Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Donation #25

I've been a blood donor on and off over the last seven years or so, and have in the last year switched from making whole blood donations (which can be done quarterly) to plasma (which can be done as often as every fortnight). That said, this evening's was my first donation since the 19th of December!

Anyhow, at the price of some discomfort from the needle (I have a very low pain threshold, how wimpy), tonight's was number twenty-five, and the Australian Red Cross Blood Service therefore gave me a nice new ballpoint pen, to match the keyring earnt by five or so bleedings.

Give blood today! (Surely it is one of the corporeal works of mercy...)

To refortify myself, upon returning home I had steak and ale (as Bad Queen Bess had for breakfast): a ⅓kg slab of meat with the juices still running red, and a Grimbergen... a man's meal, to put hairs on the chest (no wonder Eliz. I never married). While I did feel lightheaded after the beer, didn't the doctor used to recommend that expectant mothers drink stout for nourishment? That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

Then I did the washing-up (when you share with two other blokes, it can really pile up), and have just had a cuppa.

Greatly to my delight, as I came in the kitchen door I espied a package for me on the table: the facsimile edition of the 1738 Missale Parisiense that I bought from Shawn Tribe of NLM fame has finally arrived - after 79 days in transit - from British North America. In the heyday of Empire, a gentleman of leisure could have circumnavigated the globe at the same speed, as Verne tells it, and as a brave Yankee lady journalist proved.

Oh well. At least, now I again have access to a copy, I can blog with reference to its very interesting contents, liturgical and euchological in particular.

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