Strike a vein

Today, I went for a blood test as a follow up to yesterday’s annual medical checkup (it’s been in fact a couple of years.) As a joke and since it’s timely as we’re just in 2007, I call this procedure my 60,000 mile service. So here I show up this morning and a young male nurse undertakes to draw blood from me. Before hand, I warn him that it would be easier to draw blood out of a turnip, but it doesn't register. We try one arm without any luck; then the other with the same result. At each time, the very-hard-to-locate vessel rolls under the needle and instead of blood, a great deal of invisible frustration percolates into the plastic conduit. At that point, I’m about to suggest that the nurse slits my throat open and we put and end to that game. Not willing to go for my final solution, he undertakes to poke the top of my right hand and a microscopic drip starts filling the tiny tube; just like a movie in slow motion, or watching grass grow. After 30 minutes of that game of patience, the three test vials are somehow filled up and I’m on my way back home.

By the way, I’ve decided on yesterday’s blog question. All my very serious thinking (is that an oxymoron or what?) will appear in Go Politics, my other English-only blog and we’ll leave that blog and its French counterpart intact.