If you live in a remote village of Africa, the sound might have been a bit muted.  But if you live anywhere within a 1,000 mile radius around Basel, Switzerland, you most certainly heard the over-the-top celebrating that happened at about 11:30 on Wednesday morning.  I had entered the “klinik” 20 minutes earlier for my […]

WARNING:  If you were ever in my Creative Writing class, please don’t read on.  You may suffer irrevocable literary damage, and I wouldn’t want to be blamed for sabotage-by-puny-poetry!  NOTE:  Given the topic of this entry, I’m sure you’ll understand that I’ve provided no illustrations…DISCLAIMER:  The  cartoon at the end of this entry might be […]

(Facebook readers, please click here to be redirected:  https://www.xanga.com/serenitymine.) And here I was wanting to write a terrifically positive post in which I’d bypass the usual topics (tumors, radiation, barbaric medical procedures!) and focus instead on my mom’s recent visit and last night’s Christmas banquet.  But I received an email yesterday from a person I […]

(Reading on Facebook?  Please don’t…  The captions and text all get unformatted and you’ll end up terribly confused.  Click here instead to be redirected:  https://www.xanga.com/serenitymine) Here’s the problem with snow:  I’m supposed to like it.  I mean, everybody does, right?  I’m supposed to get excited and talk about making snowmen and snow angels and throwing […]

(Please click here before going any farther if you’re reading on Facebook:  https://www.xanga.com/serenitymine) “Gratitude sublimates the mundane into the divine.”It was Thanksgiving at BFA this week, and I got to spend it at the dorm, surrounded by many of the people I love.  The pictures below might not give you an accurate idea of the […]

[Reading on Facebook?  Please click here to be redirected to the site where the layout will be viewed best: https://www.xanga.com/serenitymine]    “What God cares about, with all the power of God’s holy being, is the quality of my life…not just the continuation of my breath and the health of my cells–but the quality of my […]

(Facebook readers, please click here to be taken to my blog and read this entry as it should look!  https://www.xanga.com/serenitymine) My horizons have changed a little in the past 48 hours. I’ve gone from the serenity of Port Franks’ beaches… …to the serenity of Riedlingen’s hills and forests.  It’s an adjustment I’m happy to make! […]

I have  a confession to make: After years and years and many moons of loudly and stubbornly proclaiming that jogging is unquestionably of the devil, and after myriad rants about the disastrous side-effects of too much exercise on the human condition (ie. excessive brain jostling resulting in a person’s inability to illustrate a point with […]

(Reading on Facebook?  Please click here to be redirected and see it as it should be!https://www.xanga.com/serenitymine) This is the last entry I will be writing from Canada in 2008–I’m flying off to Germany a week from today!  I still occasionally find it hard to believe that a two-month summer break turned into a five-month battle […]

(Reading on Facebook?  Please click here: https://www.xanga.com/serenitymine) NEWSFLASH:  I’m heading back into surgery tomorrow, Thursday.  My plastic surgeon had a cancellation and is going to “fix my face.”  Pray that surgery #10 will be as uneventful as 1 through 9 were! Details at the end of this post. So how exactly does a cancer-twofer patient […]