Another Pint

I didn’t mention in yesterday’s post that I had just returned from giving another pint of blood. This brings me to a total of three. Next time will make me ½ gallon giver. Sort of sounds like a lot doesn’t it? It’s not really, close to half what’s in a man’s body, but it sounds impressive. OK, I’m visualizing a ½ gallon of blood… OK, let’s stop.

Anyway, the process is becoming fairly routine and my body seems to handle it reasonably well. Although, it is somewhat hard to tell as last night my wife fixed roast and veggies (mmmmm!) along with some homemade rolls (double mmmmm!) and once again I underestimated the amount of carbs in her dinner rolls.

I need that little guy from calorieking to jump out and say, “Keith, that roll is at least 45 maybe even 52, grams of carb, will you please quit guesstimating it at 23! You know that messes you up EVERY time!” If that happened a few times I’d probably get it right more often. However, I suspect that everyone struggles with these foods that we don’t eat often.

Back on track, I read on the web today that the Red Cross receives $225 for every pint of blood it sells. This figure was from a post written in 2001 and I have no idea how accurate or legitimate the figure is. I also found out (and verified) that the Red Cross has an annual budge of approximately 3.9 billion dollars (yes, that’s billion with a B folks) and that 60 percent of their money comes from revenues received as a byproduct of blood donations. So I suspect $225 or more for a pint of blood is about right (my own calculations put this up around $325-$350). Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad for the good it does and that organizations such as this exist, but I’m not going to feel bad about the two bottles of water and the 6oz can of V8 I had… I don’t care how much of an evil eye that volunteer gave me!