Half a percent

The first thing I did after leaving work was to go and give blood. They've phoned me three times and sent me two cards about this - in the last three weeks, just - so I suppose they're fairly serious about wanting it. I chatted to a very nice bloke with a silly haircut (quite like my old silly haircut, actually) about their new Machine That Goes Ping, which automates the process of rocking the bloodbag to mix the anticoagulant into it, at the expense of making the process of setting out the various bags and tubes rather more complex, and forces a rearrangement afterwards into the other arrangement that the labs need them in. Apparently it was the least popular (but cheapest) of the three machines they tested, and he didn't think it was going to reduce the workload or staffing needs, which of course was the aim.

Oh well.

After that I went home, got something to eat and then went over to see Lara and Seth fresh back from Sardiniania (which is part of Italy, as you can apparently tell from the driving). After Alex and Marianne had arrived, we all forced them (at gunpoint) to show us their holiday snaps, which were excellent - all hills, limpid seas and mosaic-encrusted remains. And cormorants. Lots of cormorants.

My brief visit stretched out until half-eleven, at which point I went back and spent a couple of hours transferring two-thirds of The DaVinci Cod onto the computer so I can reuse the tape tomorrow - hopefully I can fit the other transferring job in tonight, around or amongst the Samhain stuff.

The Grauniad didn't reach KB today, so I got a copy of the Indescribablyboring instead. I didn't use to agree with that description - while a touch dry, I always found the Indie to be a well-written and informative paper - but this time (the first since tabloidisation) I haven't been able to relate to it at all. News articles and other features seemed to be scattered amongst each other without logic, and nothing really tempted me to read it for more than a few lines. I suppose it's a question of what you're used to, but clearly Indie and I have diverged, and if I ditch the Guardian over its new format I suspect it'd be for the Herald. Having said that, I haven't read the H in a while. Maybe I should.

The other annoying thing about this is that If . . . is very good this week, so I have to look for a copy on the way home - unless anyone got it and can scan today's?