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Weird things happen in threes

Not too long ago, I had a weird and oddly specific dream about work.  I don’t normally dream about work unless I’m overworked.  I haven’t really felt overworked recently, but maybe I am?  Perhaps I’m so overworked that I don’t even realize it anymore?  Maybe I’ve broken through to the other side or something.  Or maybe not.  Anyway…about this dream.

At work, I’m in a situation where I need to borrow some equipment from a vendor because it would not be cost effective to buy it.  We only need it temporarily for testing.  We are on good terms with this vendor, I think, but we did just recently borrow a bunch of other stuff from them and JUST NOW returned it.  Granted, I wasn’t the one asking for it originally, but still.  I don’t want them to feel like they’re being used or anything.  Well, they aren’t since we bought 10 very expensive units of another component from them.  And I digress…again.

So, I’m in the position to borrow more stuff from them, and I sent out a carefully worded email to see if they’d be open to such an idea.  I emailed them late on a Friday and they are on the east coast, so I didn’t expect to hear from them until the next week.  Sure enough, they sent and email early Monday (for me) when I was still in bed and groggy.  I remember half-waking up and checking my email and then…my brain confabulated some weird stuff for me.  In that the person I had emailed said that I wouldn’t be able to borrow the equipment I was requesting because their “cosmetics division has it checked out until 2032.”

There are several things wrong about this.  First of all…cosmetics division?  This is an industrial automation and electrical component supplier.  They don’t have a “cosmetics division.”  And if they did, why is one of their own departments checking things out from sales?  And until 2032?  The component I was requesting is pretty much already obsolete.  The notice hasn’t been given yet, but the manufacturer is pretty much trying to price the component out from buying range.

I woke up kind of bemused at why the vendor would have told me such a thing until I got to the office and decided to “reread” the email.  I say “reread” because I have serious doubts that I ever read the email at all.  I probably just checked to see who sent me email and fell back asleep.

Ok, so that was the first weird thing.  The second is, on the way to work that same morning, I was hit with this overwhelming urge to eat junk food.  I rarely crave junk food in the morning.  If I want junk food, it’s more of a lunch kind of thing.  But no, I really wanted junk food in the morning.  So…that took me to McDonald’s.  I rarely ever have a craving for McD’s.  Mostly because I think it’s gross.  But I do have a certain fondness for sausage biscuits and McD’s was more on the way to work than Chick-fil-A (yes, they also have sausage biscuits, but if I went there I probably would have gotten a chicken biscuit).

Anyway, that’s when I saw that McD’s tells there workers how to pack the bags.  I had never noticed that before.  It was terribly amusing to me.  It’s ILLUSTRATED.  Because posting a sign on the wall or writing down instructions would be overkill?  Ok yes, I realize that the simple depiction of how to pack the bag is actually a really effective way to show workers how much food they can stick into the bag without writing a huge paragraph that they wouldn’t have time to read anyway.

And…I lied.  I didn’t have a third thing.  Oh!  How about this?  Cabbages and roses look pretty similar if you look at them on a small scale.  This actually plays in to a later post.  Yup.

What do vampires want with plasma?

I recently donated blood to the Red Cross, which is run by vampires, in case you were not already aware of that fact.  The humanitarian things that the Red Cross does is just a front to keep people from finding out that its really run by vampires.

Anyway, I recently supported vampire hibernation.  I have never done so before.  I don’t really know why.  Maybe because I always thought I was anemic, or close to it, and needed every red blood cell to keep me functional.  Or something.  I do things for very obscure reasons sometimes.

One of these obscure reasons for supporting vampire hibernation was that I have been quite curious about my blood type.  I never knew what my blood type was and apparently neither did my parents.  I guess I would have found out sooner if I needed a blood transfusion or something, but I never have needed one.  I have led a terribly blood transfunsionless life.  I suppose the vampires are happier because of it.  I’m not constantly trying to dip into their stores of blood.

ANYHOO!  My donor card arrived recently and I have found out that I am an AB+ (two links).  This probably means the Red Cross will never want my blood again.  “But why?” you ask.  Well, apparently you weren’t paying attention in high school biology, otherwise you’d know that people who have blood type AB+ do not have the anti-A or anti-B antibodies in their plasma and they have the Rhesus factor on the surface of their red blood cells.  This in turn means that they are the “universal recipient” as they can receive blood transfusions from all blood types.  That also means that only others who are AB+ can accept type AB+ blood…so, demand is rather low.  The Red Cross probably does not want any more of my blood.

Well, the vampires might want my blood, but since they’re putting up a humanitarian front, they probably won’t be accepting any more of my blood.  Otherwise how can they explain that blood disappearing when relatively few humans can accept that type of blood?  Nope.

BUT, the Red Cross might want my plasma.  Remember how I said that there are no anti-A or anti-B antibodies in my plasma?  That means all other blood types can accept plasma from an AB person (the Rh factor doesn’t really mean much in this case because there are no red blood cells).  That means that perhaps the Red Cross will ask for my plasma instead of my blood.  Which brings me to the question, what do vampires want with plasma?  I always thought vampires wanted whole blood.  Maybe dieting vampires drink only plasma.  Makes sense, right?