A Non-Vampire Blood Post

Today there was a blood drive in the office park where I work.

I have been meaning to donate blood for awhile. My blood type is O negative, which anyone can receive. (I'm such a giver.) Once my name gets on that blood donation list, not a couple weeks will go by without a phone call reminding me that they would like my blood. However, I have spent the last year, since moving to Kentucky, not donating blood. I just didn't do it. However, I finally decided that, since I could do it on work time, I would go ahead and donate the blood.

So I went down with a co-worker of mine to the bus they had brought and parked in the middle of our office park. That's right, a blood bus. In the back they had little booths (kinda like catholic confessional booths) where you'd do the interviews and they'd poke your finger, and then towards the front they had the beds on either side of the bus so you could donate using either arm. A rather innovative idea, the blood bus. I'm a big fan.

My favorite part of the blood donation interview is when they find out I have been outside of the United States and Canada in the past three years. "Well, where have you been?" "Where haven't I been!" I respond, and then start to name all the different countries where Torrie and I went backpacking just over two years ago. This year I got to name the countries that we cruised to, after which I got some bad news:

"I'm really sorry sir, I want to take your blood, but unfortunately, Honduras is a malaria risk zone. You cannot donate blood for one year."

Sad! My dream of a kentucky blood donor shirt, dashed to pieces! I had so been looking forward to those cookies, and I could have said that I donated blood in a blood bus!

A half hour later, I received the worst news of not being able to donate blood.
Turns out, you can get half a day of leave time for giving blood. You know, to make sure that you have fully recovered. Since I don't have a lot going on today, I could have been out of here after lunch time.

Man! And now I have to wait until at least next June until I can take advantage of that. Dumb Honduras. Dumb Malaria. I remember marvelling, while I was in Honduras, at the lack of mosquitoes on the island where we were.

Oh well. At least I had time (and material) to write in my blog today :)

Independence Day

Being a BYU alumnus with a blog, I feel that I should comment on BYU's declaration of independence from the Mountain West in football.


I love it!!!!

I, living in Kentucky (or anywhere east of the Rockies, for that matter), will finally be able to watch BYU on TV. Every game. Beginning next season, every BYU home football game will be shown to a national audience on an ESPN network or BYUtv. How great is that??

Oh and it's not just football, either. They'll be a lot of basketball games on TV as well.


It's not just me being able to watch BYU on TV, however. It's recruits. I don't see how this move could hurt BYU's recruiting abilities. Come join our team, you will be on TV all the time. If I was a recruit from Michigan, that would have been hard for me - there's no way my family would have been able to watch me play. No longer.


Does not being in a conference limit our bowl opportunities?

Well, first, I am sick and tired of the Las Vegas Bowl. Does going independent kill our chances at making it 10 Las Vegas Bowl appearances in a row? Yes. Boo-hoo.

I guess I'm not as concerned about it being harder to get a BCS appearance because I didn't think the MWC would ever be an automatic BCS conference.

If BYU is ever actually good enough to get a BCS bowl apperance...well, we'll cross that bridge when we get there. I don't think we've been good enough yet.

It's going to be difficult - the bar is raised, and BYU will have to work hard to get a good schedule and be competitive, year-in and year-out. Notre Dame hasn't been so good in that department lately.

However, kudos to BYU for not sitting around and moping (like I sort of wanted to do) when Utah got invited to the PAC 10. (By the way, I'm happy for Utah. Good for them, I hope they do well. I may start to cheer for them if they're not playing us. Maybe.) BYU went out, used their competitive advantage, and took a step forward. It's a bold step, and I don't just like it - I love it. Except now I may have a reason to pay the extra money and get cable.

Painting.

I know that nobody likes to watch paint dry, but paint drying really does change things and therefore it should happen periodically.

Take our guest bathroom, for instance. We decided on a grayish hue. “Silver Spoon”, was what the official name was. Of course once we paint it, (We means Torrie, in this instance. She did the project while I was at work one day. Fabulous woman.) it’s definitely purple.

I was understandably nervous, then, when we undertook the project of painting our great room. Since we moved in it has always been white, and we were definitely ready for some color in our lives. We settled on a color called “Shoreline Haze”, which we thought was a tan, but I was worried that after painting the entire wall it was going to end up be neon pink.

Cute picture of Pregnant Torrie painting

Well, eight hours later, we had the majority of the room finished. At first I thought there was a greenish hue in a certain light, but I don’t really notice that anymore. However, I do notice our crown molding and how well the color matches the hardwood floors and the kitchen.

We tackled the few remaining spots, the hall, and the baby’s room a couple weekends ago. We’ll probably end up painting the guest room the same color as well. (Five gallons of paint sure goes a long way.)

My job was to paint the parts of the wall that people don't really see.

Project: Successful!

Big difference.

Next up: Decorating those walls with tasteful art and photography.