Friends:

Well, the time is finally coming for the mastectomy.  I'll go in early the morning of 7/30, and they say I'll be there 3-4 days.

I'll probably not be conscious much the first day, since this time they're using general anaesthesia.  I KNOW why they're doing this -- it's to keep me from singing.  The last several surgeries I settled for teaching the staff how to get online, the difference between their a drives & c drives, etc.  But the last surgery, I woke up in the wee hours with this dumb song going thru my head, and couldn't make it stop -- "Please Mister Custer, I don' wanna go!"  So while my doc was operating I began singing that to him.  But I had to stop, because it was making him laugh.  Anyway, I think this is the REAL reason they're refusing to use local.

Approx. 4 weeks after that, I'll have to go in for some touch-up -- removing sponges, centering my remaining hooter, etc.  Come to think of it, I won't be able to call them hooters anymore -- maybe, "tweeters"?  "peepers"?  [This will make Microsoft very happy.  Via their spellcheck, they always try to turn them into hoofers, or even hookers, or even Hoovers -- dullards!]  Anyway, the doc treated me to a porno show of headless naked women, very San Francisco, very South of Market.  They all looked fine to me, except I want to keep my head.  The best thing about them is that they all appeared to be alive, and that's superceding all considerations right now.

So, I'm expected to be out of work for about 4-6 weeks.  I'll remained connected via e-mail.  And I might line in to a few of the conversion meetings, flat on my back, just to show them a whole new definition of "control freak", haha.

I'm hoping so much that if anyone is considering flowers, they will instead send something to a favorite charitable organization.  I think it would be depressing to lie there and watch flowers die, when there's so much work to be done.  I'd be very happy, truly, to get nothing at all, but if you have an irresistable urge, and have no organization in mind, a possibility is:

And another choice, with much thanks to Tony,

It will be very odd to be different from what I'm used to.  I've been trying to cheer myself up by creating some Letterman "Top 10 Reasons to Jettison Your Hooters", and I will close with what I've come up with so far.