Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all!

It was puzzle-making time at my house

So far 2026 is already shaping up to be better than 2025. By this time last year I had already had a biopsy on a "mass" detected on a CT scan and was awaiting the results. No one guessed that it was mesothelioma, but even the more likely options were enough to cause me considerable anxiety. This year my next medical event isn't until January 26, when I get my next scan. Meanwhile, I'm so glad to be holding my own!

I've decided that my major goals for the year are remarkably like last year's:

1. Survive
2. Finish my current book

What book, you ask? I've started to write book on punctuation. The working title is Parenthetically Speaking: A Short and Sympathetic Guide to Punctuation. (Feel free to chime in with the punctuation questions that most confuse or irritate you.) Unlike last year, I won't be putting the finishing touches (indexing and proofing) on a book this year, but I do hope to get the manuscript to the publisher.

In other goals, I've decided that I want to have more people on my Christmas card list next year than I do this year, so if you'd like a card from me, send me your address! 

Meanwhile, I've finished reading The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. I had been meaning to read it for a few years, but it seems all the more topical now. It's a remarkably comprehensive and yet well-written and accessible work. I came away from it with a much greater understanding of just what a vast undertaking the War on Cancer has been. We have made great strides in the last quarter century, but there is still a great deal we don't understand and a large number of people whose cancers have not responded to the more advanced treatments. If you want to read it, make sure you get the updated edition, which brings the story up to 2025.