Okay it wasn't just giving blood, they hooked me up to this machine that drew my blood, spun out the plasma and red blood cells and stuck the plasma back in. 2 pints worth. I had no idea about this thing.

I signed up to give blood a couple of weeks ago at a service fair here on campus. You know, do the nice thing, get involved with the students outside of the library. All that stuff. Anyhow, Tuesday was my day. I had breakfast, but didn't eat lunch. I forgot all about giving blood and eating before hand (last time I gave blood was 2 years ago). Anyhow, the nurse person comes up to me and asks if I'd be willing to donate the red blood cells, rather than just blood, since they are low on that. I had to be a male, over 150 lbs, and over 5'1" (for those of you wanting to make a joke, save it till the end).

So why not, I'm game. But as soon as I said it, my stomach started to turn. I haven't eaten, so I grabbed two cookies and started to eat. After all the questions and stuff. I love the one about if I've every had a blood transfusion in the presense of someone who lived in the UK and sold their monkey for sex. Who answers yes to these questions?

They hook me up, and all is going fine. I'm drinking some juice because they've told me it'll take 35-40 minutes, so I'm thinking about not eating. I've got a high iron count so the machine is already grabbing plasma (which looks pretty werid). I'm doing fine until one nurse walks by and says that I look a little pale. "I don't feel pale," I said. Then I proceeded to look down at the needle and back up. "Okay, I'm a feeling pale."

Next thing I know I'm riding on a flying shopping cart through the city at night.

Then my eyes open and I'm staring up at strange, blurry (they took my classes off) faces and bright lights. I've got no idea where the hell I am, but damn I'm feeling pretty rested. I'm not at home... where was I... crap! I passed out.

There are students on both sides of me, who I know. I turned to one and said, "hey you always look good when your next to the guy that passes out." The Red Cross ladies said I was out for about a minute. They had taken the needle out, undone my tie, and cold rags all over my face. Later that night I saw another student who was next to me. He said "Man you were out. They kept trying to wake you up, but nothing."

Oh well, it gave everyone something to talk about. But hey, they did get a pint at least.

passing out pauly

EPIC 2014

Check out this interesting web movie (about 5 minutes). Just click on "Go to a random mirror." It's a little slow on dial-up, just as a warning.

It is about the future of information, the internet and Google. Very interesting and thought provoking. So post your thoughts and comments.

Enjoy

Okay, so I created my blog for the research class at school and sent an email out to everyone in the class. As of now, there's only one person. We'll see how it works, or if it does over the next few days.

Thanks to everyone who posted today. I plan on staying active with this blog. So I hope that most of you will stop by every now and then. One thing I will make sure of is that I'm adding new content each day. Maybe a full rant, maybe a Carter story, or maybe just a cool link I found.

But I promise there will continue to be new stuff. Whether or not any of it is interesting, well that's for you to decide. I have a timeline on Darth Sidious coming up, some NFL draft discussion, some side stories and probably a lot of other odds and ends. I hope you're add some topics for discussion too.

Have a good night everyone

Welcome!

I decided that I wanted to set up a blog for feedback at the library, but I wanted to test it out first. So this is that experiment.

Feel free to reply to any post and add your own thoughts and comments. I'll be adding my rants on a probably a daily basis. You all know that I suck at email, so maybe this might help me stay in touch with you guys. So here we go...

First up, any thoughts on MNF moving to ESPN? Or NBC being back in the mix with the NFL? I'm glad that they are moving to the flexible scheduling. That should make this interesting - although most every game is interesting from a fantasy football standpoint.

I've been putting together an email about Star Wars and Sidious/Palpatine. So I'll look to post that in a day or two. I want to put up a brief essay on SW each week as we build up to EpIII. It is not the completion of the saga, just the complete the movies. To me there is still a lot of story to be told. With my posts I want to try to tie together some of the stuff that's been leading up to EPIII. I've recently finished watching TPM and AOTC again, and I really enjoyed TPM. Please feel free to rip it, but I'll post why I think it makes sense (now that we know what we know). It is not a great movie, but it's a fun opening chapter to a much larger story. There is a prologue to that saga and I'll talk about. A lot of good stuff lead up to TPM and by knowing it by TPM and ATOC make more sense.

Tomorrow I'll post some of my personal SW memories. So please post yours as well.

Have a good night and I'll talk to you in the morning.