A good bloodletting / bad taxes

For once I actually had a good blood donation. I gave a single unit of plateletes and a double unit of plasma via apheresis. My long term reader will remember how last time I tried it wasn't so pleasant, or successful, and I left feeling pretty crappy (not physically, but emotionally). Today was much different. I picked up my Gold Club prize for last year (a totebag - yes it is gay for a guy, but I didn't need a hat either). Plus it turns out this was my 10th apheresis donation, so I got a nice stainless steel travel coffee mug.

It wasn't totally without mishap - apparently the machine had been set up last night, but some of the tubes had been left in, which they shouldn't have been. Whatever the cause, the setup in the machine wouldn't work, so she (the nurse - or was she a phlebomitist? I don't really know) had to tear it down and put in a new one. She felt bad for the length of time it took, so gave me an extra gift (a travel alarm clock). So I left after it being successful feeling pretty good, and not just for the stuff, though that helped.

I do think that losing the weight has made it a bit easier to find my veins - which makes a lot of sense. They don't have to feel around as much fat as they did before. The nurse also laughed when she asked my weight - and I let her round it up even because their system doesn't do decimal points for it. :-)

In other, not so pleasant news, it looks like the school district administration is pulling out all the scare tactics for the levy renewal in May. If it fails again (which it did in November) then all sports and band will be cancelled. If it passes then in August then they will be re-instated, but that would be too late for band camp (which they are now talking about moving later in August to after the levy - which of course puts in on GenCon - so Erik would have to miss the convention). If it fails in August then the programs are gone for a year. If it fails a third time in November then they are gone permanently. Which should pretty much kill the school district completely.

What I don't understand is why they made them temporary in the first place. One of the big problems is them going back again and again and again - and a lot of these are for renewals. If they would have just made them permanent in the first place then we wouldn't have all this mess anyway.

Of course, the board didn't make a fuss in November the first time when it failed - so now they have to get nasty. I would like to know why they weren't honest then? I'm not real happy with the board right now. Of course, the best way to take care of this is run myself - which I really don't want to do. I really hate the superintendent as well. For one, he doesn't live in the district, and his kids don't go to the schools here. Which to me is grounds for him immediate termination. The only exception would be if his kids were in specialty schools (like Katie) that didn't exist in the district.