I opted for the orange juice and Oreo knock-offs afterwards

Through some under the table dealings and nefarious investments we enjoyed a fat refund check from the gubbyment last year. Not so much in 2007. We managed a couple bucks from donating to charity and then the $40 that everyone got because whenever we called our grandmother to thank her for the birthday card we ended up funding the Spanish-American War.

It was thus decided that 2007 will be the Year Of The Donation because we don’t like paying any taxes and donating seems to throw up some kind of smoke screen. So while the G was goofing off on Saturday, I started giving. It took about five hours longer than it should have and it cost a little bit of sweat and some serious amounts of blood. Thoughts:

• Donating clothes to Goodwill on Saturdays = chaos.

• Only nice, elderly women or incredibly weird people work in the Arlington Library system.

• Traveling to Iraq does not disqualify you from donating blood. The same goes for Jordan, Estonia, or Thailand. Also, eating a hamburger during a layover in London is the most dangerous thing I’ve done in the last ten years. And that includes handling civets in China.

• I do not know my blood type. The G thinks that this is disgraceful and on par with not knowing my SSN or skirt size. I say, whatever, I’ll just avoid getting whooped on by the cops during the next World Bank protest or standing in Freedom Plaza when Charles Ramsey is around. She has AB negative and thinks she’s God’s gift to the American Red Crescent because she’s a universal recipient. It also means that only other AB negatives can take her blood, which is about .000001% of the population. So when she donates her useless blood they usually just throw it away or do tests on it or feed it to mutated vampires, if Blade II is any sort of indicator.

• When giving blood in today’s modern library conference room donation setting, you now have an option of dealing with a distinctly non-Katherine Heigl-looking intern or a strangely Ellen Pompeo-looking robot. The robot will draw the blood automatically, take only the needed red blood cells, and then pump back the liquids that are less desirable. It’s called Alyx and I assume was designed but someone who didn’t like the idea of not being permitted to smoke for one hour after donating. I did not venture anywhere near Alyx out of a severe mistrust of any sort machine that seems to be programmed solely to harvest humane blood. However, I believe that instead of a needle it uses an arrangement of quickly rotating and jabbing bicycle gears.

• We should all agree the Christian Bale is pretty much the sexiest man alive in all creation and do away with any of People magazine’s attempts to argue otherwise.