Friday, April 13, 2007

the week

Tuesday

Shannon and I took Mountain Whore Jenna to Fresco for dinner. (We've missed her, but time flies. It seems like just the other week we took her out to a goodbye dinner.) We split a bottle of Shiraz with minimal help from Shannon because she was saving herself for a Columns mojito. We got to the student half of 1718, which was of course entertaining. We had a little roundtable on the word "moist" after because we discovered that Jenna hates it. Her discovery for the night? "Wow, I've never been to a bar where people were, like, smart and not just trying to get on each other." Learn something new everyday. We ended up at Bruno's with a bunch of her other friends playing drinking games, drunk-dialing Jerry, and going around the group and talking about "things we love about Jenna."

Wednesday

Classes. I tried to give blood as usual. They filled out the form with the info from the computer, completed the mini-interview, did the mini-physical, swabbed the area, put a tourniquet on my arm. They put in the needle. Nothing. One minute. Nurse starts fidgeting with needle. Two minutes. Nothing. Another nurse tries. Nothing. The head nurse tried. Still nothing. I've had this thing in my arm for almost five minutes now. She pulls it out. "Scar tissue and rolling vein. You'll never bleed to death, sweetie." I know what scar tissue is but have no clue about "rolling vein," so I ask. Apparently your veins move all the time, especially when you move, and sometimes when you try to get into one, they move out of the way. Mine, despite being large, are apparently very good at rolling.

I offer my other arm. I get off the chair, so they can swivel it around. Swab. Tourniquet. Needle. Nothing. Then the blood starts flowing slowly. It's dark. "High in oxygen, very healthy." Then it stops. "My God," says head nurse. I ask what. "Your platelets are off the charts. The blood just clotted even with the needle inside. Maybe next time, Wolverine."

I apologized for the lack of blood. They said "It's a good thing. Amazing actually. But just not good for giving blood." They told me I probably wouldn't need the bandages but they'd set them up anyway. And I should help myself to snacks and drinks at their canteen. They said I still lost a substantial amount of blood but "with your clear health, you can probably exercise and drink as soon as you want."

So apparently I have superheroic abilities. Super-Selfish-I-Don't-Share-My-Blood-Man.

Jenna and I went to dinner with some of her friends at Miyako. (My first time there. Pretty decent.) I got a sushi box which was a combination of fresh salmon and spicy salmon. We ordered a two-person drink called a "scorpion" which undoubtedly had everclear in it. She made me drink most of it, and it felt pretty good considering the lack of blood/fluid thing.

LOST with Whitney. Great episode.

Thursday

Brunch with Shannon. Then we said "seeya later at graduation" to Jenna, so she could go whore up to the the mountain again and be with her ancient 33-year-old boyfriend. (Seriously though nothing but love for Jenna and Jerry.)

Terrorism class. Crazy ACLU speaker. Lunch with Tara. We texted Jacque about plans for her August wedding and generally missed her, as usual. Brian's art show. Impressive. My favorite part was the sublimation of his love for paper clips (30something thousand of them) into a sculpture/curtain/thing and a 3D portrait of a male head and torso with X,000 cigarette butts.

I went to the Toni Morrison thing in McAlister. "I'm smart and black. Most of you are not." Okay, that's not what she said. She read excerpts from her four latest novels and did some Q&A. Intelligent and somewhat inspiring, pretty much what you'd expect McAlister was packed. I sat next to Jonathan, a former professor of mine.

Friday/Today

This was a question on my adolescent psych exam today:
19. Gino doesn't smoke and has now made friends with Andrew, who does smoke. Which of the following is most likely to occur?"
Har har har, Cunningham. You are so funny.

Had he written "drink" instead of "smoke," it might be valid.

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