demolition, unless someone is willing to put up big money to preserve it.

The Moon trapped in a geometric web. Venus is also visible in this picture, just to the left of the chimney on the left.

The Moon again. Note the Earthshine which makes the dark parts visible. Close inspection will reveal two stars just to the left of the Moon. I couldn't see these with my naked eye or with binoculars, but they show up in every photo of the Moon that I took - and appear to shift position as the Moon barrels across the sky. - well, no. In two consecutive photos taken at the same zoom level, one in "landscape" and one in "portrait" mode, the "stars" maintain the same position on the screen - but move with respect to the Moon. Yet in photos taken in the same orientation but at different zoom levels, the "stars" maintain the same relative position to the Moon but the distance between them changes - as though they are also being "zoomed". So clearly they're system artifacts, but artifacts that show up differently based on the zoom level. And they don't appear in photos taken later in the night!

Orion from my mom's back yard, with contrast blown up (to a setting of 88 on Adobe PhotoDeluxe) to improve visibility. I wanted to get the trail of the plane flying into Orion's groinular area during the multiple seconds that the shutter was open. The effect makes it look like Orion is quite happy to see somebody.

Auriga from my mom's back yard, again with the contrast increased. This approximates what I could see bare-eyed. I think visibility was even better than it was during my astrophotography outing last week.

Work and blood

Today is my four-hour day. I go in at 10 pm and leave at 2 am. Hopefully my "Check Engine" light doesn't turn out to be something serious. (I checked yesterday, and everything looked OK. I did add oil, but that's become a regular thing with this car. After more than 314,000 miles...)

After that I will work twelve-hour nights on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Monday is a holiday - Martin Luther King, Jr. day.

Wednesday I am scheduled to give blood - which means I should be bulking up on iron right now. I wonder what the blood situation is in Haiti right now? There are a lot of injured people. Are there many in need of blood? Is there a clean, safe supply of blood available? Are blood supplies being shipped there? And is that depleting available domestic stock?

After 9/11 lots of people rolled up their sleeves for the first time - resulting in a massive oversupply of blood, much of which had to be discarded after it expired, unused, weeks later. When this news broke many of those first-time donors vowed never to give again.

This is, to put it mildly, dumb.

Blood is needed throughout the year, in routine situations as well as emergencies. Everyone who can donate blood, should - if not out of altruism, them maybe out of some bizarre fascination with the alleged health benefits of the ancient practice of bloodletting.* A good way to randomize blood donations to make sure there's a steady supply: give blood on your birthday, then every eight (or twelve, or whatever) weeks thereafter. Assuming that birthdays are spread evenly throughout the year, this should mean that donations will also be spread out.

Anyway. Time for a shower. And maybe some red meat.



*Well...yeah. Don't judge.

Layoff interrupted

Well, I'm not technically on layoff today. I was laid off Saturday and Sunday, and expect to be on Friday...and maybe Saturday as well. My days off this week are Monday through Thursday. But today I'm going in on overtime. So my guaranteed pay this week will be one day of overtime (paid at straight time, since I'm currently at zero hours for the week) and one day of holiday pay. I need to reopen my claim with the unemployment office.

Had to get up early to go and pick up Bowie. She's doing fine after being spayed yesterday. She's happy to see the other cats, and they're all happy to see her.

Now I need to go back to sleep for a few hours. Tomorrow I have a blood donation scheduled. I wonder if my iron levels will be high enough? I've been making a conscious effort to eat more red meat lately. We'll see how it goes.

Too much to tell

Today was another Big Day - which is defined as a day where I run two or more errands in sequence without touching base at home. Today I gave blood, chased a wild goose (a clearance-section child's easel at Target, last spotted nearly a week ago buy my aunt), shopped (unsuccessfully) for electronic ephemera at Circuit City, shopped (successfully) for bouncy balls at Party City, paid one last visit to the Waldenbooks at the Wyoming Valley Mall, topped off my gas tank, checked my oil, came home, ate supper, searched (unsuccessfully) for my good tripod, went to 4:00 Mass at a different church than "my" church (parking there is always an adventure, since they have parking spaces for about 30 cars and seating for about 1000 people), and went to my nephew's long-postponed birthday party.

Half of those could be blog entries themselves. But they'll have to wait. I have work in the morning, and I have several things I need to do before I can go to sleep.

Recession? WHAT Recession?

Today I had a fairly structured program to follow:

1. Get up.
2. Eat.
3. Shower.
4. Give blood.
5. Drop off photos at Sam's Club for processing. Which means, "Take CD-ROM of photos to Sam's Club and upload on one of their self-serve thingies for processing."
6. Get oil change.
7. Buy sneakers. (I'll be needing them starting next Sunday. Twelve hours a day on my feet again...)
8. Buy whiskey. Brandy was OK in last year's Rocks, my grandmother's fruitcake cookies, but whiskey punches them up better. I learned that last week when my mom freshened some Rocks from last Christmas that I had taken out of the freezer with some whiskey that I had on the counter. Unfortunately, this was Paddy whiskey from Ireland, not available for purchase in the U.S. It costs about $30 - $35 a bottle (depending on the dollar-euro exchange rate) and about $400 - $1000 for shipping and handling (depending on the cost of a round-trip ticket to Ireland so you can carry it home in your checked baggage.) So I was looking for something similar in taste, but more affordably priced.
9. Buy fuel injector cleaner, drygas, and window insulating film.
10. Buy cardstock, preferably the stuff that comes with envelopes. For my holiday cards, among other things.
11. Pick up photos at Sam's Club.

Items one, two, and three went smoothly, though it was the first time in many donations that we used my right arm. (My left arm is semi-retired since the vein apparently closed itself off the last time I tried to give blood.) But when I got to Sam's Club I was a little surprised to see the parking lot more packed than it has been in years. Recession? What Recession?

I got to the photo kiosks and saw that there were people crowded around them all. On closer inspection I saw that many of these people were just family of the people using the machines, and in fact one machine was open and available - I didn't notice that at first because there were two kids playing with it while their father used the one next to it.* After pounding the unresponsive touch-sensitive screen with my fingertips a bit, I was able to get my photos uploaded and sent off to be processed. For some reason I didn't get a receipt. Oh, well. Onward.

Oil change went well. I wasn't sure about this new place at first, but I've gotten to like the pit-crew style team service. Turned out my coolant reservoir was mostly empty, so they topped that off.

Sneakers went well. Got New Balance again, but this time I shopped on design and weight, not whether or not the particular model was made in the U.S.A. (That used to be New Balance's thing. Not anymore.) Twelve hours a day running four DVD injection molding systems puts a strain on your feet and legs. But all the signs indicate that this gig won't last long... and then I'll be needing good shoes for pounding the pavement. Saved $15 over the shelf price, too! And this parking lot was also mostly-full.

I completely forgot to buy whiskey. This bugs me, because the liquor store is right next to the next place I had to go, so it would have made a nice, efficient pattern. As it is I went to the one downtown after church and after I delivered my mom to the church-sponsored variety show being held afterwards. I got a 750 ml bottle of Bushmill's 1608. It's not as good as Paddy. I was wondering if there might be a place where I could have sampled different whiskeys for taste. Then I realized that there is one: it's called a "bar." Maybe next time I'm out and not the designated driver I'll do some Irish whiskey taste testing. The things I do for the sake of good Christmas cookies!

I gritted my teeth and went into Wal-Mart for the next bunch of stuff. I went in through the garden department entrance, which always takes the edge off. Yet again I had a hell of a time finding a parking place, even in the side lot which is usually overlooked by most shoppers. I got the stuff I was looking for fairly quickly and checked out. The lines at all the registers were long when I started to check out, and were much longer by the time I was done with my transaction.

I went back to Sam's Club, where the parking lot was now even fuller than it was a few hours earlier. I searched for a while for the blank greeting cards, since they have done one of their periodic store layout re-shuffles, and eventually discovered that they no longer carry what I was looking for. Crap. I'll have to go somewhere else to get them.

Finally I went to the photo desk to pick up my photos...only to find that they had never transmitted. So there were no photos to be had. I decided I would try sending them from home.

And try, and try. Uploading large numbers of high-resolution photos takes a long time. And each time I did, a few of them failed to upload. So I had to reload twelve out of seventy, then five out of twelve, then one out of five. Finally they were all uploaded and ready to order...and the program told me I would have to crop my photos. ALL of them. I have no idea what that means in this context. I think it means that I have to change the resolution, or maybe the aspect ratio, to avoid pixellation. I don't know.

I think I may order just two or three to be printed, to see how they come out. If everything looks fine, I'll do the rest. If not, I'll drop them off to be printed - just not from the same machine I used today.

Tomorrow I will be visiting friends, but I will try to post another entry in The Stained Glass Project. My goal is to do one a week, every Sunday. We'll see how that goes.


*It is unwise to assume any child-sized person is a child. I realized that as I walked past the line of people standing in line at the service desk and noticed a person the height of a ten-year-old girl who was quite obviously a full-grown woman.

We interrupt this cavalcade of politics for...cake

OK, I'm doing a lot of political blogging right now. But you know what? At this moment I think that who is going to be in the White House for the next four to eight years is pretty darned important. Really, my last post pretty much summed up where I'm coming from. And I'm going to keep at it until the last vote is cast.

Having said that, please know this: there's always time for cake.

Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy reminded me of this with this post. And that post reminded me of a blog I've been meaning to link for a while now, but keep forgetting.

Cake Wrecks isn't just a fantastically popular digest of professional and amateur cake design and decoration gone horribly, horribly wrong. It also showcases the occasional brilliant and beautiful (and, I trust, delicious) creations like this Wall-E cake, and this James Bond-inspired Wedding Cake.

(The closest I came to decorating a cake was my Y2Cake, of which I do not believe there are any pictures. It was made for a Y2K party that I was co-hosting at a friend's house. It was baked in a mold shaped like a computer monitor and keyboard, with the words "GAME OVER" in sugar letters on the screen. Decorations included a rubber critter from a dollar store called a "Y2K Bug", a toy passenger jet crashed nose-first into one side -which would turn out to be in very, very poor taste 21 months later, but having aircraft lose their guidance systems as the year rolled over from 99 to 00 was a concern for many on that ultimately uneventful date - , and a squad of army men erupting from the hole in the cake that my cousin's dog chewed while we were letting the cake cool. Don't worry, I trimmed around the parts she had eaten, and I ate the neighboring region myself.)

I'm not sure who first turned me on to this site many long weeks ago, but it was probably Michelle. Let's say it was her.

No discussion of cakes would be complete without noting the cake Deanna Hoak made for her son's birthday - scroll down into her comments for the recipe and modification.

And speaking of cakes, I'm due for a blood donation in ten days. About time I made some Shoo-Fly Cake. For the iron, you know.

Out of sorts

Eh. I'm in a mood. It will pass.

Maybe it's related to the retirement party last night. So many Physics and Electronics Engineering alumni in one place. I can't say for certain that every one of them is more successful than I am, or was more successful at my age than I am, but I'm seriously questioning what I can do to get myself out of the pit I'm in. Right now I'm thinking that the best most of us can hope for is to stand our ground until things pass. But when the stock market crashes that same day that the oil market makes it abundantly clear that it is not fluctuating according to simple laws of supply and demand, I'm not sure standing our ground will soon be an option for many of us.

I'm having car problems. Stupid car problems. My right rear tire is losing air. I had these tires installed at Sam's Club back in April. This is where I have had every set of tires on this car installed. A few weeks ago, after the problem was first brought to my attention, I reinflated the tire using my handy portable air compressor and took my car to one location to have them look at the tire and check it for leaks. They told me that the tire was losing air around the bead and that the problem appears to be with the rim itself, and showed me a large lump on the rim that looked like a welding mark. They reinflated the tire and reinstalled the wheel. The tire held air for two days after that, and then lost enough that I had to refill it again with my portable compressor. (These tires were installed in the beginning of April, and the problem first became apparent as of mid-May.) I took the car for a second opinion to another Sam's Club, the one where I had the tires installed, and they told me the same thing, but also applied some sealant along the bead where the leak was happening. That held for about two weeks. But today I had to reinflate the tire again. At some point I may have to bite the bullet and take another day off so I can get this dealt with. Since some 90% of the miles I put on this car are for commuting to and from work, all these expenses - repairs, maintenance, even gas - should be partly deductible on my taxes. Shouldn't they?

I wanted to do some planting today, but the weather was just so insanely hot. Then it was insanely stormy. Now it's just wet.

I gave blood today. Three weeks of getting extra Iron paid off, and my donation went off almost without a hitch, except for some confusion with the PalmPilots that are used to streamline the donation process. Someday I should look into the question of why my Iron has been low-ish for the past few years. As with many things, I'm worried I might not like the answer I get.

I opted out of the Belmont Stakes gathering today. But I heard that Big Brown, the horse who was not only favored to win the Belmont and, consequently, the Triple Crown, but also was as much out of the league of the other horses as Tiger Woods was out of the league of other golfers when he was playing at his peak, didn't simply fail to win, but actually came in last. If Big Brown's victory over Eight Belles in the Kentucky Derby could be viewed as an omen of Barack Obama's eventual triumph over Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic nomination, then the outcome of the Belmont Stakes is a very bad omen for Obama indeed.

On a positive note: My nephews were over and - I have to wipe a tear from my eye when I say this - have recently turned into Star Wars junkies. Having burned through all of the movies, today they contented themselves with the documentaries and featurettes on the Special Features disc from the Special Edition Trilogy boxed set, as well as some DK visual guides I've had tucked away for a few years. My younger nephew drew and colored a lightsaber on a legal pad my mom gave him as drawing paper. I then turned his drawing into a three-dimensional object with the help of a paper towel tube and some tape. (I even tapered the tip with some folds and tape, so it comes to a point like the lightsabers in Revenge of the Sith.) He then drew a Boba Fett-style jetpack for himself. I designed an alternate jetpack for him out of three sheets of scrap paper: two rolled up loosely and taped to form two 8.5" cylinders, and one rolled up more tightly and taped to form an 11" cylinder. I then lashed the three cylinders together with tape, and affixed the assembly to his back with two more pieces of tape, and then he was all ready to hunt for bounties until the day that some blind guy with a stick accidentally launches him into a Sarlacc Pit.

Retirement party

I just got home from spending a few hours at the University of Scranton at a retirement party for one of my old professors from the Department of Physics and Electronics Engineering.

It was a good time. I got to meet several interesting people, got to refamiliarize myself with a lot of old friends and acquaintances, and passed out a bunch of copies of my blog card.

I would write more, but I'm very tired and need to go to bed soon. I have a blood donation tomorrow morning, and then I need to plant a replacement cherry tree and two blueberry bushes.

Time for bed. More later.

Shoo Fly Cake

I'm giving blood on Saturday, so I need to make sure I have adequate Iron in my system. I've been eating a lot more red meat than usual (usual is "none at all"). I've been taking Iron supplements. And now I'm about to get my Iron from the most delicious source: Shoo Fly Cake.

Shoo Fly Cake was always a special treat when my grandmother made it. It looked like chocolate, but it didn't taste like chocolate. Still, it was delicious. I hadn't had Shoo Fly Cake in decades when someone at the Red Cross suggested molasses as a source of Iron. She specified Blackstrap molasses, which is higher in Iron, but I used up all my Blackstrap on my last cake a few weeks ago. So I'm making do with what I have.

There are a lot of recipes for Shoo Fly Cake on the internet, but the one I'm using today is from Recipezaar.com. In the interest of proliferating this delicious cake, I'm reprinting it here.

The recipe was originally posted by a Recipezaar.com member named kzmom. Here is the recipe she posted, which is indexed as Recipezaar recipe #110423 :


Shoofly Crumb Cake Recipe
If you like molasses, you will love this rich, moist cake. The recipe comes from a Pennsylvania Dutch restauranteur named Betty Groff and is published in an old book by her called Good Earth and Country Cooking.
by kzmom

1¼ hours 10 min prep SERVES 15

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

4 cups flour
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup light brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter
1 cup table molasses
2 cups boiling water
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda

In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugars, salt and butter to crumbs using a pastry blender or your fingers.

Reserve one cup of the crumbs for topping.

Mix the molasses, boiling water, and baking soda and gradually add to the major part of the crumbs until well blended.

Pour this mixture into a greased 9 x 13 inch baking pan.

Sprinkle the reserved 1 cup of crumbs on top.

Bake in a 350 F oven for 55 minutes.


I made mine in two non-stick loaf pans. I recommend reducing the heat to 300 degrees after the first 40 minutes or so. But ovens will vary, so my oven may run hotter than yours.

My cakes are out of the oven now. If you'll excuse me, I have to go get ready for Saturday's blood donation.

Note: With its crumb topping, this might make a nice base for a Poop Cake. Just add Tootsie Rolls!

I ate too much cheap post-Valentine's Day candy

I stopped at Rite Aid (a chain drugstore, or "pharmacy", or "chemist's", depending on what part of the world you're from) on the way home from work to check out the discount Valentine's Day candy and I was not disappointed. A lot of chocolate was there to be had at half price. Good stuff, too. Maybe, just maybe, it was chocolate rich in iron, which will help me with my attempted blood donation tomorrow.

While trying to not look too much like a chocolate hyena, I strolled the aisles browsing through the non-candy items on display. I wound up getting a battery-operated screwdriver for $5.99 (I've actually been looking for one for a few weeks; they're great when you're working on assembling stuff that has dozens of screws) and a half-price MAD Magazine 2008 calendar - this was the first and only place I've seen these, and I don't think I've seen them anywhere since 2005 or 2006. I had to hold myself back from getting the Vivitar 7x50 binoculars for $9.99 - I have several pairs of binoculars, and I don't need another just yet.

Though you might want to get yourself some binoculars for next Wednesday (February 20, 2008)'s Total Lunar Eclipse visible from (almost) the entire Western Hemisphere!!! More details to follow as the date approaches!

Faked out on Calendar Day!

I didn't get to give blood today. My hematocrit level came in at 37, and it needs to be at least 38 for a donation. Maybe I've broken something by giving too much blood. Maybe I just need to lay off the bloodletting for a while. Maybe it's something else. I'll go suck a cow's veins dry and try again.

I hit the Wyoming Valley Mall straight after to check for calendar sales. Waldenbooks didn't have anything marked down to 50%, and while they still had two Astronomy calendars, they didn't seem to have the Terence Dickinson one, which they did have a few weeks ago. I only found one calendar kiosk elsewhere in the mall, and they only had a handful marked down by 50%. Barnes & Noble, outside the mall, had all their calendars marked down, but their selection sucked. The only Astronomy calendar they had had a star chart for each month - which would be nice, if I weren't already getting two star charts each month, one in Astronomy and one in Sky & Telescope.

At least the Hickory Farms kiosk in the mall was still open. 40% off processed meat and cheese!

If I'm stuck working tomorrow - and I still don't know for sure, they haven't updated the recording that tells us whether or not we've been cancelled - after work I'll go to the Borders in Dickson City and the kiosks in the Viewmont and Steamtown malls. (Neither of these malls has a bookstore anymore. I remember when the Wyoming Valley Mall used to have two bookstores. Now bookstoreless malls seem to be the norm.)

I'm continuing to update my link lists. I may have to start a second blog list - adding stuff to the bottom of an existing list is one thing this version of Blogger does not do well. I'll do writeups on the sites I'm adding as soon as I get a chance.

Merry Christmas to all

It's been a good day for me. Saw the nephews. Everybody likes "The Dangerous Book for Boys" - I got them two copies, one for their house and one for here, plus a bunch of other stuff.

Some friends have suffered a horrific tragedy - well, it involves one of their parents. I won't give details, but please try to beam some generally positive energy to someone who needs it.

I'm sucking back some wine right now, 'cause I have a blood donation scheduled for tomorrow. Who realized that Boxing Day is exactly eight weeks after Halloween?

Tomorrow isn't just Boxing Day - not that that holiday has any significance for most folks here in the U.S. No, it's also Calendar Day, the day that most stores slash calendar prices by 50%! Prices in most places will be marked down further to $1 for whatever is left in about a week, but by then the calendars will have been pretty much picked over.

The next day, the 27th, I've actually been mandated to work overtime! It won't really be "overtime", since I've only logged 12 actual hours this week - the 24 hours of holiday time for yesterday and today will not count towards putting me over the 40 hour hump beyond which all hours worked count as time-and-a-half. Still, a 48-hour straight paycheck is more than a 36-hour straight paycheck. Most of us who got mandated (there are quite a few) figured that low workloads would cause our overtime to be cancelled, but that was before the power got knocked out for a few hours on Sunday, causing our production schedules to be thrown off.

Somewhere along the way I'm going to try to squeeze in some holiday visiting, too. And I'm adding site links to my sidebar - long-overdue additions.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Halos for Halloween

My first day off this rotation, which coincidentally was the first day of Hallowhog, was not as productive as I would have liked. I had planned to give blood, get an oil change, get a haircut, and then prepare for the little ghosts and goblins who would come to my house that night, demanding candy. But several days earlier I had found that my house was without dial tone, and I really wanted to get it fixed. The earliest Verizon could get to it was October 31, which worked for me, though their scheduled appointment was for sometime between 8:00 AM and 6:00 PM. I called them that morning and was able to get this narrowed to between 2:00 and 6:00 in the afternoon. Since my blood donation was scheduled for noon, I figured I would be able to squeeze in the haircut and maybe even the oil change, depending on how long the blood thing took.

I had not counted on having four or five people ahead of me at the blood center. One delay led to another, and I did not get to the actual donation part until 1:03. The donation process also took longer than usual - when I used to go there on weekends, the blood donation staff often outnumbered the donors two to one, but now the ratio was more nearly the opposite. I was not done, refreshed, and back in my car until 1:50 PM.

Just enough time to get back to the house by 2:00. I didn't expect the service guy to be there at the stroke of two, but there were things I could do around the house while I waited. I watered my plants, fired up the furnace in preparation for a furnace dump (purging the rusty water from my steam radiator system), did a few other things, and then settled in to my re-reading of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

The service tech called at 2:48 and said he would be in Nanticoke in about ten minutes. A half hour later I was beginning to get worried. It seemed that every vehicle that drove by was a service truck, but none were from Verizon - until the one from Verizon showed up.

The tech looked a lot like Toby Keith, which I suppose would have meant something if I gave a damn about Toby Keith. We got straight to business, and once he realized my old house did not have an external access box, we went straight to my cellar. While we were heading down there, he pointed out that I did not have a inside wiring service plan (idiot idiot idiot, that was something you were supposed to deal with when you set up the service!), so any repairs to my inside wiring - if it turned out to be an inside wiring problem - would be quite expensive. But after a few minutes of line testing - which required the use of a broom to clear away a few decades of cobwebs from the vicinity of the wires - he determined that the problem was in the outside lines.

He repositioned his truck on the other side of the street and ran a ladder up the pole. I sat on my rocking bench on my front porch, non-functional telephone handset in my lap, and talked with my next-door neighbor about the weather while the phone guy did his thing.

It took the better part of a half-hour for him to locate and deal with the problem - a short in the main box. But once he was done, he said that he would also be installing an outside box on my house, just to make things easier if this ever happened again. He went into my basement again and drilled through the wall, coming perilously close to one of the brackets holding my new electrical service to my house. I stayed on the outside and fed a wire to him through the newly-drilled hole.

While I waited I happened to glance up at the sky and noticed that the wispy cirrus clouds were doing remarkable things. I like to take photos of clouds to use as potential future photo references for paintings. I ran back into the house to retrieve my camera from the kitchen and snapped this photo:

Crosshatched Cirrus clouds, 10/31/07

I was most interested in the crosshatched clouds in the middle of the picture. This suggested to me that there were winds at different altitudes moving nearly perpendicular to each other. But then I noticed the rainbow-colored patch on the left.
I zoomed in on this patch. A single cloud , located above the position of the sun in the sky, was showing a halo effect - a refraction of sunlight through ice crystals that are aligned just so. But something seemed odd. The bend to the halo seemed to be away from the sun.
More photos confirmed it: this halo was definitely not forming a ring around the sun. So what was it?
By now the phone guy was back out of the house, and couldn't help but notice me standing in front of the house taking pictures of the sky. "What are you taking pictures of?", he asked. And I told him. He looked up and said, "Well, that's definitely not a sun dog. Wrong place for it." And I agreed that a parhelion would not be in such a place - of course, everybody knows that! He went to work on the box on the side of the house.
After a while, as I stood out front showing the sky to the neighbors, the phone service guy called out from the side of the house. "There's your parhelion!" Clouds had aligned themselves just right for a sun dog to appear between my house and my neighbor's house.
The halo above us gradually resolved itself into a segment of a circle which, if extended, would form a ring around the top of the sky. "Upper tangential arc!", I called out, realizing that the phone tech knew a bit about atmospheric optical phenomena. "Or circumzenithal arc! I'm not sure. I'm gonna have to look it up!"
And look it up I did, in my trusty copy of Light and Color in the Outdoors by M.G.J. Minnaert. I now believe this was the circumzenithal arc, as described in section 165 on page 218:

One of the most beautiful halo phenomena! Of fairly frequent occurrence, it is a vividly colored arc parallel to the horizon and showing the colors of the rainbow.

Closeup of the colors of the circumzenithal arc

The arc persisted for a while. It brightened at first and then faded. The geometry of the refractions was very specific: I called my mom across town, but less than a mile away she could not see it at all.

While all this was going on I remembered that my original intent was to get reference photos for paintings of clouds. But I laughed when I noticed the cloud on the right in the photo above. Here is the photo, from October 31, 2007...
...and here is the painting, from March 26, 2007, more than seven months earlier. So maybe I don't really need those reference photos after all!

Blood and candy

Today was a semi-big day for me. It could have been a big day, but I missed a few marks along the way.

It started with chainsaws. I woke just after 8:00 (after getting up previously at 11:00, 2:00, 1:30, 4:20, and 5:30) to a buzzing, whining noise. A neighbor a block away is having a row of very large, very old pine trees cut down. (I actually removed these trees myself several months ago - on canvas, at least.) There oughta be a law, I grumbled to myself, and realized that there probably was...but that it probably allowed chainsaws after 8:00 in the morning.

So I got up. I didn't have anything planned until my 12:15 blood donation. If I got my butt in gear early enough, I could stop at Radio Shack and pick up the cordless phone battery I had special-ordered to be delivered there, but that was a bit of a long shot.

I made myself breakfast, a high-iron cereal. As I finished I decided I would play with Scooter a bit. I looked in his box and saw that it was full of poop.

Well, not full, but there was poop there, watery poop. My mom had warned me that he had done this earlier. It looked like he hadn't gotten it on himself or his toys, but I had to change his blankets and wash out the box itself. I took him out of the box and let him scoot about the kitchen while I cleaned the box and reassembled it.

When I was done with the box I saw he had pooped on a rug in the kitchen. Oh, crap, he's sick.

We decided to take a stool sample from the blankets and take it to the vet's to be tested. I slid this module into my schedule for the day:

1. Blood donation, 12:15
Alt. 1: If rejected for donation due to low Iron, and if time permits, go to see 12:40 showing of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
2. Go to Radio Shack to get a battery.
3. Go to vet's to get poop analyzed.
4. Go to Best Buy and pick up my repaired computer.

My blood donation went smoothly, though my Iron levels were just barely acceptable. Radio Shack did not yet have the battery - it isn't scheduled to arrive until Friday, I found out later. The poop analysis indicated that Scooter has roundworms - how he got them, or why they waited until now to show up, is anybody's guess, but we had to give him half a pill today and half a pill in two weeks.

Before I went to Best Buy to part with rather a lot of money, I decided to stop at Sam's Club to prepare for the holidays. I walked out with $40 worth of candy (good for about an hour of Trick-or-Treaters; I need to buy a lot more candy in the next eight weeks - my next blood donation is scheduled for Halloween, by the way) and more than $50 of blue LED Christmas lights (if you're looking for LED Christmas lights, now is the time to buy them.)

My computer...well, I'm glad I found out about the AAA 20% Geek Squad discount. Very glad.

And then I came home, suddenly feeling very tired. Probably the blood thing. Oh well.

10

On July 7, 2007 I donated my eightieth pint of blood.

I first started donating back in 1992. There was a blood drive going on in Nanticoke, at the Armory downtown. I was still kicking around trying to find myself a job, hoping that the one I had applied for with a Compact Disc manufacturer thirty-five miles away might work out, and giving blood seemed like a good thing to do while I was waiting. Besides, I had recently picked up a book on historical fads, and one of the more interesting ones was bloodletting - attempting to increase the lifespan of men to match that of women by imitating the periodic blood loss experienced by most females, and I thought it would be amusing to see if there was any value in it. Better health through blood loss! Unlike the bloodletting fads of old, my blood donations would actually get to help some people.

Donors were laid out on hard, flat cots. The donation lasted about an hour and left me with a huge bruise on my arm. I wasn't sure I would do it again.

I think I gave blood one more time, in the basement of a local Catholic school, before I started making arrangements for semi-regular donations at the local Red Cross Donor Center. Donations became a sort of a game: how many donations could I squeeze into a single year? (You can give blood every eight weeks, so if you time donations right you can actually give seven times a year, though you would only be able to give six times the following year.)

I haven't always succeeded. At least one donation went awry, with the needle missing my vein (or passing through it entirely), resulting in an incomplete pint that could not be used and a huge bruise under my skin. Other times I have been deferred for Iron levels that were too low. Sometimes I couldn't donate because of scheduling conflicts, or because I was out of the country when the date rolled around.

More people need to donate. For many people, the first and last times they donated was in the days following September 11, 2001. First, because many people had an automatic response to want to do something meaningful in response to the attacks, and donating blood seemed like the most appropriate and helpful thing; last, because many people became enraged when they discovered that their donations had been discarded after a certain period of time, and vowed never to donate again. (Blood and blood products have a finite shelf life, and the glut of donations in response to an incident that really did not call for blood donations meant that, briefly, much more blood and blood products were available than could be used before their shelf life expired.)

Over the last fifteen years I have donated eighty pints of blood. That's ten gallons of the red stuff, as the pin I recently received will attest. On Wednesday, if my Iron levels are sufficient, I will begin working on the next ten. I would be very happy if you decided to start working on your ten gallon pin.

Deferred

Dammit. My iron levels were too low for a blood donation today, even after a week of eating red meat. I could try again next Saturday, but I've already got plans for that day.

I had other plans for today, too, but those got shifted when I found out that my nephew is playing his last two T-ball games this weekend, and there is a Mass for my uncle tomorrow. So today would have been a quick trip to hang out with a bunch of heavily-armed people making lots of noise for a few hours, followed by a drive home late in the evening. Even without being a pint low, the whole thing would be a bit stressful. So I opted for the T-ball game today, and perhaps planting some roses later this afternoon. (This would not have been possible with a hole in my left arm, so that worked out for me.)

Wow. Assuming I do not give blood next Saturday - which I do not intend to do - the next Saturday after that will be July 7. Time keeps ticking away.

Eight weeks, Sixteen weeks, Thirty-five years

I give blood every eight weeks whenever possible. Tomorrow I will give blood once again. It's been eight weeks since my last donation, though if I didn't have the evidence to prove that I would swear that my last donation was just three or four weeks ago. Eight weeks ago I broke the news to them that my "employer" data field would need to be revised to reflect my "between jobs" status. I fully expected that eight weeks later I would be several weeks into a new job. So far, no such luck. I've applied to several carefully selected jobs, but as of this writing I haven't heard anything much one way or the other about any of them.

Eight weeks before then I actually could have had them change this data field. I had a blood donation the weekend after our little Reduction In Force. I guess I was still in shock at that point, still saw myself as being on the payroll of that company. It's a funny story: we had a corporate blood drive scheduled for the Wednesday of that week, and as I was actually eligible to give blood the previous weekend, I postponed my donation by a few days so I could be a team player, pitch in, and help with our blood collection total at work. Mysteriously, the blood drive was cancelled without explanation shortly before it was to take place, and I rescheduled my donation to the weekend after. The real bloodletting at work took place that Tuesday. The next day, I doubt many of those who were left would have been in the mood to roll up their sleeves and give a pint. Besides, nobody would have probably passed the blood pressure test.

So it's been sixteen weeks since I lost my job. They haven't been idle weeks, although there was a period of enforced idleness during which I did not know what the terms of my severance would be, and could not take certain actions (or certain jobs) for fear of forfeiting my severance. I have filled up the days with classes and training, home improvement work, time with my family, time with my friends, all the things I never had time for back when I was working. I am looking for new employment, though maybe not as frantically as I should be. Soon that will change.

Tomorrow will also mark the thirty-fifth anniversary of one of the most significant events in this area's history: On June 23, 1972, the Susquehanna River, swollen with rainwater deposited upriver by Hurricane/Tropical Storm Agnes, rose out of its banks and flooded the Wyoming Valley. The amount of damage was remarkable, although it pales in comparison to the flooding in New Orleans or the Great Johnstown Flood - both of which were events in which man-made engineering stupidity played a major role.

My uncle, the one who died on the same day as Haley, was getting married during what has come to be known as The Wrath of Agnes, or simply The Flood. His marriage went through as scheduled, though some arrangements had to be changed drastically - I believe their wedding cake needed to be replaced in a hurry. My mom invited a relative living in the flood zone to come stay with us until the danger passed; the relative turned down the offer, pointing out that there wasn't even water in her basement yet. She left her house several days later, by boat, out a third-story window. My most vivid memory of the flood was standing in her living room a week or two later, after the water had receded and the Susquehanna had returned to its banks and the cleanup began, and looking up at the images of book covers pressed into the plaster ceiling. They had floated out of the bookcases, floated up to the ceiling, and then pressed against it, leaking yellow and blue and red and green and brown dye out of their cloth and leather bindings, as the water continued to rise but the books remained in place.

Today the weather is beautiful as we bask in a high-pressure system that followed on the heels of yesterday's thunderstorms - maybe it's even a little windy, but I'm not complaining. Tomorrow I will give blood. And I will remember events of eight weeks, sixteen weeks, and thirty-five years ago.