Mortaine’s Blog

Remember 2 years ago, on September 11th, everyone rushed out and spent hours and hours and hours in line to donate blood?

OK, all that blood is gone. It’s all been used up in the 2 years since then. And then some– more blood has been used than was collected in those weeks. That may seem unreal, but it’s true– it was all gone in less than a year.

I just made an appointment for what I thought would be a pretty popular date to give blood, September 11th, 2003.

The entire day was open and available.

This means that there are just not enough people still interested in donating blood.

It can be hard to donate blood on a whim– you have to plan for it, drink a lot of water on the day of, and expect to give up 1-2 hours of your time.

1-2 hours to save up to four lives.

If you’re not eligible to donate, your support and encouragement is appreciated.

If you donate just once this year, do it now. Who knows? 8 weeks later, you might go back and donate again. After all, that’s just before the holiday season, when blood reserves get critically low.

It costs nothing to donate blood. Blood can’t be bought. If you think about what you would want to give to charity, compared to what you can afford to give, remember that your donation of blood is charitable giving. It’s not tax-deductible, but it’s certainly a gift of yourself that is unique and precious.

By the way, if you’re looking for freebies, blood donation is a great way to get free cookies and juice, free T-shirts, free cups, mugs, water bottles, pens, magnets, hats– the Red Cross gives out all kinds of schwag, especially at times of critical need (like the middle of summer, and during the holidays), and around all major holidays.

I once got “I gave blood in the dark” water bottles during the energy crisis. The last 2 times I donated, I got T-shirts. I’ve also gotten pins in the past. And, well, one time I got an ice pack.
GIVE BLOOD, SAVE A LIFE!

My dog, Hammer, had to have 2 plasma transfusions 2 weeks ago– I don’t know of any nationwide dog blood donation programs, or I’d probably hype them, too!

Picked up my beginning piano books today at the bookstore. Oh, yes. Basic music theory…. I probably don’t need that one, but will chat with the instructor tomorrow to find out. If there are written assignments required from it, then I need it. If not, back to the bookstore it may go.

The other book is titled “First Year Piano” or something similar, and looks good. It starts in an area I’m familiar with and ends with chording on the left hand and melody on the right, with some chording on the right hand to go with it. So, I feel comfortable with that one.

Parking is $2/day, or $40/semester. There are 15 class sessions, with the first two weeks being ticket-free. I’m going to just pay the $2/day, I think. Cheaper, though the walk is further. Good exercise. Yes.

I found the classroom. I also found the other parts of the building, like the student lounge areas and the cafeteria, which is good in case of hunger.

I will, apparently, need to keep some sort of record for my practice sessions, if I’m going to do them off-campus, to get credit for Music 90A (the “music lab” course, required for every applied music course, ever). Now, I need to ask, of course, whether “record” means “recording” or “log.” Cause if it means “log,” then I think we all know who’s gonna get LiveJournal page print-outs at the end of the semester! LOL.

If it means “recording,” maybe I’ll record them on Trinity and burn to CD-ROM. Probably not, though…. that would be a LOT of MP3s (15 minutes a day for just over 100 days…. 1500 minutes of music, when your typical CD-ROM can record about 80.)

Of course, if it means “You have to spend X number of hours practicing, and X number of hours doing pointless exercises in our music lab” then I’m just going to flunk it. I don’t care if I pass the piano course or the music lab; these are just for me.

I also need to seriously get the piano tuned. So far, I’ve called a few places and never made an appointment. Why is it so hard to schedule shit like that?

I wonder how Austin is doing with the violin….?

Well, John was right: the green carpet does make the house darker. I must concede this is true. We can install lamps and lighting, I suppose, to lighten things up.

It’s still better than what we had before.

It’s very thick carpet– very squishy. I like it much.

In the den, the carpet is lower pile– hopefully, this will help it stay cleaner, long-term. It’s also lighter in color.

John’s office is now our workout room. We will be working out together in the mornings, using his monitor as a tv screen. Well, we will once we’re both not exhausted/sore/sick.

He needs a new computer desk, something small to fit in the office/workout room, and we need a new sofa or loveseat. Also, time to break down and buy the new dining room table.

Wonder if we can have this all done by the game on the 13th? Probably not the sofa, but maybe the desk and table. Sweets in the Nude is generally pretty prompt.

I miss my GPS device. It’s in a box. In the garage.

John gave me his Clie (yes, the one I got him for XMas a year and a half ago), which is in a bag in the kitchen. So now I need to update gentoo to be more stable re: the USB drivers, and/or figure out a MacOSX solution to syncing and AvantGoing with a PalmOS device (? John says you da man! Also: I need to call yer mom soon– I have books to trade for a spinning lesson, if she’s free sometime).

The clie is brushed-metal look.
The phone is brushed metal.
Trinity is brushed metal.

Time for a see-through purse/laptop bag.
Oh, and has joined the revolution and is installing/running gentoo and KDE. Go, Chris!

Tomorrow is my first day of piano class at Mission College. I am looking forward to this.

Yesterday I forgot to practice. I meant to practice, but then I didn’t. With everything going on in the house, I’m not all that surprised.