Category: Miscellaneous babble

I hate moving. I’ve made 3 moves so far in my life, and i’m starting to get ready for my 4th. And each time, there’s more and more Stuff to move. That’s the nature of Stuff I suppose. It grows to expand your available space. Some Stuff is useful. Other Stuff just becomes Junk. And since I’m a bit of a packrat, some of my Stuff that should be Junk just ends up sticking around.

So now I’m in the middle of collecting boxes to put my Stuff into. Some of the Stuff will become Junk, and end up getting tossed. The rest will remain Stuff and will get packed away. Someone’s supposed to be stopping by to look at my Stuff and give me an estimate on how much it will cost to move it. Sometimes, I think I should just get rid of all my Stuff and start over.

Then I have to see about making all the address changes. There are a good deal of them, and inevitably, I’ll forget one or two of them. Thank goodness for mail forwarding.

Also have to get my car checked out and make sure it will survive the trip to my new home. Been having some cooling issues with it lately, and don’t want it dying on the road in the middle of my trip.

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.