CNN reported that Dr. Jerri Nielsen has died. If the name tickles a memory in you, she was the sole doctor in Antarctica when she diagnosed herself with breast cancer during Antarctic winter, requiring her to treat herself for breast cancer until a risky South Pole rescue mission could be undertaken as soon as winter ended..

A quote of hers struck me as particularly memorable; it put into words something I've been trying to say a long time but never formulated properly:

"The things that make you strong, and make you feel as though you've accomplished something, are not the easy ones; it's the things you had to work and struggle through. Those are what give us our depth -- that make us not gray and plain and nothing but give us depth and texture and longing."

Indeed.

Four days to vacation + furlough #2. I should probably be thinking about packing...