-The Minor League of Pathology-

Step 5
Originally uploaded by idalingi.

As a frequent donor, the routine of giving blood no longer fills me with trepidation. Because it is so routine - a middle finger is punctured to test iron, some personal fluids questions are asked, and the transmissable disease of the hour becomes required pamphlet reading.

Next, the chair, the iodine swab, the tapping of a vein, filling a bag and four tubes with enough of my A+ to help four patients.

Only trouble is, yesterday's medical assistants weren't major league material.

They missed the vein on the left arm. They missed the vein on the right arm, finally catching and starting a slow flow. So slow that blood began to clot inside the needle. The attendant's solution (aside from blaming my blood's slow flow on my diet and not drinking enough water; wrong on both counts) is to jiggle and turn the needle still in my arm to restart the flow.

Can you see me wincing over here?

After approximately 45 minutes had elapsed since the "good" needle stick, his manager disengaged the tubes and told me she thought the might have enough, even though the weight hadn't dropped on the scale. More likely, she sensed my rising ire, which I think was spilling into my features.

For the rest of the day and even now, I think of that moment every time I lift anything heavier than a pen and paper. The ache in both arms from the bad needle sticks is not overwhelming, just infuriating. In my twinges, a more confident and cinematic version of myself snatches the clamp out of the slack-jawed assistant's hands, kinks the tube and pulls the needle out while expertlypressing the cotton to the puncture at the same time. I rise up from the chair and raise my arm over my head, turn to the pathology team, their mouths agape, and say: "And that's enough of that." in a gravelly but somehow magnanimous growl. This tougher self favors them with a condecending smile, and walks out to a jangling guitar riff.

Of course, I would also be willing to settle for the blood bag weighing enough for all that blood to be used. I really hate the idea of all that trouble counting for nothing, and I'll never know what happened.

-Pillar-

"Can you see them?"
-I think they may be behind that pillar.-

A wedding in Eastern Pennsylvania, and I'm sitting at the overflow table, a round table in the corner of the ballroom with capacity for eight bodies, currently seating six, bodies that rank just above the uninvited and those that didn't care to respond.

Jill knew the bride years ago, it seems, but no longer. She brought Jack, a young auditor, as her date. She keeps trying to drag him to the dance floor, and his face gets even ruddier if you ask him on which companies he plied his trade. Jack has never met the bride or the groom. Kathy and William are a married couple - they teach high school, although which is the full time teacher and which is the substitute is never made clear. They also knew the bride, once upon a time.

Finally, there are two friends of the groom, Ryan (since college) and myself (since high school). We are all that's left of the groom's friends from his education days.

Two empty seats confound the kitchen staff. They bring two extra helpings of every salad, entree, and flute of champagne, which sounds much cooler than it really is.

Whatever nasty turn of events put the six of us so far down in the pecking order, it is clear that our lifeboat will not float the cheeriest batch of shipmates. My early attempts to play cruise director gave way to overly solemn concentration on eating, drinking, and career recitation. Trapped between an auditor and an accountant, (Ryan's profession) our table fast became a statistic.

What I would give, I thought darkly between sips of beer and anecdotes about Big Business internships, for the wit of Gertrude, protagonist of Pictures from an Institution. Cutting as she was, she could dissect those who bored her with creativity, no matter how deep into her cups.

Even sober, I felt my wit thickening in the doldrums until two colorless businessmen could dominate the conversation.

-Baked goods-

After a week of walking through the rain to work, I decided to infuse this downtrodden town with some of my disposable income. The bakery is just so economically pretty, with lace stretched along the inside the perimeter of the molding much the way a first-year teacher lines the classroom with ruffled paper.
Frilly but prolateriat cakes press against the glass with small town pride to acknowledge that big city cakes may rise higher, but here you can be certain to taste what you see.

Most of the time, anyway. The sign out front proclaimed fresh pumpkin pie, but the only pie in sight was the fourth quarter of a double header baked early that morning. If I intended to feed an office of 5-20 people, I couldn't begin with the last slice of pumpkin pie no one will eat to try to be polite or thin.

The apple cheese coffee cake traveled well, but the office was almost empty when I got there. It may have been a busy administrative day for those left behind, or maybe the need to kiss the asses of the visiting VIPs, but the first two people I offered the coffee cake nearly snarled.

Setting the box down for the eaters' tempers to cool did the trick. Within an hour, both of my bosses defied their physicians and sampled the cake. They were followed by the less alpha members of administration, once I had promised them that cake was bought, not made.

They have never tried my cooking, how do they know?

It doesn't matter.

Two bosses, two stomachs won. I should ask for a raise.

-Hunting and Phishing-

So this web-savvy creature creates a mock up of a bank's web page, arranges for a plausible url, and finally mass-mails a security warning begging the recipient to follow the link and input their account information.

After putting in all that work mimicking the web page, why blow it on a horrifically misspelled and nearly incomprehensible e-mail?

Doesn't make sense. All of those underemployed humanities majors out there, and they can't afford a decent copywriter?

They're not alone, of course. A heavily degreed job-hunter presented me with a resume that wouldn't have passed the muster at the lowliest of temp agencies (and believe me, I've worked for the lowliest). Great qualifications, maddeningly vague message - as if MBA stood for Masters in Bureaucratic Areality.

If that really exists, I'd like to get one.

-Alpaca Stud-

"He has an amazing lineage. His grandfather was Caligula."

Daily life for an Alpaca!
Originally uploaded by Enjoy Alpaca Photos.

Once we learned that Alpacas only make those quiet bleats when stressed, I regretted intruding on the farm. Set baby-talked to the bleating Alpacas near the gate, but the tall and silent one with the dark fleece never took his large eyes off me. Three-quarters of his top incisors popped from his overbite, and he stood impossibly still the entire time we were there.

It was my idea to continue up the drive, but I soon regretted that, too. The shop is open on weekends, but the shop is also a private home. We didn't have much money.

Still, the farmer answered my questions with the rehearsed delivery of a child reusing an older sibling's book report. Set baby-talked some more at the faun-like alpaca identified as less than a week of age. "Are there toy alpacas?" She asked.

The farmer's script sputtered and died. "Toys? You mean stuffed animals?"

"No, miniatures."

He seemed offended that she would even ask, and she would later purchase some $1.00 postcards as penance. The farmer rallied at the appearance of a largest member of the family Camelidae, a pure white quadriped behemoth turning the corner of the barn. Among these placid animals, he seemed powerful, boring baleful alpha-maleism into every object on which his roving eyes rested.

"That's our prize stud." The farmer said with sweaty admiration, taking off his hat and mopping his pate with a rag. "He has an amazing lineage. His grandfather was Caligula."