Three days walking a concrete floor, shaking hands, exchanging business cards, duscussing new plans and projects, having impromtu business meetings over cigarettes & coffee, and marvelling at the surrounding freak parade during this all.
That's a Comic Book convention. That was my weekend.
Friday through Sunday I walked the floor of the Moscone Center, in San Francisco, and despite the sore shoulders, tired legs, and completely fucked sleeping schedule (I fell asleep on the couch around five last night, and woke up at quarter to one in the morning), it was all a grand success.
I won't get into details, regarding the contacts I made, and the new jobs I picked up, but I will tell you a story.
A story about blood... my blood.
You see, every year The Heinlein Society runs a blood drive, at various Sci-Fi & comic book conventions. I don't do a whole lot of volunteering, or social service, but when the chance comes up to do something simultaneously so simple & so important, I hop on-board.
It's been a few years since I last donated, and I do not recall having been asked in my prior experiences whether I would be willing to spare the extra time to donate red blood cells, rather than whole blood. This go-around, the question was asked, and I agreed to it, without asking questions.
This was a mistake.
Had I asked about the procedure I'm certain I would still have agreed to it, but I would have been prepared for the horrors that lay ahead... but this is not the sort of shit you can sneak up on a person. The procedure works (in a very general way) as follows:
Rather than the traditional gravity/vaccum system of draining, the blood is drawn into a machine (out of frame, to my right). Once drawn, the blood is automatically sent to an internal centrifuge, where the red blood cells are separated from the plasma.
Now, here's where it gets fucked up...
Note that in the photo you can see two tubes, toward the lower right.
After the blood is separated, the plasma, along with an anti-coagulant, is returned to your body.
This process is repeated, automatically, four separate times (or was it five?).
I am not creeped out with any particular ease, and this flipped my fucking lid. I became more & more of a wreck over the course of the day, with the ghoulish memory of the procedure.
That, and I had a reaction to the anti-coagulant, which caused most of my left hand to go numb for a while, along with fuck knows what other side-effects.
I know that this procedure is tremendously helpful, as it provides a concentrated source of blood, while minimizing the probability of contamination, but god damn it, you cannot do shit like that to a person without warning them.
OK. That's WonderCon 2007 update #1.
I'm sure I'll get around to telling you more of the many bizarre & hysterical stories soon.
