New Things For Johanna

New: MySpace
I have become a MySpace nerd lately. I don't have a lot of time to play on there so my page is still pretty basic, but for me it is all about collecting friends. I'm up to 38. I don't want random people that I don't know. We've got to have some connection, some personal knowledge of each other, some relationship outside of MySpace.

New: Giving Blood
I gave blood for the first time on Friday. It was all very last minute. A friend was going to a blood drive on her way to meet me for lunch and so at the last minute, I decided to go as well. I don't know why it has taken me so long to do this good thing. I conquered my fear of needles long ago, as evidenced by my multiple piercings and tattoo. The whole thing was easy and virtually painless. But did I mention this was on the way to lunch? And I hadn't eaten breakfast. Which brings us to my next new thing...

New: Almost Passing Out
I've never actually passed out before but I got pretty close at the blood drive. I was fine the whole time my bag was filling, but I started to feel a little funny around the time they filled the two little tubes at the end. Okay, a lot funny. I got really swimmy-headed and hot and maybe just a tiny bit nauseous. (By the way, I'm a really good speller, but I have to look up nauseous every time.) So all the sudden they've got my head laid back and my feet and one arm in the air and cold towels on my chest and head while someone went to get me a juice. The whole incident passed quickly but it was a bit embarrassing. Right about the time I started to feel better, my friend started feeling bad. I've never seen the color drain from someone's face so quickly. Her lips were white. So they rolled over a bed for her and put up a cardboard partition around her, supposedly for her privacy but I suspect also for the mindset of all the folks that still had a needle in their arm.

New: Pride & Prejudice
Meg, I took your advice and stopped by Amazon to get my $20 copy of Pride & Prejudice (the Colin Firth version). My Jane Austen collection is now complete, except for Northanger Abbey, but I don't think a good movie adaptation even exists. P&P should arrive tomorrow, with...

New Again: The Streiker Saga
Back in the day (the day being 1994-1995) I worked at a Christian bookstore. Much like my current bookstore, we were able to check out books as long as we kept them in sellable condition. I read a series I really enjoyed at the time and when it came to mind again a few years ago I started hunting around for it. Here's what I remembered: one of the characters was named Stryker or Striker, it was supposed to be somewhat allegorical, and there was a motorcycle. Now, if I had a customer seek my assistance at the info desk with that information and no title, author, or ISBN, you can bet that I'd be filing the incident away to bring up after we closed during the let's-all-tell-annoying-customer-stories time. I can't tell you how many times I've googled those few details with no luck - and if Google can't help you, I don't know who can. I decided to take a new approach to my search and actually browse through all of the Christian fiction books on Amazon, like this: Books>Religion & Spirituality>Christianity>Fiction & Poetry>Romance>Sort by Publication Date>skip to somewhere in the mid-1990s. It was so simple, I don't know why I didn't think of it before. There they were, the three books of the Streiker Saga. All along, it was just another case of my good spelling failing me. I was so excited to find them that I immediately ordered all three. I just hope that I'll enjoy reading them as much as I did the first time, 11 years ago.

Oh, Mr. Darcy!