Raincharm’s Weblog

I gave blood today, again. I’ve been giving since I was in college, and continued with some notable gaps during the early child years.

When I first gave I think I was interested in finding out my blood type. To make the weight requirement I would put silver dollars in my pockets. That’s not necessary anymore.

Now I try to be consistent and I really have the time. Throughout my giving history the iron test has been the reason I could get turned away. In the early days they would put a blood drop into a solution (copper?) and see if it sank = passing. Then there was a machine that took a minute to give the pass/fail result. Now a drop of blood on a slide into a meter gives the result in seconds. 12.5 is the magic number. Below that and you’re out the door, above and you can head to the chair.

Today’s iron result was 12.6 – Yeah! The last 3 tries did not make the cutoff.

The other metric I have run afoul of is pulse rate. 50 is the minimum. The last 2 tries were too low. Today’s pulse was 56, so time to go.

And it went well. A no-pain poke, not too long to give, and nice phlebotomists. I do tire easily now, good reason to sit down and watch some Olympics.

In the continuing Super Bowl aftermath Carl was walking to a Post Office and bank in the U-District and ran into a small crowd.

The first Raising Cane’s in Seattle is scheduled to open later this month. And there’s a crowd. (SW corner, old Pier 1 or more recent American Apparel for those trying to place it.)

And it’s because Sam Darnold, Seahawks QB, is visiting to film some sort of promo in the kitchen. So a chance to be in the vicinity of a champion. And it looks like he drove himself.

This entry was posted on February 10, 2026 at 8:15 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.