Ride my train of thought

There was a letter waiting for me at home the other day, it came from some transportation survey thing and it was telling me that (should I decided to co-operate) I would get the opportunity to represent 109 families in my area. Go Me. They called me last night to make sure they sent it to a real address and then we had a lovely talk. I only had to re-affirm 12 times that I do indeed live alone and there are no children of any age living with me, I do not bike to work ever and I did not choose the location where I live because of the availability of near by bus stops. They seemed disappointed in me because I do no use public transit at any point during my day and when I had to tell him I do not own a bike, I think he teared up.

The guy was also somewhat put off that I am not a student, I don't know any students and no students live at my address and that the neighborhood schools played no part in my buying this house. They didn’t think to ask me about grocery stores, proximity to a church or synagogue of my choice, how close the on ramp, hospital, and fire stations are – things that matter to me.

They are going to send me a little diary thing to fill out to chart my driving habits for a day. I feel like a vehicular Nelson Family, I’m trying to decide if I should save up my errands for that day so I can really impress them with the efficiency of my errand running or if I should just go to work and come home and lock myself in the house so as to impress them with my dedication to fuel conservation and love of the environment. They kept making me repeat back the day I’m going to be doing this, it’s very important that I remember that JANUARY 31 is the day and that I should not under any circumstances keep track of my driving on any other day and to make sure I don't try to keep track of where I drive on say JANUARY 30th on accident. They are going to send me a packet in the mail with the date clearly stamped on it with instructions to only journal my errands on JANUARY 31, so I can write down all the trips I take The Right Day. On that day, they are going to call me and debrief me about my day. It’s going to be a very exciting phone call.

changing the subject

Oh, I am not a complete failure as a human being any more! I went to go give blood on Monday and I was successful! When the woman took the finger stick I told her I had better do well on this, I studied for it. She was confused. I have made a concerted effort to eat more iron rich foods for the past couple of weeks and it helped. I am not anemic, at all, actually but the damn Red Cross won’t take blood from you if your blood count is under a certain number. Monday night I was 39, 38 gets you booted to the curb. I asked a doctor what number really constituted anemia and I was told under 37.

Afterwards, I passed on the red rubber bracelet thing this time as my reward and went with the write on/wipe off board. It says “Things To Do” and at number one is Donate Blood - which you can only do every 58 days so really, if it is the number one thing on your to do list you really do not have enough to do – and besides once you sign up for an appointment the Red Cross will not let you forget it. They send postcards, they call you at work, they are not going to let a donor get away with out a fight.