Of Blood, Hats and Husband

Yesterday I gave blood at a blood drive at St. Michael's, having slept through my Saturday Red Cross appointment. It turned out that I would have had a long wait on Saturday, but I got right into the bloodmobile on Sunday, and the guy who wielded the needle got into my vein on the first try. That practically never happens. So yay - I got adequate sleep Saturday morning/afternoon, and still gave blood as easily and painlessly as possible. The rest of the day (other than a nap to make up for only half a night's sleep Sunday morning) was pretty much all spent doing team-related stuff for my critical thinking class, shopping with John, and fixing some typos Sara found in Heirs of Mâvarin. Thanks, Sara. The last thing I did, until nearly 4 AM, was build a four-slide PowerPoint presentation for class.

This morning my head is full of a 1050-1400 word paper I have to write by tomorrow night about a decision-making tool or technique. In case you're wondering, yes, I do find the topic incredibly lame and boring. Most of the same ground was covered in my first University of Phoenix course two years ago, so much so that I'm using the old textbooks to write papers for the new course.

I decided to do this latest paper on something called the Six Thinking Hats. It's kind of a role-playing thing, in which you mentally put on different-colored hats, each representing a different way of thinking. At first glance, it seems awfully silly, but the guy who came up with this stuff, Edward De Bono, goes on about ego and method acting, and how playing the role allows the thinker to explore a different way of thinking without getting all defensive. De Bono is also the guy who came up with the concept of lateral thinking, which I do respect. Okay, so I'll look into this thinking hat jazz and write about it. We're supposed to apply the tool or technique to a problem, so I'm going to play around with the question, "How (if at all) can John get a good job in Tucson?" This is ironic, because John once planned to write a book called Get a Good Job in Tucson as an alternative to actually getting one himself.

Speaking of John, he was after me again this morning to take  better care of myself. At the time I was trying to get dressed, check my email (AOL didn't want to connect), collect some of the food we spent over $100 on last night so that I can try to stop going out to lunch, remember my morning mantra of purse-keys-book-phone so I don't forget to bring anything important, and get the heck to work almost on time. John said he wasn't nagging, but it sure felt like it.

His latest concern was that I reported my blood pressure as 132 / 88 or something like that during the bloodmobile procedure. I think John called it "pre-hypertensive" or something. I don't get any exercise, I'm not losing weight despite half-hearted Atkinsing, I get stressed out from school, and I don't get adequate sleep six and a half nights out of seven (meaning that I manage to get eight hours or more about once every two weeks). Okay, yes. It's all true. But bugging me about all this when I'm trying to do four things in three minutes on my way out the door is not a good way to resolve the situation.

More later.

Karen