An odd day
Yesterday (Tues., Dec. 23) was an odd day. This mantle of fatigue that I’m carrying really slowed me down. We barely got out to my blood donation at 11:30 a.m. The work-outs went by the board.
Canadian Blood Services’ Toronto Centre seemed a bit more chaotic than usual, but eventually I saw the nurse. BP and pulse were excellent (124/68 and 55); but then the nurse got to the questionnaire. I had admitted that, yes, I’d had cancer: a basal-cell carcinoma that was removed in 2001; I mentioned casually that I was seeing a dermatologist that very afternoon to have a spot looked at—and the nurse immediately rejected me.
I believe I’ve been giving blood for 35 years, and this was the first time I’d been rejected; I understood it (in the context of Canadian Blood Services’ extremely rigid criteria), but it still was a bit depressing.
Mona was rejected, too, but because her pulse was too high for their taste.
We had lunch at Pogue Mahone, and tramped in the snow up Yonge Street, remarking on how little that street had changed since the ’70s. A fairly quick stop at the Watch Service Centre of Canada (whose very poor Web site you can find here) and my Polar watch and transmitters were rebatteried; the technician said to me, “Now you have no excuses.”
Then we tramped to The Runners Shop where we wished Sava goodbye, and bought Andie a Christmas present. Thence to Specs on Bloor, where we picked out a new frame for me; I never grew to like my wireframes, so a new prescription gives me an excuse for new glasses.
Finally we got to the Dermatology Centre, and saw Anne Curtis, the dermatologist who treated my cancer. The spot on my face? yet another example of seborrheic keratosis (SK), which is all over my ageing skin; i.e., not cancer. Phew! (When I got home I rescheduled my blood donation to next Tuesday.) At my request, she used a can of liquid nitrogen to blast off a particularly annoying SK from my back.
After that, we spent some time at the Atelier Grigorian, where Mona picked up some CDs (how 20th-century!), and at Lululemon where we had no luck with my plan.*
We got home, and I “lay down for a minute”. Of course, I fell asleep. What’s happening to me? This is really weird.
Today (Christmas Eve, Wed., Dec. 24) I’m hoping to get out to the East York Community Centre for a thousand-yard swim (i.e., nothing very hard), and do a home-based strength work-out, trying out some things.
Other than that, it’s just work! And maybe some football on HDTV: but the only game today is the Hawai’i Bowl, featuring two unranked teams, the University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish (6-6; why are they in a bowl at all?) v. the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa Warriors (7-6, 5-3). Not at all promising.
* Ah, my plan. I’d like to do my stretches several times a day, but in the PRESTO System Project office I work in a vast bullpen, so lying down on the floor would only add to my unfortunate reputation for eccentricity. My thought was to get a Lululemon-branded mat and bag for said mat, and use them in unused meeting rooms. The mat, the bag, and the branding would somehow signal that this was all “official”, and thus betokened dedication rather than late-middle-aged eccentricity. We’ll see.
Canadian Blood Services’ Toronto Centre seemed a bit more chaotic than usual, but eventually I saw the nurse. BP and pulse were excellent (124/68 and 55); but then the nurse got to the questionnaire. I had admitted that, yes, I’d had cancer: a basal-cell carcinoma that was removed in 2001; I mentioned casually that I was seeing a dermatologist that very afternoon to have a spot looked at—and the nurse immediately rejected me.
I believe I’ve been giving blood for 35 years, and this was the first time I’d been rejected; I understood it (in the context of Canadian Blood Services’ extremely rigid criteria), but it still was a bit depressing.
Mona was rejected, too, but because her pulse was too high for their taste.
We had lunch at Pogue Mahone, and tramped in the snow up Yonge Street, remarking on how little that street had changed since the ’70s. A fairly quick stop at the Watch Service Centre of Canada (whose very poor Web site you can find here) and my Polar watch and transmitters were rebatteried; the technician said to me, “Now you have no excuses.”
Then we tramped to The Runners Shop where we wished Sava goodbye, and bought Andie a Christmas present. Thence to Specs on Bloor, where we picked out a new frame for me; I never grew to like my wireframes, so a new prescription gives me an excuse for new glasses.
Finally we got to the Dermatology Centre, and saw Anne Curtis, the dermatologist who treated my cancer. The spot on my face? yet another example of seborrheic keratosis (SK), which is all over my ageing skin; i.e., not cancer. Phew! (When I got home I rescheduled my blood donation to next Tuesday.) At my request, she used a can of liquid nitrogen to blast off a particularly annoying SK from my back.
After that, we spent some time at the Atelier Grigorian, where Mona picked up some CDs (how 20th-century!), and at Lululemon where we had no luck with my plan.*
We got home, and I “lay down for a minute”. Of course, I fell asleep. What’s happening to me? This is really weird.
Today (Christmas Eve, Wed., Dec. 24) I’m hoping to get out to the East York Community Centre for a thousand-yard swim (i.e., nothing very hard), and do a home-based strength work-out, trying out some things.
Other than that, it’s just work! And maybe some football on HDTV: but the only game today is the Hawai’i Bowl, featuring two unranked teams, the University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish (6-6; why are they in a bowl at all?) v. the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa Warriors (7-6, 5-3). Not at all promising.
* Ah, my plan. I’d like to do my stretches several times a day, but in the PRESTO System Project office I work in a vast bullpen, so lying down on the floor would only add to my unfortunate reputation for eccentricity. My thought was to get a Lululemon-branded mat and bag for said mat, and use them in unused meeting rooms. The mat, the bag, and the branding would somehow signal that this was all “official”, and thus betokened dedication rather than late-middle-aged eccentricity. We’ll see.
3 Comments:
We spent 5.5 hours trudging around!
The food at Pogue Mahone is variable in quality. The steak-and-mushroom pie smelled good but the shepherd's pie was mediocre: a ring of mashed potatoes with a dab of gravy, half a teaspoon of ground meat, 3 peas, two pieces of carrot, and a kernel of corn. The salad was the best part.
No one is going to care if you have a LuLuLemon mat and bag or a plain mat and bag.
Post a Comment
<< Home