G’Day everyone, Dutch here! Welcome to my little place in the Universe! Going to do a short blog here before venturing out… waiting for the warmup…. had a few inquiries about me donating blood so thought I would do a quick one here about it… here’s some music to browse by….

Soooooooooo, put your troubles aside, pull up a chair and visit a spell…

To begin with, I’m a regular at the blood center… now I can’t make it every time, for any number of reason’s, but try to as much as I can… every 56 days I’ll get a card and/or phone call… when they were still calling from the center itself, one of the ladies who knew me would call and say "this is the Champaign County Blood Center, today we’re having a special on Pepsi and cookies, I highly recommend the peanut swirl, thank you, bye bye"… what that is all about is after you donate you have a choice of drinks, cookies, crackers, etc… unfortunately no adult beverages or steak and eggs, but I’m working on it..

In 2006 I became a member of the 4 Gallon Club by donating 4 gallons of blood over time..

I remember one of the moments, a number of years ago, when they first moved into the new building… it was still in the stages of completion, the contractors would work and night and then have it suitable for donations during the day.. a lot of the work wasn’t completed yet… anyway I went in to donate, went through the paper work, and went to the couch to give the blood.. Well, the young lady that took care of me was having a bad day.. I could tell she was upset, plus the thumb screw on the blood pressure cuff wasn’t working properly.. but pressing on she pumped up the cuff, inserted the needle then tried to let the pressure off, thumb screw wouldn’t work.. I jumped in, put my finger on the needle while she worked on it, could see the tears coming, I, without thinking, moved my hand to help her, the needle popped out and a shot of blood splattered on the wall… I put my finger on my arm to stop the bleeding, she finally got the thumb screw loose but was upset.. She look at me through the tears and said "I’m sorry and I guess you’ll be leaving" and I said " No, you have the other arm to try again"… she did, with a new machine this time, and all went well…. when I got ready to leave, she walk up to me, kissed me on the cheek and said "thank you".. The last I heard that young lady is working in one of the bone marrow labs at Mayo’s Clinc..

here is the pin that came with the certificate..

They would also like for me to do a Apheresis procedure… keeping it simple, basically what that is, you set in front of a machine like this, it is a kind of centrifuge…

They connect one arm to the machine to retrieve the blood, and connect another arm to the machine to put what they didn’t want back.. It takes 1 1/2 – 2 hours and you can watch a movie while the procedure is going on.. I give them a hard time about it, I tell’m I’m not overly impressed about the movie selection, no shoot’m up western, etc. and they say the idea is to try to relax me… and I bring up the subject ; how do I know I’m getting "MY" blood back.. I mean, after a half a century of eating fried chicken, taters and gravy, brartwurst, etc to get the quality of blood I have, how do I know I’m not getting the blood back from some vegetarian who eats celery and drinks carrot juice.. The lady in charge looked at me, smiled and said "You don’t" .. I’ll give it a go one of these days..
Here is a picture of a pin given to me by the Masons...

They are required to ask you a half dozen or so questions… by now they run through them pretty rapidly with me and I usually have them answered before they finish… before I started going to the nearby church to donate, there was a young nurse I hadn’t seen there before… after I filled out the paper, she come in and said I need to ask you these questions… I said "lets try something different and I’ll ask them" and without even seeing the paper ask the first question to the letter… she smiled and said "you’ve been here before, haven’t you".. I said a "couple of times"

Then there was another young lady who, after the procedure, would always say "see you in 56 days".. and on one comment I said "wait a minute, you know I might be on vacation, or at a party, or fishing or something".. she turned to me, pushed her glasses (like Ben Franklin glasses) down the bridge of her nose and said "Woller (she always called me Woller) you DON’T want me to have to come get it" and with that turned and walked away.. she has a way with words, don’t she??? … actually those darling ladies are regular sweethearts, and they have their personal problems to contend with also, so I try make things a little easier by being a happy camper and we joke around quite a bit...

I need to get going but in finishing this up I was thinking… here is a handful of medals I earned as a volunteer Marine in Vietnam…

proud of them to be sure for I defended the flag (which a number of people some leaders of this country didn’t and/or wouldn’t do) and what the flag stood for (something that has been used by some to force their ideology on to others) could be another blog but I don’t have the burning desire to "whip a dead horse"…. but here are a couple of medallions I’m more proud of..

A look at the back of one of the medallions;

Why do you ask… because with a drop of blood I was able to help save the life of another creature without harming or taking the life of another creature… with a drop of blood I was able to do more good, without creating hate, pain and suffering, than a trainload of bullets, bayonets and bombs ever will.. So yes I’m kind of proud of those dollar two ninety eight medallions…

Well, I gotta get going, sorry about being long winded today…. Sooooooooooooo everyone have a smilin’ gooooooooooooood day full of Peace Love and Happiness and I’ll see you next time if the good Lord’s willin’ and the creeks don’t rise..

Had a dear lady ask me if I was feeling a bit "frisky"… Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeesssss, ma’am I certainly am …. spring is coming and I am….