(no subject)

Before The Matrix, there was Ching Ling Foo, Ching Ling Foo Reloaded, and Ching Ling Foo Revolutions.

Blood and Coffee (whut, there's a difference? ho ho)

I finally visited the phlebotomist. Whee, that only took three months. I think that maybe reading a novel that describes a man slowly dying of cancer in excruciating detail (and also includes, as part of its plot, a parade of every degenerative disease the author could cram in) gave me an extra push to follow through with this, finally. (Wait, so you're saying that reading a work of fiction has scared you straight, when those still-mysterious screaming back-pain attacks from a couple of weeks ago couldn't? Yes, this does in fact appear to be the case.) I wanna live as long as I possibly can, and that means letting the professionals (as well as myself) learn what goes on beneath my skin, and keep watch on it. I declare an end to the opaque me!

I trust that it's not jinxing anything to say that my on-paper goal at this time involves surviving up through the advent of ubiquitous longevity-enhancing technology, whenever that may happen (or, rather as it happens, as new therapies and drugs and biochip-implants and nanobots and so on arrive, in stages). I figure I can at least give my all on the personal-survival end of the contract, and maybe-just-maybe help with the other side too, through the nature of my job. Who knows?

Anyway, I don't think I've ever had so much blood drawn before. Yes, I'm a sissy and here also is me not admitting to ever donating the red stuff... alas. It was unpleasant but not painful, but worsened the headache I already had from my prepatory 12-hour water-only fast. Immediately hobbled to the Starbucks next door to the lab and had the most delicious and, aye, rewarding coffee & scone I've enjoyed in quite a while.

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OH NO CHARBUCKS AIIEEE! Yes, yes. Sorry, was desperate for quick-quick fast-breaking, and to be quite honest the coffee-obtainment options here at Longwood are, as far as I know, substellar. There is no moral equivalent of Diesel or Jorgy's here; just St*rb*cks, Au bon (pronounced "Urban") Pain, and good ol' Dunkie's. Also the bland "Seattle's Best" available in the café across the quad, and bitter dreck one can buy from the machine downstairs. Hmm, and I keep forgetting about the Peet's Coffee on tap in the cafeteria, because I rarely go to the cafeteria, because it's usually closed by the time I'm hungry for lunch, so I can't really count that.

The Starbucks I visited this morning opened about a month ago. It's approximately one block away from another Starbucks, on the same side of Longwood. Watching the new place take shape as I walked past it every day, I sort of assumed that the older one would close down... but it remained open, so there are two now, practically in sight of one another. Huh? What decade is this? I declare that Longwood Avenue is the Seattle of Boston! Of the 90s! Yeeaaahhhh!