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Tag Archives: secretive

The real reason for the winter blood shortage

It was brought to my attention recently that we have seasonal blood shortages (I’m pretty sure she’s quoting an email she got toward the end of the conversation, but I didn’t ask).

cherriebb515: Another blood shortage.
cherriebb515: Apparently blood shortages are seasonal.
…
cherriebb515: There is an impending holiday shortage.
cherriebb515: More blood needed during holidays?
cherriebb515: Red Cross calls on donors to help reduce strain of impending holiday blood shortage.
…
cherriebb515: The holiday season is in full swing and as predicted, your American Red Cross is facing the very real possibility of a winter blood shortage. Many donors are focused on shopping, making travel plans, and soon school will be out of session. These factors and other seasonal distractions have lead to a rapid decline in donations.

I never knew we had seasonal blood shortages.  I doesn’t particularly make sense to me that we would be short on blood during the winter over some other season.  If there were going to be a seasonal blood shortage, I would think summer would be the time when there would be a shortage.  People are always out and about and doing their extreme sports and grievously injuring themselves and then needing blood transfusions in the summer, right?  Don’t people just stay at home and complain all winter about how cold it is?  Ok, fine.  There are people who go and ski in an extreme manner and are probably also grievously injuring themselves.  But since it’s cold, your circulation isn’t as…circulating.  There probably isn’t as high a demand for blood transfusions in the winter.

So why is is there a winter blood shortage?  It’s because vampires are depleting their stores of blood because they are preparing for hibernation.  Yes, their stores.  The evidence is here and here.  So anyway, the vampires are are preparing for hibernation and they are bulking up for their long sleep…of the undead.  Thus, the Red Cross doesn’t have enough reserves for what we think of as normal medical use.  It’s not because of people skiing extremely.  It’s because the vampires are drinking all the blood themselves.

For the vampires that decide not to hibernate through the winter, or for those who live in warmer climes, I suspect they still contribute to the blood shortage.  I bet it’s pretty hard to bite someone’s neck when they’re bundled up or wearing a scarf.  Even in SoCal, people wear scarves in the winter.  I think it’s ridiculous, myself.  But then, I’m not a big fan of things around my neck.

You’d think, since vampires run the Red Cross, that they’d know about the higher demand for blood in winter beforehand and that make sure they would have enough for themselves and medical use, as they need a legitimate front to keep the general population from getting suspicious.  I’m not sure who is running things, but this is really quite irresponsible.  It’s just too easy to figure it out when the Red Cross has a blood shortage near every winter.  The head vampire really should be fired.

But in all seriousness, maybe you should part with a bit of your blood if you’re qualified to donate.  Here’s a link about donor requirements and a link to find a local blood drive.

How to keep people from stealing your precious roll of tape (or, how to embarrass your coworker)

Grampaw, one of my colleagues at work, has a problem with maintaining a roll of masking tape.  People are always stealing it from him and he never sees it again afterward.  He’s told me he’s tried scrawling his name all over the tape and it hasn’t helped.  Well, the last time he did that, I decided maybe I would help him personalize his roll of tape a bit, so it would be more obvious when someone has taken it and is using it.  I doodled all over his tape and make such lovely drawings as a pile of poo and a pot of lard.

It helped.  Grampaw was able to keep his tape for months and use about half the roll before it disappeared.  I figured someone was able to swipe it because a lot of the drawings and stuff were gone by time half the roll was used.  So, when grampaw got himself a new roll of tape, I decided to do a better job decorating it.  That is…I brought it with me one Friday night (without telling him of course) along with my very colorful set of permanent markers and let the kids decorate it.  My only instruction was that they fully decorate the sides so that when the roll was half finished, you could still see a lot of the doodles.  And…that’s what they did.

I presented it to grampaw this morning.  He was a bit embarrassed, but so thrilled to have some nicely decorated tape.  There’s decoration on the surface of the roll too, but I couldn’t get pictures of it.  But really, he was so thrilled.  THRILLED.  Now we just have to see how long it is before someone swipes this roll.