I'll jack the engine as a last resort, the instructions that came with the kit seem to display that I can pull the pan out (after the sump tube is cut) with the engine still down of the mounts. This might require dental tools to get at all of those pan bolts, but I'll see if it's manageable.
In a perfect world, I am hoping to:
1. Jack up the truck, remove the transmission cover and associated bracket.
2. Drain fluid, remove transmission pan bolts and lower the pan as far as possible.
3. Cut filter neck, slide pan out and remove rest of filter neck.
4. Clean the threaded holes with my fancy new thread chaser tap (thanks Quijote).
5. Install the new filter, slide in the new pan and replace hardware.
6. Fill the transmission per the FSM, and install transmission cover and bracket.
7. Drive over the wife's Prius to celebrate, and post the write-up to this forum.
The FSM talks about removing the shifter linkage, I'm not sure I have to do that if I'm only dropping the pan..
Feel free to give that list a sanity check, I don't remember much from when I did the TC fluid and it might be tighter than I remember..
Mike