Talk Without Speaking

Gave blood on Wednesday night which was all well and good. It was my first time donating blood and the setup at Canadian Blood Services was pretty impressive. Being a blood-giving newbie I was given a ‘first-timer’ sticker which meant that people had to be even nicer to me than the normally are While I pumped it out I was sitting next to a guy who was giving blood for his 91st time - WOW! Impressive. Considering that you are only allowed to give blood every 56 days this means that, as a minimum, he has been giving blood for:

91 * 56 = 5096 / 365 = 13.96 years. Talk about commitment.

The folly of my actions did not catch up with me until the next day. Wanting to vote, I realized that I had not received my voter registration card yet. Called up my electoral office and was told that, despite having voted in a prior federal election from my same Vancouver address and having filed taxes here (checking the ’submit my info to elections Canada’ box) for 7 years, they still had me listed as living with my parents, an address that I have not lived at for 15 years. Gives one faith in the system doesn’t it?

So, to get this all straightened out I figured out where I needed to go and further decided that it was kind of on the way to where I was playing Ultimate. Figured that, although a bit far, I could hit 2 birds with one stone and bike to both locations.

So, the moral of the story here is that you can’t be expected to bike about 50 blocks, play 2 games of Ultimate and then bike 50 more blocks when you’ve given blood not 24 hours previously and not eaten enough.

I blame the federal government.