A-part of yourself

Being the good boy that I am, and being that P works for them, I donated a pint of blood today at work. After going through the battery of questions (more than 30) and reading which countries were on the bad list, I was led to the bed closest to the room’s TV. Which was good because I was getting kind of faint after the first bag. I did make sure to eat before going, but I should have drunk more liquid. The nurse saw me turning pale, and raised my legs and lowered my head onto a bag od ice. Afterwards, P showed up and stuffed me with traditional blood drive goodies. Still, I felt rather weak and beat up. I wanted to do certain things, and my body wasn’t cooperating. My dad had to do this 3 times a week for 4 years for dialysis, making up about 600 times in his lifetime. Good grief!

Today was 1 month after my dad passed, and we had dinner with my mom at the houe. Thankfully she has found things to occupy her time. The big thing is her high blood pressure, which was a problem for my grandmother. My dad seems to find a way to make himself present; this time it was the low battery sound on the fire detector in his room. I have to believe he is looking out for us.

3 picks for restaurant week on Atlantic Avenue: Atlantic Chip Shop – great batter, Dhakaindian – much better than anything on Montegue St,; Shinjuku Japanese – pretty good but staff was harried; also was the namesake of the Tokyo neighborhood we stayed in the last half of the Japan trip.

Sunday

Yesterday, a friend and I tried another Brooklyn Restaurant Week’s selection, Caffe Buon Gusto on Montague St. Kind of odd that I went to law school in the area and had never been there, but it was nice – pricing wasn’t bad; pretty good eggplant parmagiana.

Today, I attended a brunch at Alma Mater Undergrad School, to welcome accepted students (those high school seniors have to decide where to go now that they know what schools accepted them). My first time attending as an alumnus. The event used to be known as Prospectives of Color Weekend, as part of the recruiting of minority students; now it’s Prospectives of Diversity. Well, ok; either way, it’s about getting the best students who would be best for Alma Mater. Well, ok, it was really about the free food. 😉 Whatever. I had a good time, and it was a beautiful day, warmer than yesterday.

I did plenty of walking yesterday and today, for exercise purposes (although, heaven’s knows if my pace of walking could dare be considered beneficial for cardiac reasons – I’m too slow).

I finished reading Barack Obama’s book, “Dreams from My Father.” Beautifully written. He’s quite a writer in making his memoirs come alive. He discloses upfront that he changed names of individuals to protect their privacy, furthermore comes up with composite characters to stand in for the real people (a lawyer’s thing to do is to disclose, I guess; Obama wasn’t Harvard Law Review president for nothing) – which kind of makes one wonder a bit about accuracy. But, accuracy wasn’t the purpose – the purpose was to give a sense of one man’s journey on the personal politics of race and ethnicity in America. Incredible stuff. I thought it was poignant to read Obama’s conveying his personal turmoil growing up with a white mother and black father; having a mostly absent father; spending a childhood in Indonesia (with post-colonial dilemmas) and a childhood in Hawaii (where the racial politics are unique); his early career in Chicago in the Reagan era; his coming to terms in visiting his father’s family in Kenya; and so on – all very interesting stuff, written before he became the U.S. Senator from Illinois.

Let’s see what’s next for the reading. Great weather to enjoy, otherwise. We ought to have some rain soon, to avoid brush fires in NJ (or so the local tv weathermen keep saying), but I’m not going to complain…

Oh, and about the most recent episode of “Enterprise” – let’s just say that having an episode about the Orion women (those Sexily Clad Green Women of Star Trek) was (for me, expectedly) dimwitted. Archer is back to his silly self (I don’t mean in a good way, either) – I mean, haven’t we learnt anything from the last time Archer acted weird from being under the influence of alien mind control? And, I like T’Pol and Trip, and I expect that I always will, no matter how poorly their characters are treated by the writers (the actors who play T’Pol and Trip should be given special awards for acting as well as they can despite the silly writing). Note to the Trek writers: congratulations on realizing these particular characters have great chemistry; can you please write a mature relationship for them, that actually fits in with their (usually) mature selves? Who am I kidding; Trek writers never do romantic relationships very well. It was a miracle that they made Deep Space Nine’s Worf and Jadzia get convincingly married to each other.

Eh. And, supposedly next week’s episode is about the Mirror Universe – that alternate universe where Kirk and crew in the Original Trek met their evil selves; “Deep Space Nine” took the Mirror Universe to an even darker and weirder level; it got to a point where I really didn’t want anymore Mirror Universe episodes; so why does “Enterprise” have to give us Mirror Universe episodes instead of something, say, fresh and different, as the previous Vulcan and Andorian episodes were (although I thought the Andorian episodes were a trifle weaker than they should have been). Eh…

Enjoy the latest work week…

Friday into Saturday

My colleagues and I enjoyed Asian cuisine at Planet Thailand in Williamsburg Friday night. Good food – pad thai was good. Fried ice cream is always awesome. Curiously interesting locale – ex-warehouse, with Asian/weird art decor (a fountain at the front; a row boat at the ceiling; eh?). Funky neighborhood – very East Village for something in Brooklyn.

After all this eating, I must say that I’m glad I get paid next week and that I ought to exercise already…