At church this morning they made an appeal for platelet donors. Since I had about 3.5 hours to kill between the end of the
11am service and rehearsal for Evensong, I went over to the Blood Center and plopped myself down.
After explaining my travels in Europe since 1980, that I hadn’t slept with anyone, HIV-infected or otherwise, and telling about the one time I couldn’t give
because my iron count was too low (!), they strapped me into the machine and cranked it up. They wouldn’t let me turn the pages of my magazine with a long stick held in my mouth, so I was forced to watch the last half hour of “Sweet Home Alabama” that
my neighbor was watching before I could pick something: “Return of the Pink Panther”, which was lying out on the desk – a classic which I never tire of seeing.
About 2/3 of the way through giving, the power in the whole neighborhood went out. They do not have backup generators at the Blood Center. After about five
minutes, power was restored, but they could not get my machine to reset. They pressed all the buttons. They fiddled with all the knobs. They called Tech
Support (glad it wasn’t Windows-based, or I’d be dead). My arms start getting cold from all the saline solution rushing back into my body. Finally they got it
reset, and continued the process. Only ended up being late for Evensong by about 20 minutes, which is pretty good, considering. Used the ordeal as an excuse
when I initially started canting on a cypher in the chapel’s organ rather than the note John played.