Greetings again after a while! For a couple weeks I was in a not-blogging mood, and then my computer broke.
And I think I'll start this new round of blogging with a gripe, a disappointment: Eugene "lost" the Civil War Blood Drive.
Each year, during the week when the football teams from the University of Oregon and Oregon State University play (the "Civil War game"), the entire city is a bit fanatic. The county blood bank joins into the spirit of the occasion with their amusingly named Civil War Blood Drive. For those of us do not become emotionally consumed by the football event and its frenzy, the blood drive seems more significant.
The University of Oregon always "loses" the contest: 2152 to 2720 (in 2002), 2835 to 3705 (in 2003), 3095 to 4059 (in 2004), and this year 2220 to 2673. This could have been our year!
I called the county blood bank and confirmed that their number of regular donors is increasing each year. From this I'll conjecture that the overall drop in Civil War Blood Drive participants is not meaningful. Given that an individual cannot donate at whim but must wait 56 days between donations, if this annual event is actually successful in inspiring people to become regular donors then an increasing subset of the potentially donating population will be unavailable during the event itself!
