Side Effects and Four-legged Neighbors: Knock on wood, but the side effects for the second treatment don't seem as pronounced as for the first. My face is slightly flushed but nothing like last time, when it felt like my cheeks were smoldering. No fever to speak of (typically, I run low, 98.4 at the highest...think I must have some reptile genes in me). No fatigue so far, either. The oncologist said that body sometimes adapts to the chemotherapy-induced fatigue, so I'm wondering if it can "learn" to handle the other symptoms, too. Here's hoping.

Not trying to push myself today but still wanting to get outside for awhile, I took a few pics around the property.

The Pookie-Dilly Circus at full charge (Dilly on left). Happy, happy, joy, joy.

Oak tree against fall sky. Note the clusters of mistletoe in the top branches, most prominently on the upper left.

Neighbor pot-bellied pigs Benny and Lola singing grunting for their supper. Lola is the bold one pushing her snout through the wire fence.

Lola munching on carrots. Pigs make me a little nervous; look into that left eye and maybe you can understand why. An Oregon farmer was recently in the news as having been eaten by his hogs (authorities believe that he had a fatal heart attack while in the pen, but I bet those suckers just had enough of the guy and overpowered him).

Ring of mushrooms around a blue spruce. I see mushrooms dispersed in this manner every fall (so-called "fairy rings") but never with a tree in the center. There's another, looser "ring" around one of the pondersa pines but the pattern was a little harder to see.

Another happy carrot monger: Carmen, from across the street, at a moderate gallop. She watches me like a hawk whenever I'm outside.

More 'shrooms. 'Tis the season, after all.

Me from yesterday trying to document the blotchiness (which was nearly gone by this time; it's more visible in the close-ups I took). No, I can't explain why I look pissed off.

Until next time...