This is cheering: I faxed off four resumes this morning, and this afternoon I received a phone call which resulted in an interview appointment. Of course, it's a fairly unlikely agency for me, but I never turn down interviews. Larry, who phoned me, was as country as you can get with his twangy accent and down-home humor. He's clearly the Pop of their Mom-and-Pop agency. Sadly, Mom-and-Pop agencies almost never want to pay the going rate for good agents, and their owners look at you with frankly disbelieving eyes when you explain that $15K a year isn't enough to live on. Then they ask you what church you attend. I don't care, I'm going on the interview anyway. I have the clothes for it, remember?
I donated blood today for the first time in my life. I noticed an article in the paper yesterday which said the American Red Cross needed 500 donors to get through the holiday weekend. For absolutely no reason that I can think of, I picked up the phone and made an appointment. I think my sixth house is in transit, or Jupiter's aligned with Mars, or something. In the last week I've been ruthlessly honest with the various laggards and leeches of society who mistakenly believed I was their friend, done all my chores when I said I would, and generally been energetic on the morals and ethics front. Call it psychological housecleaning, maybe. Anyway, it struck me as a good thing to donate blood, and so I went down to the Red Cross at noon today to let them have mine.
I was a little nervous, even though I don't mind needles particularly. I made John go with me for mental support. He decided to donate, too, as it'd been a few months. The elderly woman who signed me in was chatty. Chat chat chat, all through the process of giving me a form to fill out and finding me the promised baseball cap and food coupons. Chat chat chat until I wanted to smack her from sheer nerves. I filled out my form, pondering over the various diseases I had not had nor knew existed, and listened to her chat chat chat to the next hapless fool who was signing in. Then they called my number and I went to have my blood pressure taken, ear pricked, and temperature gauged.
Actually giving blood was a really simple and fast process. You lie about on a lounge chair and they give you something to squeeze so your blood flows properly into the bag. 10 minutes and you're done. I felt fine throughout, enjoying the view and chatting with the nurse about my tattoo. Every minute or so, someone would ask how I felt, and I began to be a bit surprised by the frequency -- until the woman behind me fainted. I finished up, clutched my baseball cap and coupons, and walked out to the lobby to munch on cookies and wait for John. I waited a long time. Finally, I went back in -- and he had fainted! Poor guy, he didn't even finish donating his full pint. I thought it would be me who passed out, but in the event I was fine. And now I feel very happy that my blood will help someone who needs it. I'm going to wear my cap all weekend.
