Gave blood today out by the Wal Mart.

Carter Bloodmobile comes by regular and I always get a call. They like my blood (and the fact that I actually show up the get stuck when I say I will). It's apparently excellent for babies and AIDs patients. There's some blood virus or something that a lot of folks get, but I've never had it. Plus, I'm O+, so they want a LOT of my stuff. They call me as soon as it's time for me to give again, and I try to show up.



They performed a new operation on me this time. Technically, it's called Apheresis. The folks in the van called it "a double". This is where they pull whole blood out of a donor, run it through a machine that separates the Plasma from the red blood cells, and then they run the red blood cells back into you.

Apparently, it takes a long time for your body to regenerate those red blood cells, which is why you have to wait to give blood again. So shootin' 'em back into the donor saves lots of time, allows the blood to be used quicker, and allows that donor to donate more often. As you can see here, the red stuff is flowin'.



You can see the clear stuff here. The red tube goin' down the right side is just to allow them to get a few viles of whole blood, for testing purposes. They spliced it shut pretty quick, after drawing blood into several viles. But the other went on for about a half hour. The machine drew the band tight around my arm and pumped blood three times, and then returned the stuff they didn't need. Squeeze your hand when it's pumpin, and rest when it's returnin'. And don't move your arm, or all hell could break loose.



Here's the shot of the last return, when the red blood cells being pumped back into my arm.



In the end, I got a purdy blue bandage for my arm...



and another new t-shirt. As I got up to go, the dude told me to refrain from consuming tobacco for a half hour (shit, no cigar in the car on the way home), no booze for 24 hours (Hm, yea, we'll see), and leave the bandage on for a day or so. Thing is, he didn't say anything about BBQ!

I cooked two racks of pig ribs yesterday morning for the annual family reunion. They love them there, and I never have any left when it's time to come home. We got home after, empty handed, so the house still smelled like BBQ, but Denise and I had only had about three ribs between us. So as I sat in school this morning, putting up with obnoxious 3rd graders, I decided I'd toss another rack in the oven when I got home.



The shot above is what they looked like when I pulled them out after three hours or so and poured BBQ sauce on 'em.



I spread it around with a fork, and then put 'em back in for another hour or so.



Now, all I gotta do is toss the ribs back in, and the left-over fries to warm up, and wait for the little wowman to get home. Y'all try to find somethin' good to eat. Cheers.