WHAT IS THIS THANG?

Animal, vegetable or mineral?

Here's a hint:   It lives here on the farm with me.  I look into its eyes every morning around 5 a.m. and over the past couple of days, I have been totally weirded out by their expression.   This creature looks distainfully at me every time I appear. So judgemental is its icy stare that I have begun brushing my hair before venturing near it and I rarely lock my gaze with it, fearing its unblinking ability to search deeply into my soul and thereby reveal the $5 of chocolate-covered ju jubes that I ate last night under the covers.  It's some kind of freakazoid alien, I'm pretty sure.

On the splendid side of the headlines,  this morning Birch was running early and I didn't even have a chance to sit down before they called me in for my blast.   Now that there are only four (YES I SAID FOUR! FOUR! FOUR!!) treatments left, I am finally getting immersed in the social structure of the unit, i.e., whether Jayne the technician and her husband camped out and got wet over the weekend, who made potato salad for dinner, who thinks glass-blowing is dangerous.  All pretty interesting stuff, and now I'm not going to be around to find out how it ends.  Over in Arbutus they probably just talk about stuff like bark peeling, heh, heh. (That one's for you, Lew.)

I had my final check up with my rad/onc, who awarded me a star as I hung my head and tried to look humble.   She also mentioned that they are waiting on a new study that will likely negate radiation therapy for women in my diagnostic bracket, i.e. early type, not terribly aggressive, well-seasoned, dignified and mature (ok fine, over 55 and menopausal) and responsive to hormone therapy.   They just don't feel that the radiation for this group is going to make a statistical difference, and so in the future, these ladies will likely just have an excision followed by 5 years of hormones.   I found this strangely reassuring, even though this alludes that this stint of therapy may all be for naught.   If I were given the choice, I believe I still would have opted for the radiation.  It's a relatively benign procedure and even if it offers only a slight improvement in the stats, it is still worth the small risk of side effects. 

Could someone please remind me that I said that when I get turned down for the Playboy spring issue because of my aligator scales?