Blood, it's in you to give

Proud to say that that I donated blood for my 3rd time today! Not a huge number, but I'm averaging once a year since I started. I got a fancy little pin to mark my 3rd donation. Apparently my next "pin milestone" is 10. Here's what I've gotten so far:


I felt pretty good this time aside, from feeling a little light headed when sitting up right after donating. I even went and played volleyball tonight (about the 8 hours after rule that they suggested). Probably not the best sport to play after getting stuck with a needle considering my arm was getting hit with balls. My wound did bleed a bit b/c of volleyball, which obviously isn't a good thing, but it wasn't too bad. I was hitting pretty well though. I was actually trying to hit hard. I'm usually hesistant to hit as hard as I can because I'm not confident in my consistency, so then I end up using like 50-75% power. But lately, I've been getting quite consistant - getting my timing right, not hitting the net, and hitting well within bounds. So today, being just pick-up, I tried to swing harder and it worked quite nicely :). Next is to really go at it, really swing as hard as I can and get those ab muscles involved. My goal is to get the ball to bounce back over the net (bounce off the ground, off the backwall, and back over the net in the small GSU gym) or to knock someone unconscious.