captainsblog | "Okay, Get Me Ham On at Seven, Hold the Garbage Platelets!"

We finally got to watching the Disney+ screening of the original-cast Hamilton production. After many throwing aways of my.... shot, I finally saw it last year, but (a) without Eleanor, (b) in Rochester not Richard Rodgers, and (c) with a very good cast but one that was not Lin-Manuel and Leslie and Goldsberry. That experience has finally dropped in the Bucket.

Or will, finally, when we end it tonight. We started Thursday at 7, but stopped just before the Battle of Yorktown because we'd signed up for the streaming premiere of a documentary about Olympia Dukakis. The live filmings of her all occurred after her 80th birthday, and this screening was premiered right after her 89th. But there are tons of home-movie depictions of her, her family and a variety of her experiences as an actress, a daughter, a wife and a mother. Then, after another day of the Long Hot Summer, we got through most of the rest of Hamilton during Friday dinner before calling it a night.

Not much progress on the patio since the last batch, other than moving stuff into the garage so it wouldn't get rained on and covering outdoor parts that we couldn't move- but I did get a picture of one of the cans of sod as it sat at the curb:

We'd rolled it out to the curb Wednesday night in hopes they might take it along with the rest of the yard waste. I even threw in a branch that had broken off the street tree, in hopes that it might encourage them. Nope, they won’t pick anything up that heavy, but we can take it to the town composting location, 60 pounds at a time.

Eleanor thought the stuck-out branch was a fitting image of our feelings about 2020 🖕

----

Speaking of Buckets, that rain finally came down in them early this afternoon, after Eleanor got tired of waiting for it and turned the sprinkler on. I asked if she really needed the rain to come, in which case I would leave a little early and get my car washed. Still, I did my part to offend the weather gods: I got stuck in the worst part of the downpour just as I finished lunch in the plaza where my platelet donation was scheduled.

I knew, from prior trips, that it was best to eat right before the blood draw, and when I saw this place in the same plaza, how could I not?

Ted's is a local hot dog institution that really has no match in Rochester or, really, anywhere else I've ever lived; the Nathan's Famous of Coney Island goes more for quantity and the tradition of its founding. These babies are cooked to order, slathered in tons of toppings and in better times are shared in a dining room full of fellow travelers. Now, everything is contact-less, delivered in a bag at a pickup window with individual packets of condiments, and the tables are social-distanced. Not many were in there when I was.

When I posted that picture on Facebook, I said, Good thing they don’t have Nick Tahou’s here, because then I’d be putting out Garbage Platelets.

Little did I know.

----

I've done platelet donations before; a few earlier times at a then-locally based donation organization, which operated out of a storefront in a nearby suburban dead mall that, a generation ago, had housed its video game arcade. They even left up the shiny metal walls and the sign pointing to where the change machine was for the quarters. That bunch did platelets by the "one arm" method, where the blood is returned to you through the same arm it comes out of. When I sought out donation opportunities during the pandemic, the Red Cross had more options, and they do it by the "two-arm" method. I'm told it's faster once the juice actually gets going through the machine, but getting swabbed, stuck and wired up in two places eats up much of that time. It also immobilizes you far more; no phone or laptop options, so you're limited to their Roku screen and whatever you can find to watch on it. Remembering last time, where they offered me a Netflix of Zombieland II without the least bit of irony, I came prepared this time with my own DVD- of Harriet, the tale of Tubman and a second chance to see Leslie Odom, Junior in action.

Sadly, I never got to finish. After maybe half an hour into the actual donation, I heard the alarm go off. It's a common occurrence, and I'd heard my neighboring donor's go ringy-dingy once or twice before that. It usually just means you haven't been pumping the squeezy ball enough, and by the time the tech comes over to check, you've heard it, resumed your squeezing and you press on with maybe a minor needle adjustment. This time, though, he saw what had caused it for me: the "return" was putting some quantity of blood into tissue rather than the vein, and it was starting to bruise. Rather than take risks, it meant I was done for the day. My platelet count ain't that great, so they probably didn't get enough to turn into an actual donation, but I was still thanked, plied with snacks and welcomed back with a note to put the return in the LEFT arm next time.

----

Wait, what? Did you say something about a squeezy ball?

Heh. Funny thing about that.

As with most donations, they give you a squeezy ball to pump and then hold while they find the vein for the IV. In platelet donations, though, you keep it in one hand for the duration, with instructions to keep squeezing it every 3-5 seconds to enhance the flow of blood out of and back into you.

All of this was old hat to me from prior donations, but there was one change this time: the squeezy ball came wrapped in latex for our protection. More particularly, wrapped in a latex glove. I so wish I could've gotten a picture of this, but my phone was out of reach and I couldn't operate the camera anyway: each time I pumped the ball, one of the five fingers filled with air and popped out as if an Invisible Hand was flipping the bird, time after time after time.

I told Eleanor just now that it seemed a fitting message to 2020, sitting there, and causing a middle finger to just keep saying "Fuck You, Fuck You, Fuck You...."

Now I only wonder if the garbage collectors will pick it up next week.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

warriorsavant

I think half the cities in the US (and likely elsewhere) have a locally-famous, totally-delicious, junk food place. Skyline Chili in Cincinnati, Varsity Hot Dog in Atlanta, even Nathan's in NY before it became a chain.

captainsblog

And many of them have wound up going down the tubes because they got too big for their britches and tried franchising or otherwise expanding beyond their original market. Ted's is mostly unknown even 40 miles from here except among ex-pats; they've been smart in limiting their expansion to a couple of markets where there is a good combination of retired Buffalonians and not as much competition for thrm.