Bloody Donors!

Now, it seems, not only to strange people call me daily, but bizarre dramatic encounters course at my heels.

Yesterday, whilst donating blood in a drive for work, I single-handedly managed to traumatize an entire bloodmobile full of people.

The process, up until the point of disaster, had gone relatively smoothly, considering there were about 20 people crammed into the waiting area, and all four blood donating receptacles were occupied. Usually, there's a big to-do about finding a vein in my arm. And there was, but one nurse expertly stuck the needle in my arm without having to poke the needle around inside my arm several times first.

Yet, I had no sooner remarked at how quickly she managed to get the needle situated, than - SPLUT! One of the already full vials of blood attatched to one of the tubes in my arm came flying off, splattering blood all over the floor and chairs.

Suddenly, we all hear, "Um, Penny! I need you over here, ASAP!"

The people in the waiting area behind me were freaking out, whilst two people already donating blood took one look at the floor and passed out! I kid you not. The place was pandemonic, one nurse grabbing cold compresses and drinks for the distressed, while another suited herself with something straight out of "Outbreak," carefully mopping up the unsettling splatters of plasma all over the bus.

I just sat there, freakishly fascinated. 'Perhaps,' I thought to myself, 'I should be the one freaking out, as it's my blood all over town.'

I sensed that it would do little good to tell them that I was undiseased, and though the whole situation was decidedly gross (to everyone not named 'Trina'), there was no chance of anyone contracting AIDs or any strange, as-yet-unnamed airborn blood disease.

'Good-night!' I thought, 'It's always something with me.'

However, it wasn't long, effete with having so righteously freaked out such a large quantity of people, until I found the whole debacle enormously funny.

I am sorry that those people passed out. Bummer. I am told, though, that they made a full recovery a short while later.

Well, that's all for today.

OO!

P.S. - The teaser poster for "Sweeney Todd" is on imdb.com. AWESOME - is all I will say about it. If you value your health and sanity, you should check it out. Makes me want to dance around.

...A Petite Fictionalized Non-fiction...

"Cancel my subscription. I'm tired of your issues!" Trina shouted at everyone.

"Enough of this diatribe, I'm moving to Canada to live in a tree house. All the fucking crazy people in the world can leave me the hell alone" she continued.

....And other emphatically howled expressions of anger, frustration, and deepest disgust.....

Snakes in Pain.

God help anyone that would preface a blog this way, but...

When "Snakes on a Plane" was released, there were all these hilarious knock-off shirts with little cartoon snakes performing various actions. "Snakes in the Rain" portrayed a tiny 'S' squiggle with a miniature umbrella, for example. There were also "Snakes in Spain," and my favorites, "Snakes Insane" and "Snakes in Pain" (!). Here was a bitty squiggle with a bandage wrapped around his wee tail.

All this to say, we had a fucking copperhead in our building at work. Yup. There was a poisonous snake hissing and striking at a co-worker in the hallway day before yesterday. Not long before that, we'd had the mother of all rats (which we finally caught in the women's bathroom). This thing was this size of, I don't know, like, a chihuahua, or something.

Right, back to the snake. My rant here is this: I present this copperhead as evidence of the cracked nature of the world I inhabit. How is it that deadly snakes just traipse in and out of here unchecked, and no one thinks it's weird? Certainly it gives me something to think about. Yet I know that if a snake had gotten in to the main office, everyone would've flipped out. But it's okay, here, for everything to be ghetto.

Conditions of my extracirricular activies / employments have always been relatively shanty. In high school we were "The Little Speech Team That Could." In college, we were the undervalued, underappreciated, underfunded (though completely stellar) "Drama Productions Produced Out of Thin Air." And now there are snakes....

I cut out a paper snake and we hung it on the door, a warning to all those who enter, "Beware! Snakes on Premises."

But there is a deadly ending to this serpentine tale of ickiness. The copperhead in question got its head cut off by a snow shovel and is now being eaten by ants. Snakes in Pain indeed....