walk around the clock

A friend of mine has been donating blood (platelets) a lot recently for a friend of his who is in the hospital and it has inspired me to start giving whole blood again. I can’t even remember the last time I did… high school maybe? I did try once since then but they wouldn’t let me because I had recently gotten a tattoo. But that was my last tat and it was years ago so there is no reason I couldn’t have gone back, I just haven’t. It seems like such a waste because, not only do I have no problem with needles or the sight of blood, I am also type O. So I made an appointment for yesterday and was really excited, the night before I mapped out how I was going to get there, a combination of walking and taking the bus. I’ll spare you the details and just tell you I walked around for over an hour before calling my boyfriend at work so he could look it up on the computer and tell me I was really close and how to get there from where I was since it had proven not so easy to find. Well, that isn’t quite how it happened and instead when he looked it up he told me I was in the completely wrong part of town. Google Maps had failed me (though I admit it was most likely user error). Knowing there was no way I was going to make my appointment now, I walked back to the bus stop and waited thirty minutes before it arrived and took me home. I immediately jumped on the computer to see if I could make a later appointment, but there was nothing. I emailed the contact and she wrote back three hours later saying that there had been a glitch on the website and the drive I had been trying to get to all day was actually for employees only. Quite a glitch considering I received both a confirmation email and a reminder email. I wonder if they would have let me do it anyway had I gotten myself to the right place. I’ll never know.

Now that I have calmed down from my frustration of a completely wasted day, I have made a new appointment (at a different location) for this Saturday. I felt it was important to tell you all this back story now since Saturday happens to be Valentine’s Day. No, I am not that uber cheesey and didn’t go “Oh it is Valentine’s Day which is heart day let’s go do something special and give blood.” It is a coincidence and I plan to give as often as I am allowed from now on, which I think is about every two months.

And the above story isn’t the only time I have taken on my city by foot this week. On Sunday I was on a mission to find intstant white chocolate pudding mix. My mother warned me it could be hard to find, so I was prepared to make a few stops. I wasn’t, however, prepared to make nine and still come up empty handed. Here is how it went down:

First stop was Pavillions, where I did my weekly grocery shopping. No luck there so I dropped off the other groceries at home and headed right back out to go to Whole Foods. No luck there so I continued on down the street to Trader Joe’s but there was nothing so I crossed the street and went to CVS. Still nothing, but CVS is right next to a metro rail stop so I hopped on the train and back tracked, got off a few stops later and went to Gelsons. No luck. So I kept walking and went to Target. Nope. So I kept walking and went to Ralph’s. Nada. I had mentally given up but in order to get home from where I was I had to pass Walgreens so I checked there but found nothing, as well as a second Trader Joes which of course didn’t have it. Where are you instant white chocolate pudding mix!?

You would think after both these ordeals I’d be thinking, “Hey, maybe I should get a car,” but I’m not. I still plan to hold out as long as I can because I would much rather waste a few half-days walking around Pasadena then deal with traffic and parking on a daily basis.