Give blood, get tickets

For at least the last several years, Penn and Teller have generously donated two free tickets to their show to anybody who gives blood during what is otherwise the slowest time of the year for blood donation. (In 2008 I wrote about seeing their show for my second time when a blood-donating friend took me with her.) A Twitter message this morning from @PennJillette reminded me that it was that time of year again: "I'm at United Blood Services on Charleston giving whole blood and free tickets to P&T to other blood donors from now until December 31st."

So I headed over there this afternoon. I confess that I had not donated blood in, oh, 20 years or so. After having been a regular donor in my youth, I stopped when I entered a career that, kind of ickily, gave me sufficiently frequent contact with other people's bodily fluids that I thought it wise not to donate, even though I remained technically eligible. (I was concerned that I might donate in the interval between acquiring some nasty virus and the tests for it turning positive.) But that's no longer an issue, so it's time that I put myself back into the donor pool.

I'm grateful to P&T for their service of giving show tickets as an incentive. It worked for me! To my surprise, the blood bank was also giving each donor a free four-pack of compact fluorescent light bulbs from Nevada Energy (equivalent of 60-watt bulbs), which are not cheap to purchase at stores. The combination made for a rather nice payoff for doing something that I really should just be doing out of the goodness of my heart.