Things I Love Thursday – Baking, Giving blood, Cats, JC, Soundcloud

I’m having one of those wonderful days where I’m appreciating what I have, and feeling quite lucky. Taking stock of things and itemizing them has a way of really keeping that energy up when where ARE a lot of terrible things happening in the world, to the planet, in my city, and even around my community. It seems really easy to get sucked into the negatives, especially this time of year when the sunshine is at a bare minimum, but I find focusing only on negatives really draining, and dis-empowering to pretty much everyone.

First of all, I’ve used Soundcloud for months without really paying attention to it, especially after Fiona Apple released Every Single Night on there. But I didn’t sign up for an account, and I probably didn’t have to, but I’m really enjoying the recommendations  So much good stuff on there from voice based broadcasts to fantastic collections of music. This song Holdin’ On by Flume has been on repeat.

Giving blood.

This is a weird one. I think it’s seriously important that blood be available to people that need it, I do believe that people should donate if they can. But I’ve always been really bothered by their stance on homosexual male donors, to the point that I stopped donating for a while in disgust and solidarity. But they called me once asking if I’d donate again, and I opted to start again since I have a relatively rare blood type and I’ve been bugging them with letters about how I didn’t like their policy ever since.

On the bright side progress seems to be happening, the Canadian Federation of Students and has been pushing Canadian Blood Services and Health Canada to move towards a behaviour-based model of screening, and I’m in full support of their actions with End the Ban and other groups like it.

I had a great time at the clinic, especially since my intake nurse was a lovely Polish lady, and I’m always looking for people to speak Polish with.  Everyone was really friendly, it was nice and warm in there, and my iron levels were amazing.

Even though my iron levels are always great it still gives me a silly sense of personal satisfaction to get that ol’ look of approval from the screening nurse. People have warned me that I’d have to keep track of my iron levels as a vegan, that I’d be anemic, etc. Well, I’ll admit to not paying attention to them, or taking supplements for iron. Every body is different, and I’m just lucky to not have any issues with it. I’ll save you the picture of me with tubes coming out of my arm, but if you really want to see it, it’s on my flickr feed. Obviously, I had to send a picture to JC as I was in the chair.

I spoke with one of the cafe volunteers, complained lightly about their lack of vegan post-donation cookies (they used to have the accidentally vegan Dad’s cookies, but not anymore) and talked about platelet donations, something I’ve been interested in a while, and something I’ve researched in the past. The donation takes a little under 2 hours, but you can go every two weeks to do it.

Baking

I’ve been really enjoying the whole baking process lately. I made carrot apple and beet muffins this week (recipe is on Facebook) and they were pretty delicious and I’m thinking about making them again this weekend.

Something about the cooler weather has got me really thinking about baking and of course. Still Mise-En-Placing it.

The Usual Suspects

Oh Cats and JC, my two favourite non-thing things I love everyday.

What are your favourite things? or non-thing things?

P.S. I wrote this on Thursday and neglected to post it.