Rich was the second "civilian" to try the new TRIMA machine today, after the nurses and blood center workers. This was about 90 minutes, when they took out his blood and centrifuged it then put it back (he says the antibiotics made his lips tingle as this happened) over and over again. They took out 4 trillion platelets (how'd you like to be the person who counted these? One... two... three...) and later 350 ml of red blood cells.

I would donate blood, except I keep failing the anemia test.

Then, still jet-lagged, we went to the next lecture in the gold rush series. This was a mistake. Rich dozed off right away, to the smug amusement of the younguns ahead of us. The point of the lecture was that the Yankee 49ers left an early Victorian society and passed through Latin America on the way to the gold fields, and while they tsk-tsked, they embraced the looser lifestyle. This could have been interesting, but the lecturer (first year professor, needs a speech class) read in a monotone, and fidgeted. He rubbed his nose, scratched his ear, pulled his ring finger, coughed (well, that was understandable, he's working on laryngitis), rubbed his neck, and over and over. I finally started channelling my Mother and filling in the "O"s on my program. This was something she did that used to drive me totally crazy. But what else was I to do?

November 20 is up, in which I get a gorgeous shiny red necklace.