Just to give fair warning: This entry contains poop.

Saturday morning, my toilet clogs up.  I was getting ready to see the sights of Philadelphia so I didn’t worry about it.  The clog wasn’t doing anything awful.  As long as I didn’t flush every 5 minutes everything was just fine.  I had an enjoyable Saturday and went out again on Sunday.  By Sunday night, after not even had to use my hotel room toilet, I had pretty much forgotten about the clogged toilet.

Now fast forward to Monday night.  I had just settled in to watch the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championships after work.  During a TV timeout, I took a quick pee and flushed.  I heard a CRACK but thought nothing of it.  I ran back to my seat so I wouldn’t miss a single second of the game. 

After about five minutes, there was water coming out of the BATHROOM AND ONTO THE CARPET.  That wasn’t the worst part.  The last flush broke apart some of the clogged poop and toilet paper so there were small pieces of poo covering the floor.  And the water wasn’t stopping!  I hurriedly took off the tank cover to try to figure out how to stop it all.  After what seemed like forever and another two gallons of poop water later, I gave up and found the water shut-off under the toilet. 

It was time to call the front desk.  The receptionist, Tiffany, and the janitor on duty, Aquil, were very helpful.  Aquil unclogged the toilet and left a mop, apologizing that he couldn’t mop it up immediately.  If I didn’t want to wait for 20 minutes, I could mop it up myself, but he was actually in the middle of setting up the large conference room for something tomorrow.  I started mopping, and Aquil came back, as promised to finish the job. 

He confirmed that the water kept running and the room was starting to smell like shit so he called Tiffany at the front desk to get me another room.  He opened up another room for me and I transferred my stuff over.  Unfortunately, the only room available was a smoking room.  The towels, the sheets, the closet and the room in general smelled of smoke.  I was faced with two equally bad choices: Rancid poo or stagnant cigarette.  I chose the smoke and Aquil got me an air ionizer and I left it running in there for the remainder of the evening until I went to bed.  He even sprayed some de-odorizing spray onto the carpet. 

A day later, I am still staying in a smoke smelling room, but the ionizer helped.  It’s running now while I’m in the lobby.  I plan to leave it running some more when I go jogging in the fitness room.  There are still no non-smoking rooms available, but I can check every morning and every evening.  I only have two more nights anyway.

Some thoughts in hindsight:
1) When I first saw the water streaming out of the bathroom and onto the carpet, rather than spending a few minutes or whatever trying to figure out why water didn’t stop flowing out, I should have gone for that water shut-off FIRST. 
2) When I heard something crack after the last flush, I should have stayed by the toilet bowl and made sure everything was okay.
3) I could have prevented the whole drama.  This entire episode could have been avoided if I had borrowed a freaking plunger Saturday morning instead of rushing out Philadelphia.

So I gave blood on Friday at Blood Centers of the Pacific.  My only suggestion is to not go early in the morning.  The workers there are just as groggy and careless and anyone else at ungodly hours of the morning without coffee.

In total, I had four different needles and lances jabbed into me in the morning.  The first was an attempt to get a drop for the copper sulfate iron test.  However, the person either didn't get the correct angle or hit a callous on my finger.  It still hurt, but it was like getting blood from a stone.  After about 20 seconds of squeezing my punctured finger, she got about half as much blood that she needed and gave up on that finger.  A second lance was used on my ring finger.

I like to think of myself as an altruistic person, donating money to various charitable organizations and blood at regular intervals.  Out of convenience, I do a "double red" donation that involves separating the red blood cells from the whole blood and putting the rest back into me.  The result is that twice as many red blood cells are removed.  The process takes maybe 15 minutes longer than a regular donation for centrifuges to spin and separate the blood and the leftover plasma (mixed with some saline) is pumped back into me.  The added bonus for me is that I am then only qualified to give blood every 4 months instead of every two.

What I didn't realize was that it also requires a different iron test when doing a double red donation.  The lancer who took the drop of blood completely missed this on the form.  When I sat down on the chair the person who would eventually be operating the machines realized the lancer's error and had to lance me AGAIN for the correct blood test for the double red donation.

I totally enjoy doing my part to keep hospitals supplied with fresh blood, but this morning started to suck.  I had little bandages on over half of my fingers on my left hand and the machine hadn't even fired up yet.

Once the actual fat needle was inserted (I swear the needle is bigger for the double red), everything went smoothly.  If you read this far, then you must not be too queasy about blood so maybe you'll find how these double red machines work somewhat fascinating. 

The first step is easy, the machine pumps blood out of your veins into one of the four bags hanging from the machine.  We'll call the whole blood receiving bag Bag_A.  It actually pumps to speed things up instead of letting gravity do the work like with whole blood donations. 

Bag_A empties small amounts into a centrifuge that separates the heavy elements from the plasma.  The blood plasma flows into an empty Bag_B while the red blood cells along with negligible amounts of platelets and white blood cells flow into another empty Bag_C. 

Once Bag_A is sufficiently full to allow the centrifuge to run for a while, Bag_D which holds a saline solution and Bag_B are pumped back into me.  When I saw this happen, I was a little paranoid thinking that air bubble would surely get introduced into the mix and watched the little air bubbles in the tubes.  I was assured that there are plenty of sensors that don't let the air get past a certain point and I was perfectly safe.  After Bag_B is emptied of plasma or Bag_A is emptied of whole blood (the two happen about the same time), the process starts over again.

I think the number of cycles depend on the speed at which the machine pumps blood out of my system (the operator sets this speed as high as possible without causing pain).  Either that or it could the exact same number of cycles no matter what.  I don't remember since I didn't count the first time or this time.  I was engrossed by Forever Peace which I finished while donating blood.

The best part after donating, free Oreo cookies!