Texted Mike earlier to check up on Marcie and see how the surgery went, 

and just received this:

Great. She is home and resting.

Tom, on the other hand, was not resting, but out mowing.  

Both front yards are done, and the ditch, and the Back 40, where there's full sun of course.  (FYI the mower still sounds terrible and 'rough' despite two trips to the shop, both expensive, be fixed.) Naturally Tom didn't want to mow the backyard with Rod and his son our there repairing the pool pump, and will mow back there early tomorrow morning.

Yesterday I was still not able to order the next puzzle with the PDF file; this has been an on-going saga for over a month, with headaches every single step of the way.  I "may" <g> have complained about it in previous posts.... 

Alex just came over to get the thumb drive to see if he can load it in a different format and send me something useable.  However at this point I know better than to hold my breath, and despair of being able to order it before I leave,  despite starting the process over a month ago, in theory at least well in time for someone's birthday.... sigh!

On the plus side, I'd noticed last week that the bottle brush tree was getting ready to bloom again, and here it is starting.  While we virtually never use this gate, I'll still trim those branches back after they're done blooming.