I've been watching this space for your news, Michelle. You and Pete are strong together, and all things considered, you had the worst of it cancer-wise, I think, and came out like a champ. Thyroid cancer is one of the most treatable ones. Beyond that you know the drill: if you want any documents from the university medical databases send me keywords and I can send you what I find. In this day and age, though, NIH and Mayo are probably equally good and are in lay-person terms. Later you and Pete may be going in together to get your tumor marker readings.

Dorothy, congratulations on taking up baking again. I wonder why you stopped baking 10 years ago? I agree about the great baking pans you can find in thrift stores; over the last few years I've accumulated a number of sizes of baking pans. Sometimes I'll make a big loaf (full size bread) if I know a lot of people will be eating it; more often now I make the smaller loaves depending on if there are only a couple of people in the household, so it is eaten soon while it's still good and they don't end up with old leftovers (or feel guilty for eating all of it.) Some of these pans are so small that I can make five or six miniature loaves with the same amount of batter that would go into the one large loaf.

The big pine in the front yard is coming out this weekend. My foundation is pitching and shifting and that's bad enough, and I can't afford to fix that right now, but I figure I can afford to remove the pine before it falls on the house.