Iron deficiency and thunderstorms

It's the Tuesday after Memorial Day weekend, and no one is going to get to work for a few hours, I imagine. So it's perfect time for updating. I got to cross another two things off my list this weekend (three total coupled with last weekend). With T-minus 20 days until I reach my official half way point in this allotted 1001 days, I hope I'm reaching a sort of half way point in the 101 tasks...

#27 - Artistic endeavors
I visited our art museum last weekend for the first time in probably seven years or so. Not too much has changed, except they no longer have my favorite, a concept by Felix Gonzalez-Torres: just a stack of paper with "Veteran's Day Sale" typed on each sheet. The trickery is that you can take one! Felix is long gone, but his studio would indefinitely replenish the stack of paper. Indefinitely must have reached definitely, however, because it's no longer there. Gonzalez-Torres wasn't a huge fan of the whole "no touching" part of an art museum, so all around the world he set up similar situations in the corners of art museums. I have at least five of his works: three sheets of poster sized paper and two pieces of candy. The irony of all this is that I actually got a "talking to" from one of the museum guards for blowing on some sculpture. Too funny!

#69 - Let's talk blood.
Ok, so despite the fact that I claim to know about the proper ways to eat, I was not aware that you need to ingest foods with vitamin C in the same meal that you ingest foods with iron that doesn't come from meat. In other words, while I took a break from meat last month, I also took a break from iron as I didn't really pair oranges with my beans, nuts, and other non animal iron rich foods. So that's great! I loaded up on water, refrained from all alcohol, and I get to the blood center only to find that I'm just two notches below the healthy iron count. So I was rejected yet again, but I've decided to count my two rejections as an official blood donation due to the inconvenience factor. I'll probably try to go back in the next month to squeeze in my official spring donation as I'm still behind from winter. Jeez.

#70 - Will you take my marrow instead?
Going into the donation, I really did have a feeling I'd be rejected again, so had most of my marbles on registering my bone marrow. I mean in that I'd get to experience the "feel good" moment after completing the paperwork and mouth swabs and all that stuff. But no. The tech I dealt with was a real piece of work and after digging into me about my iron deficiency like it was my fault (ok I guess it was sort of), he just didn't exude any kind of gratitude in regards to My Big Moment of offering up the chance to save a life some time down the line. HOWEVER! This sort of taught me a lesson! At the end of the day, it's not about the donor (blood OR marrow)...it's about the person who needs it. I shouldn't really HAVE to feel good about doing any of this stuff. I should just feel lucky that I currently don't need anyone else's blood or bone marrow to survive. So yeah, a bit of a wake up call there. And I've decided that because donating blood, for me, is like the most inconvenient frustrating thing ever, it is the truest form of altruism as I really get nothing out of the experience. Which is precisely why I should keep at it.

#88 - Singing in the rain
Completely switching tracks here, over the weekend we had one of the longest thunderstorms I can remember in recent years. I'd say it lasted from around 9pm to 4am or so, and relatively strong throughout. In any case, the aforementioned boy that has recently entered into my life came over to the apartment that evening and when the rain really started up, he, my sis and I ran outside and really rocked the cliché: jumping in puddles, quoting various rain themed movie moments, the whole bit. It was quite a time! The most hilarious part being the anti-romance of freezing our asses off and then trying to dry all our clothes, particularly J who hadn't really packed extra.

#17 - Be selfish (Memorial Day)
And speaking of the man-friend, yesterday I totally had myself a Katie Day. After several weekends of either having specific plans set, or offering my helpful services to someone, or church and Eucharistic minister duty, etc etc, I took advantage of the opportunity that I had absolutely no responsibility to anyone on this day. So I stayed up VERY late with J the night before, and slept in without a care in the world the following morning. Then I just spent the entire day with him...something I had been very much looking forward to doing at some point. I think a good litmus for the possibility of a future relationship with someone is the spend-the-day-together test. In any case, he passed with flying colors. We grabbed lunch over at the Greek place, walked around Veteran's park, sat on the grass by the lakefront people watching, and even took in the Memorial Day parade. Something that was particularly nice as Memorial Day '08 became more than just a day off this year. It was a solid day and felt nice to just go and do whatever I wanted to do.

So with that said, budding relationship questionmark?? Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves (Right Katie? Right??) The phrase "It's Complicated" comes to mind. And it is. There is a huge grab bag of Pro's when it comes to this particular person. Qualities that I would very much appreciate in a mate. Meanwhile, however, there are a few Con's, and it isn't the con part I'm worried about, but rather the Deal-Breaker variety that are scattered throughout. The bright side, however, is that most of the deal-breakers are fixable and temporary. It's in his hands to take care of them though, not mine, and that's something that will just have to be for awhile. In the meantime, while I find that it's a little to late to keep him at an arm's length, I'm still able to keep our worlds separate. The best we can do is stay honest about it all and keep communication open (one of the reasons for the real late night on Sunday). I consider myself a pretty responsible person, but my responsibility has lead to missing out on what could've been some interesting moments in life. So I know that closing in on 30 is forcing me to take a more Life's Too Short attitude. I'm gonna run with it. I just am. Even if things end in disaster, it can't be any worse than the crap life throws at you even when you ARE responsible!