Entries from December 2008 ↓

I was curious so I did a little research on blood today:

A unit of blood is 450 ML – or about .12 gallons.

$1680 = price of blood per gallon. (though blood varies in price – it’s more expensive on the coasts, according to this article in Slate.

1.25 gallons = ~ the amount of blood in your body ($2100 dollars worth).

A newborn’s body holds a cup of blood ($105 dollars worth).

There are ~5,375 gallons of blood donated every day in the US ($9,030,000 dollars worth)

An adult can usually donate about 1 pint at a time (or 8-10% of total blood) ($200)

At rest, your heart pumps ~1.5 gallons of blood per minute or roughly a 1/5th of a pint per second. This works out to about $42 of blood per second (hello Douglas Adams!).

Blood lasts 42 days  (hello again!)

There are 42 gallons (again!) of oil in a barrel of oil. As of today you could buy a gallon of oil for $40.06. A barrel of blood would set you back $70,560.

There are regularly blood shortages over the holidays.

You can lose about 10-15% of your blood without major problems developing.

Exsanguination is the process of bleeding to death.

here are some other blood facts

picture borrowed from this site

Really the only surprise about this:

Iraqi journalist throws shoes at Bush

is that his reaction time is better than I would expect! Those were some not altogether slouchy ducks.

I couldn’t count on both hands the number of times I would have liked to do that — I hope there’s some hope for the guy.

Portland weather can be pretty impressive. Certainly you’ve seen this:

We seem to be headed for the same weather in the next few days.

The ice is really amazing. I grew up in Spokane, WA which gets a decent amount of snow – but the ice in Portland is of a completely different level. Think of it like an entire city being coated in a solid inch of oil-covered glass. It’s that strong and that slippery. You can scarcely walk outside of your house.

Here are pics I took about 5 years ago:

Love the TV placement – really completes the pic.

VN-5000 Olympus digital voice recorder. I wanted the simplest, cheapest good device I could find. It cost around $30 – is mono only and doesn’t import audio to your computer. This one is to be used as dictation only, and so far I love it.

Part of working on a book is remembering to listen to your brain – for when your brain is telling you the story. I woke up at 6am a few nights ago and after about ten minutes I realized my brain was composing. I wasn’t thinking about the book anymore, the book was being written, right then. This gadget is for that – but also for commuting, etc.  I’m not sure yet how the process difference (writing vs. talking) will change things. Guess I’ll find out. But so far it’s made for a nice productivity gain.

Speaking of Laura – she is also working on a novel and we discuss with some frequency how to actually get any writing done with two small children in the house. That’s why we enjoyed reading through Daily Routines - “How writers, artists, and other interesting people organize their days”. We combed through the writers looking for those who have kids. As much as I love TC Boyle – reading two newspapers, writing for four hours and then going snorkeling is not what the shape of our day looks like. And we certainly don’t fly like William Styron (who did have children):

“…sleep until noon; read and think in bed for another hour or so; lunch with Rose around 1:30; run errands, deal with the mail, listen to music, daydream and generally ease into work until 4. Then up to the workroom to write for four hours, perfecting each paragraph until 200 or 300 words are completed; have cocktails and dinner with the family and friends at 8 or 9; and stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning, drinking and reading and smoking and listening to music.

With Rose to guard the door, run the household, organize their busy social life and look after the children, Mr. Styron followed this routine over the next 30 years.” William Styron’s routine

I’m glad he could live with himself. Alice Munro and Toni Morrison are much more encouraging.

Last weekend at a signing at the Willamette Store I met Devon Monk who has a new Urban Fantasy series out that looks just great (the first book is called Magic to the Bone) and we talked about, among other things, getting work done. There’s a very funny post on her blog where, under deadline, she slips away from her family for the weekend to work at the Edgar Allen Poe room at the Sylvia Beach Hotel (I proposed to Laura in the F Scott Fitzgerald room!).

All of that is to say, I’m going to become an early riser. You heard it here first. I’m so notoriously not an early riser. When I shared a room with my brother when we were in elementary school he moved his bed out into the hallway because I procrastinated going to bed until it drove him insane. I’m up much earlier now because of the children – but I still find it very difficult to break a late night habit (I heard Michael Chabon works late at night but I’m definitely a sharper cat in the morning. I wrote Couch between 9am and 2pm every day in Ecuador – sans children). Like everything else, there’s a site for how to teach yourself to wake up early: howtowakeupearly.com