“Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden.” That’s a quote from Corrie ten Boom. I found myself doing a little bit of reading on her tonight. She was a Dutch Christian who, with her father and other fa…

It’s been said that the test of your calling isn’t how well you do on game day, but rather how well you do in your daily routine during the days leading up to it. The gist? Preparation and dedication matter. All of the daily tasks, the paces we pu…

Happy Chinese new year’s eve. I was doing a bit of reading earlier about the Chinese New Year (tomorrow), its corresponding celebrations and about The Year of the Dragon. I read that the dragon will bring optimism and hope for better times ahead i…

This morning as the rain fell and with coffee in hand, I enjoyed an episode of “French Food at Home” with Laura Calder. She was making a beef-in-beer recipe, and formed a “bouquet garni” — essentially a bundle of herbs wrapped in leaves and tied …

I adore the rain. Everyone has something that makes them feel rejuvenated. Perhaps it’s a spa day, a vacation, a good book, a great glass of wine, a sunset, a sunrise or an accomplishment; mine is the rain. I find it to be beautifully inspiring. I…

Time is a funny thing. It’s something we have absolutely no control over, and yet we’re often trying in vain to slow it down and make special moments last. Or we’re trying to speed it up to get to the next best thing, the next milestone — the nex…

Do you ever have days where you think everything is charted out, then out of the blue you get a call that turns everything upside down? Those days are the best. They test you; they want to see what you’re made of. And they want a good answer, free…

While the knee is healing quite nicely, according to my orthopaedic surgeon earlier this morning, the wrist is now the pesky annoyance on my person. Does it ever end? It received an injection of lidocaine and cortisone almost 14 hours ago, an expe…

Today was one of those days when California’s weather thought it would be funny to play a little trick, fooling its residents with sunshine when a jacket was actually more appropriate. The way the fog rolls in off the ocean during the summer eveni…

Most of the bushes in the backyard, plus a few in the front, are getting torn out tomorrow. What started as a small desire to remove a scraggly, stray, weed-like plant that found its way under the fence from my neighbor’s yard has become a full-fl…