On Friday, I have an appointment booked to donate blood. Or at least, to try to donate blood. The last time I attempted it, I failed the iron test, so I couldn’t go through with it. I’m trying again, but I have a sneaking worry that I won’t pass this time, either.
I decide to walk to the blood clinic, which is in the Hudson’s Bay Centre at Yonge and Bloor. I can walk along Davenport almost the whole way. Unfortunately, I leave a little later than planned, so I’m not sure I’ll be able to walk all the way there and still be on time, but I can at least walk partway.
In the gardens I pass, most of the flowers are on their last legs, but chrysanthemums are still bushy and vibrant.
It turns out I was right about my timing, so I turn down Kendal Avenue and along Macpherson Avenue toward Dupont subway station. I pass a block of terrace houses that I remember going up, I want to say when I was a teenager? I’ve always liked them, although I wouldn’t love living in a place with so few windows. I even like the way they look from the back, with their garages and patios stacked like neat boxes. Terrace houses are incredibly rare in Toronto, and these ones are fancy and quite memorable. I can see the very top of Casa Loma’s towers over their roofs.
When I get to my appointment, I go through a screening process and a few administrative procedures, and then it’s time for the iron test. After the first finger prick yields 23 on the first test, my hopes are briefly raised when I manage a 28 on the second, then dashed when the third is 22. (It takes a score of 25 or above on two tests to be allowed to donate.) This means I have a very slight iron deficiency. If I eat more red meat and green veggies, maybe I’ll pass when I go back in three months.
After my appointment—since I failed the iron test, I wasn’t there long—I sit outside the Toronto Reference Library to eat my lunch. I also have a little fun photographing a flock of pigeons using Portrait Mode on the iPhone 11 Pro. It works quite well, although still not much luck capturing a bird in flight.
I walk down Yonge Street to the Eaton Centre to pick up some new clothes. There’s a lot of construction on Yonge at the moment, but many of the projects are preserving the old store façades, which pleases me. About halfway there, I take a break to sit and have a snack in the little open plaza behind College Park.
I’m especially proud of the walks today, because for both of them (4.40 kilometres in total) I managed to maintain an average pace under 12:00 min/km—11:42 min/km and 11:49 min/km, respectively. It’s the first time I’ve managed to keep my average pace up twice in a row. Of course, it probably helps that I was walking almost exclusively downhill for both of them, but shhh…
Unobservant Bird 