But I do shop in Newbury

I was just thinking, as I was eating steak leftover from yesterday's grill, that for all the complaining I do about Newbury, it's my primary destination for food shopping.

I was in Tendercrop the other day, chatting to the checkout lady, and she said, "I keep telling them that if they sold paper products, I'd do all my shopping here!"

I was quick to add cat (dog) food and we agreed there really would be no need to go elsewhere. But then I remembered cleaning products, batteries, toothpaste ... all that stuff I actually buy at CVS anyway. They have good sales on a lot of those common grocery-type items.

But then there's somewhere else, that I don't think I've ever mentioned here - The Newbury Butchery. It's a sort of chain, in that the original is in Beverly or somewhere else southward of here, but I do go in there. Less lately than I used to (not sure why, but I think it has to do with the sloped parking and my E-brake), but it is worth noting.

The steak I just finished off was from there, and it was one of the best steaks I've had for a while (not generally being able to afford the ones at Tendercrop). I don't even bother with grocery store steaks anymore.

This is something I still, after all these years - and along with really good thunderstorms - miss about Michigan. Maybe things have changed there and grocery store steak is no longer good steak. Even the steaks at Ponderosa were good there.

Good corn-fed Iowa beef. I remember when I was in college, in Ann Arbor, my parents came down to take me out to dinner one Sunday. My dad wanted to revisit this German restaurant that had been there since he was a student.

I ordered a steak; he was miffed. We did not have steak much in our house, not being wealthy people, and I like a good piece of rare beef.

Which probably has at least something to do with my "female problems" relating to (benign) tumors that feed off estrogen. And it explains my protruding tummy, which I never used to have. I am told the tumors shrink when one reaches menopause, an event that I have been eagerly awaiting for about 10 years now ...

My thyroid problem is also related to my diet while living there - not enough iodine in the soil in Michigan. Lots of people with goiters and/or thyroid cancer in Michigan. I don't have a goiter, but only because I was on a syntheic thyroid replacement drug for years and years.

Frak, what a switch - from steak to symptoms and side effects.