DONE, FINISHED, COMPLETE

After 12 hours of my voice on tape I have successfully read a full 320 page book onto tape. Now that I have confused everyone, an explanation. My Grandmother in recent days has started having challenges with her eyes, the challenge being that she is loosing her sight. Alas one of her favorite recreational activities is to read. Any of you avid readers out there (and you must all be for why else would you be reading this blog) know that reading something as compared to hearing it read to you on tape is far superior. So instead of simply buying a professional book on tape I felt it would be more meaningful if I actually read the entire book onto tape for her. I have neither the most exciting voice nor the advanced equipment, yet in the long run do any of those minor points matter when it is family? So thus I began a few days after Thanksgiving to read Life of Pi (a great book if you have not already read it on the meaning of life and survival) onto 12 hours of cassette tapes. With numerous breaks and interruptions I finished it today to much rejoicing and a beer.

Last week I went to do my final blood, rather platelet donation of the year which proceeded without incident or excitement until about halfway through another donor takes a seat next to me to bring his donation. I am in the middle of some brainless action movie of which name I can’t remember which probably speaks loads for the movie, and look over and he has a group of half naked woman all over his TV. Boy did I pick the wrong spot. He had turned on a repeat of the Victoria Secret Lingerie fashion show. I used maybe half an eye on my movie and the rest on his show. The not so surprising aspect of all this was his donation process took far less than mine, would that by any chance have to do with increased blood pressure and the fastest heartbeat in the room? Quite possibly. Either way I found it both amusing and interesting to note that if I was to watch some equally stimulating show in the future my donation time can be reduced by as much as a third, why didn’t I think of this before?

Continuing my previous dialogues describing conditions in San Francisco to all my readers (all six of you). Now although the amount of precipitation we have received this winter has been higher in quantity than in previous years the weather is about on par with normal patterns according to locals. Compared to the fall which was nothing but an endless parade of beautiful clear days in the mid seventies occasionally marred by the occasional night time drop in temp, the winter is a routine of ever-present overcast days with a more than occasional rainfall. Probably similar to Seattle people remain cheerful and take it all in stride, in fact even during the strongest of rain storms pedestrians are granted the right of way (except for the occasional taxi at the end of their shift) and the streets are washed clean. Thankfully the mudslides and power outages have been limited to the Santa Cruz and Napa valley area (both areas far outside the city), the most excitement we have had was when the newspaper boxes started flying into the streets. I still love this city!