I seem to alternate off and on for good blood donations and bad blood donations.

As many of you know, I have O neg blood, the universal donor type, and thus the Red Cross is always on my back about donating. Seeing as my area was in an emergency state regarding blood supply shortages, I thought I’d go ahead and give. All was going well and I was complimenting myself on a good donation when came the time where they put that little capsule in the tube to get the last bit of blood for testing. Well, as I was told later by the donation people, the new manufacturing of these little test tube parts have been somewhat faulty, so he stuck it in the tube, and suddenly the end broke off inside of the test tube. Blood shot EVERYWHERE. All over the guy, all over my hand, all over the floor.

It didn’t hurt at all, and in fact all I felt was the warm rush of blood over my hand, but I could see the girl sitting across from me in her mid-donation process get a horrified look on her face, so I started to laugh heartily to cast it off as no big deal, so she wouldn’t freak out.

And it wasn’t a big deal, but I knew I was going to have a reaction. See, they had to clamp up the tube so blood would stop shooting out, so that backed up and put a lot of pressure in my arm, which was uncomfortable. Then they had to pull the old test tube out in order to stick a new one in, lest my donation be totally wasted, so when they did that, blood shot out everywhere again, and going from backed up to gushing out did a number on me.

Some ice cold paper towels, orange juice, elevated feet, and several fig newtons later, all was well, but I certainly was reduced to a zombie-like state for the rest of the day. Next donation I’m going to start doing apherisis, sure it takes longer, but that way I won’t have any more zombie days.

Today, Carleton and I went to the Louisville Science Center, where I used to volunteer in high school (it was awesome fun). Julie, my old volunteer coordinator boss person, was still there and delighted to see me. We caught up and stuff and things seem to be going very well in the program, it was nice to see her again.

We also went to the Frazier Historical Arms Museum which was pretty freakin cool. When I was on my England trip a couple of years ago we went to the Royal Armory in Leeds, and I thought it was awesome, and some stuff from there was donated to this museum. Swords and armor are fun and cool, but we were too hungry to stick around for the sword fighting demonstration.

Caught up with Brendan tonight, seems that crew had an awesome time at Comic-con, according to Brendan’s account. I’ll have several copies of our ashcan comic, Honor, to hand out at Conglomeration. Making that comic was fun, and I’d like to do it again next year (only this time, start planning it NOW, so I can actually have a decent story and not so rushed drawings).