Category: Miscellaneous babble

It’s summer, which means hot humid weather, lazy days trying to stay cool and plenty of sunshine. Summer also means it’s hurricane season. So, while I’m out enjoying the summer weather and hanging out at the beach, I’m also keeping an eye on the weather (along with everyone else). Fortunately with hurricanes you always get a lot of advance notice, so there’s plenty of time to prepare.

I’ve been pretty lucky so far in the 4 years I’ve been here. The closest I’ve come to encuontering a hurricane was Hurricane Floyd in 1999. That one caused some major traffic snarls when the decision was made to call for an evacuation. Luckily I was already headed out of town anyway, so I was already on the road and missed all the traffic jams.

Today I made my 46th blood donation. Maybe 48th, could be 50th. The number is a little fuzzy because I’ve forgotten how many donations I made while I was back home in Canada. I’m pretty sure it was 34. I remember being pretty close to getting the pin for 35 donations.
I’ve been a regular blood donor since about 1989 or so, with the exception of the three years I lived in Detroit. That was just because there wasn’t a conveniently located donor center that I could find.

I go every 8 weeks (6x a year) and donate a pint of my AB+ blood. The people at the donor clinic love me because I’m AB+ and I have large veins. It gives me a good feeling to know that I’m helping someone out. And I get pop and cookies in return. Doesn’t get much better than that if you ask me.

Have you donated blood recently? At all? If not, why not? you really should. What have you got to lose except a pint of blood that can be used by someone else?

Well, we’ve finally decided to take the plunge and make the move to Raleigh, NC. It meant turning down a very tempting offer to stay, but I think in the long run everything will work out. Moving is always a pain in the butt, but I’m looking forward to being up there once we get settled in.

Happy Birthday to Canada! Living in the US for the past 7 years, I’ve missed the Canada Day celebrations. Canadians aren’t really known for being overly expressive in their patriotism and we’re not big flag wavers like Americans are. But on July 1st of each year, everybody who admits to being Canadian does so proudly and loudly. And usually with much beer and partying.

An Associated Press article in today’s Post and Courier grabbed my interest today. It’s about a new airport passenger screening device that uses scattered x-rays to detect weapons and explosives.

AFAIK, many states prohibit the use of radiation on people unless it’s for medical purposes. I’m sure that someone will manage to get an exception for these types of machines given time. There are still ethical issues with exposing masses of people to radiation, no matter how low the dose. Most people are paranoid enough about radiation (mostly because of lack of knowledge). Now the TSA wants to unnecessarily irradiating hundreds of thousands of people with low, but not trivial radiation doses just to get on an airplane?

I smell much controversy coming up if the TSA gets their way with these units.