The easiest donation you'll make this holiday season

For every person that views this e-card: http://wwe5.bchydro.com/2007holiday/, BC Hydro is donating (up to $5,000) to BC Children's Hospital. It's a pretty cool little e-card - check it out and it will be the easiest donation you make this holiday season!

Blog Action Day

Although my previous post was, at least in part, about the environment it was not actually intended as part of Blog Action Day. I actually didn't know about Blog Action Day until Darren mentioned it in the comments on that post.

In his post, Darren asked "what is your big eco-sin?" Like most of his commenters, I try to be good to the environment:

• I don't own a car - I take the bus to work and for most of my transportation around the city, and I joined the car co-op for getting to hockey games
  
• even when I do take a co-op car, I usually try to do multiple things on a given trip (such as go to the grocery store after my hockey game) in order to minimize the number of car trips I take
  
• I'm a vegetarian and I don't wear leather
• I use a travel mug¹ to avoid using paper cups and I bring my own Tupperwear container to the cafeteria to avoid using Styrofoam containers
• I bring my own bag to the grocery store so I don't have to take plastic ones
• I recycle anything that can be recycled²
• I turn the lights out in the bathroom, the kitchen and the photocopy room at work when I leave them³
• I use the back of old printouts as note paper before I recycle them
• I don't buy anything new if I can get it used instead and buy almost all of my clothes in consignment & thrift stores
  
• I rarely fly anywhere⁴

But I do have one big eco-sin. I leave my computer on. All the time. 24/7. Even when I'm at work all day, my computer at home is on. And the main reason I do this is a rather ridiculous one - when I come home, I like there to be messages waiting for me. Even though I haven't had my landline and it's accompanying answering machine for months now, my natural inclination when I walk in the door is to look for the little flashing red light telling me that someone cared enough to call me! And since I don't have that anymore, my msn serves that purpose. With my computer on, people can msn me all day long and when I get home, I have messages waiting for me. OK, now that I write that down, I see it's silly. Starting tomorrow, I'm shutting my computers off when I leave.

On a related note: why, since the librarians have been on strike for four months, were all the lights on in the local library branch when I walked by there tonight?

¹A friend of mine said that he feels if he can't have his act together enough to bring his travel mug with him, then he feels that he doesn't deserve a coffee. I think this is a good philosophy
²and in light of the 4 month garbage strike that has, mercifully, just ended, this is a real sacrifice as I can barely fit in my kitchen because I have so much recycling piled up in there!
³and have noticed that some of my co-workers have started following my example
⁴Although, truth be told, this has more to do with my lack of money (thanks, $70,000 of student loans!) than with a conscience choice to fly less

A test of my will

The other day I was watching the Canucks game with some fellow scientists at Coppertank and Erika told a story about how she was burned as a young child when she spilled a scalding hot cup of hot chocolate on herself and she bears the scar tissue to this day. For some reason, this made me crave a hot chocolate*. And since Coppertank is right across the road from Timmy Ho's and I was walking home from the 'tank, I decided to pop in to satisfy that craving. And what did I discover when I entered Timmy's?

It's Roll Up The Rim To Win time. For you non-Canadians, RUTRTW is this promotion they have at Tim Horton's where you can, not surprisingly, win prizes by rolling up the rim of your coffee cup. Your disposable paper coffee cup.

This is where the test of my will comes in. As I have mentioned before, I bring a travel mug around with me, as I prefer not to use disposable cups, destroying trees and filling up landfills unnecessarily. When I emailed my sister the pic from the Metro, her response was "And look at you sporting your environmentally friendly coffee cup." It's what I do. However, I also like winning things. Hence, my dilemma. You can't very well win anything at Roll Up The Rim To Win if you don't take the paper coffee cup. So, I've been to Timmy's twice since RUTRTW started and used my travel mug both times, forgoing my opportunity to roll and win. But how long can I resist the siren song this is a chance to win an iPod**? And shouldn't they have a contest that rewards the use of non-disposable mugs, rather than promoting those who continue to fill up our landfills??

Me, modeling with a disposable paper cup at Timmy's (not a Roll Up The Rim To Win one, mind you) on a day when I was not practising what I preach. And yes, I always dress this nicely to go to Timmy's, don't you?

*I know. I'm weird.

**I know that I already have an iPod. But this one has more memory than mine!

I'm Thinking of Doing Something Really Stupid on Friday

I'm planning to donate blood.

OK, "stupid" probably isn't the best word. Giving blood is important. People need blood and it has to come from somewhere. Blood doesn't grow on trees, you know. Perhaps "paralyzingly terrifying" is a better term. You see, I am deathly afraid of needles. In fact, I'm getting woozy just writing this posting.

Sarah can attest to my unreasonable fear of needles. After all, she was present the only time I ever gave blood, way back in high school. I had recently turned 17, the minimum age for giving blood, and there was a blood drive at our high school. I felt that I really should give blood, despite the fact that I usually cry like a little baby when anyone comes anywhere near me with a needle. I distinctly remember Mr. Burt, one of the teachers and the director of the play that Sarah & I were in at the time, making fun of me for being such a big baby as I waited in line, white with fear. Sarah was still 16 at the time so, since she couldn't give blood, she ran back and forth between my cot and the cot of another person who also had the deathly fear, trying to keep us calm as we sat there with huge needles piercing our veins, nay, piercing our very souls, sucking our life's blood from us! She was also the one who pushed the chair underneath me as I blacked out on my way from my cot to the juice table! Mr. Burt later recounted to me that he felt like quite an asshole for making fun of me when he saw me collapsing from across the school gym shortly after calling me a big baby. As he should have.

Now, you may think that blacking out is a bad thing, but as they say, when life gives you lemons, make lemonades, ya? I've parlayed that one second of unconsciousness into 13 years of "I can't give blood, I black out." And for quite a while, I managed to not feel (too) guilty about it.

But last year, Jay talked about giving blood on her blog. And the guilty feelings started to appear. Every so often, the idea squirmed its way into my brain - "You are fortunate that you are healthy. You could help out someone who really needs it!"* I even looked into it, but I discovered that I was below the minimum weight. So my excuse became, "I'd love to give, but they won't let me!" That one's even better than my wimpy "I black out" excuse, as it's not my fault they won't take my blood. But it has been on my mind. And since I've put on a couple pounds, I'm just over that minimum weight. Dammit.

So, last week when I saw a poster up on campus that a group from the Ag Sci faculty is getting together to give blood this Friday, I decided, against my better judgement, to email and say "hey, can I join you?" Of course, I have had a cold for about a week and if it isn't better by Friday, I will have an out, as "full recovery" is required if you have had a cold, flu or sore throat. So the big baby in me is hoping that I still have a cough when Friday comes around. But the bigger person in me hopes I'm better**. Because I have blood and "it's in me to give," right?

Well, that brings me to one big problem I have with Canadian Blood Services - their discriminatory practices that mean that, for many people, their blood isn't in them to give, despite what the commercials say. In particular, check out this question from the screening form:

Male donors: Have you had sex with a man, even one time since 1977?

If you are a man that has had sex with a man, even once in the last 30 years, you can't give blood. Period. You also can't give blood if you've taken money or drugs for sex (or paid someone money or drugs for sex). But there aren't any questions to assess if you have had sex with lots and lots of people. The closest is question 28, which reads:

In the past 6 months, have you had sex with someone whose sexual background you don’t know?

But you could have unprotected sex with say, a different person every night, and as long as they didn't pay you and you asked them about their sexual history, you'd be allowed to donate. Whereas a gay man who has been in a monogamous relationship for the last 30 years would not be allowed. Basically, hetero sluts can donate, but gays and whores cannot. And why only a 6 month limit on straight sex with strangers, but a 30 year limit on men having sex with men?

However, despite my dismay with their discrimination, Canadian Blood Services is the only provider of blood in Canada. And people get sick or injured and need blood, and it's not their fault that CBS discriminates. They may suffer because perfectly healthy potential donors aren't allowed to provide them with much needed blood, and I don't feel like boycotting CBS and further decreasing the blood supply will help. Perhaps writing to CBS, to the government, and just raising the profile of this issue will help.

*and as the list of all the people I know who were injured or sick or died continued to grow last year, the idea seemed more and more important.
**that, and I'm sick of coughing and sneezing and being tired all day long.

Sign Here

I received the following email from my friend Mike:

I'm reading Stephen Lewis's "Race Against Time" (about the HIV-AIDS
crisis in Africa) and was inspired to do what I can to enable
Medicines Sans Frontiers and other well-intentioned do-gooders to
deliver treatment and curb the spread of the virus and its effects.
This means asking you to visit:

http://www.msf.org/petition_india/international.html
http://consensus.essentialmedicine.org/

Please have a look at the links above and consider signing. Adding
your name is easy and really helps those campaigning for access to
HIV-AIDS treatment.

So I thought I'd let y'all know so you, too, can be a well-intentioned do-gooder.