Going to NYC, giving blood

Saturday, October 8th, 2005: Went to bed last night around 11:15ish. Fell asleep around 12:15ish. Then I woke up at 1am. Then at 2am. Then 3am. Then 4am. Whenever an early morning alarm is set for me, it’s impossible for me to sleep well. My alarm went off at 4:25am and I got up for the day.

Got dressed, finished packing and headed to the Angel Cream donut shop in Rosewood Heights which happens to have the best donuts in the United States. (I’ve spent the past 15 years doing extensive research on this.) But Angel Cream was closed at 4:45am and I didn’t feel like waiting for it to open so I settled on Hostess cupcakes at Quiktrip instead.

Drove to the airport and got on a plane to NYC. The flight took 3 hours (no layover) and was uneventful. I bought a biography of Mark Twain last night so I spent the entire time reading that and listening to mp3s. Got to JFK around 9:45am, Jammie and a few of her coworkers picked me up and we drove to Jersey. The plan was to spend the day at Great Adventure. But after driving for 2 hours, we find that Great Adventure is closed! All because of a little rain. So that was slightly disappointing.

Some of us had planned to give blood to the Red Cross there for free admission. So to make our trip seem like less of a waste, me and Jammie gave blood anyway. We still got the free tickets but they expire in a few weeks so it’s unlikely they’ll get used. I’ve been wanting to donate blood for years now. When I dated Tricia, I think we had several opportunities to give blood but she always came up with an excuse for why we couldn’t that day. I was always wary of doing it alone because I’d been told that it can make you light-headed and you’re not supposed to drive afterwards. After giving 2 pints (it looked like 2 pints, I’m not really sure and I didn’t ask) it seemed to have absolutely no effect on me all all. So I plan to do this more often now.

The questions they asked us before they let us donate were pretty amusing/insane. Besides all the basics of wanting to know what kind of prescription medicine, if any, I was taking they asked if I’d paid for sex in the past year, if I’d accepted any gifts in exchange for sex, if I’d slept with anyone from Africa, if I’d visited the UK or Africa, if I took heroine, etc. She checked my arms for track marks. After finally convincing her that I wasn’t a junkie or prostitute, I got to donate.

After the blood thing, we stopped to eat and then went home. Just kind of hung around the house and watched TV mostly. I kept dozing off and eventually fell asleep.