254 Seconds

And that's the amount of time it takes for one radiation "hit."  It had me thinking of all that can be accomplished in 254 seconds: a baby can be born, a marriage can be proposed and accepted or denied, a favourite song could play out, a soliloquy could be delivered, my darling python can consume dinner, Gretchen could vacuum up a dead spider; the possibilities are endless...
 
There's the old tale of three blind men describing an elephant. One is feeling the trunk and deceives the elephant as a snake; one is near the tail and thinks of the elephant as thin with a bristly end.  The last man is at the elephant's middle and thinks/feels of the elephant as a boulder. Of course, in a sense, they're ALL right. So...radiation, from my point of view, could be described as either being asleep in the back of a pickup truck as it drives through a tunnel with splices in the pavement, OR (and my preference) like being in the upper berth of a train in eastern Europe as it goes clackity-clack down the tracks. They let me listent to music (yay), so today's music selection was "Holy Road", by Lizze West - excellent CD.
 
I'm moving to  a new apartment on Saturday, THAT should provide entertaining tales for all of you.

On board the nebudchadnezzar

(Spoiler alert: This will only make sense if you've seen the matrix.) Since I'll be getting radiation in the mouth/throat area, a possible, probable, temporary side effect is a sore throat to where I might not want to swallow for a bit - so it's the usual procedure (although "usual" and "cancer treatment" don't go well in the same sentence, as every human body is incredibly different and complex), to get a "peg" in. Simply put, that's a small tube to my stomach to where I could pour some kind of "ensure" type thing if needed. Well, the doctor's definition of small and my definition are TWO different ideas!! But it's done now, and like the rest of life, now in the adaptation process.

(but I'm putting that thought on pause while I go get another cup of coffee.) K - so, let's just fast forward to the adventure of this past Tuesday. I had scan visit to the bake factory so they can get me all aligned on the machine properly - that's where you're going to want supreme accuracy, let me tell you. They put this strechy, net-like substance over my face to where I'm pinned to the metal bench I'm laying on. This hardens over the next few minutes to make a mask.

This is where the Matrix part comes in - ridiculous as it is, NOT TO MENTION, the sledgehammer blow to my vanity. Here I am, laying on this metal bench, with a blue net tight over my face pinning my bald self to the table, add the freakish tube in the middle of my body and the element of the metal bench sliding though the big "stargate-type" ring. Lucas and the Wachowski bros could NOT begin to make this stuff up....

Shake and bake starts tuesday the 20th - BRING IT ON!!! John Paul Jones said it best, "I have not yet begun to fight!"

Pop culture flash of the day: Vh1's "I love the 90's" IS the new heroin. Oh my gosh - good stuff!

Only in America

COLLECTIBLE CHICKEN BUCKETS from KFC?!?!?!?!?! That's so ridiculously insane, absurd, and a classic example of how we love to accumulate junk, literally; that I have nothing else to add to that. Except I might add that the "collectibility" of the CARDBOARD chicken buckets is due to the fact that they have Nascar themes on them. Oh my beloved southland, of which I am a proud daughter. Land of Mark Twain, Eudora Welty, Zora Neale Hurston, B.B. King and thousands of other cultural icons and now the chicken bucket. I shake my head in puzzlement.