Happy Friday.

Laura that all sounds busy and a little hectic.

What are everyone else’s plans for the weekend?

Tonight I DJ for my dance event. Tomorrow I am joining two friends who live nearby and doing a progressive dinner thing—apps at one, soup at mine, dessert at the third. Just five of us but hoping we can do it again with more in the future. I do need to clean my house before that though, which yikes.

Donating blood this morning was an exercise in nibbled to death by ducks.

First, when I got to the building half of the parking lot was taken up by three massive police SUVs and an ambulance, so I had to back out and park around the corner.

Second, the New York Blood Center suffered a cyber-attack 2 days ago and their computers are all still down, so the site was incredibly backed up with people filling out their intake forms on paper.

Third, my hemocrit was low and they had to do a second finger stick to confirm (second draw was fine, apparently I'm just low in that one finger?)

Fourth, the machine that agitates the blood and measures how much is in the bag was completely nonresponsive at the station they put me in, so they moved me and swapped it out for a working one. The second machine felt strongly that I was bleeding too slowly and should be doing it better, so every few minutes it would beep angrily and one of the nurse techs had to come over and slightly reposition the needle, which hurt like hell.

I have never worked harder for a pack of Lorna Doones and 8 ounces of cranberry juice in my LIFE.

Yikes, that is A Lot, Jess! As a former blood donor (can't anymore due to ... everything) and recent blood recipient, thank you!