When I attended my brother-in-law Paul's memorial service on Thursday, I was reminded of how lucky I am to have the sisters and brother that I have.

John Steinbeck had almost finished the first draft of his novel "Of Mice and Men" when his dog tore the manuscript to shreds. He wrote to his editor, "Two months work to do over again... I was pretty mad, but the poor little fellow may have been acting critically." He eventually rewrote the novel, which was published on this day in 1937.

When you're feeling down, a useful exercise is to make a mental (or even written) list of people who love and care about you. This isn't a new idea, but we often forget to do it. Thanks to everyone out there who loves and cares about me!

"Everybody who writes is interested in living inside themselves in order to tell what is inside themselves. That is why writers have to have two countries, the one where they belong and the one in which they live really." - Gertrude Stein

I'm going to a funeral/memorial service for one of my brothers-in-law in Regina on Thursday.

Please go to www.zed.cbc.ca and use the "search" feature to find me under the member name "donaldb". You can see some things that I've uploaded to that site. After you get to my member page, you might see "unavailable" when you try to view one of my items. Don't worry. That's just a problem they're having with the website. You can click on the name of the file near the bottom right hand corner of the page to view it.