Sure enough, it was quite a surprise, but I made the best of it and started making cartoons about it. Then I decided to put up this journal so you all could follow along with what was going on as it happened, rather than to have you thinking the worst all the time about my health, both physical and mental. It's been a great place for me to get my thoughts together and vent too, so it's sort of become a part of my therapy.

     Well, now here we are, 3 years and 60 entries later, and it's time for a change. See, this journal's getting to be quite a bit of work, which is the main reason that it's so long between posts these days. Not to get too geeky here, but creating a new HTML page and updating the links is a bit of a chore each time. It was pretty easy at first, but as this thing's gotten bigger, it seems to take more work each time just to throw up a simple update.

     Discovering Frontpage's "Borders" feature helped a lot with the menu on the left, which was turning into a total monster after just the first few updates, but now the thing's so big (and getting bigger each time I update) that Frontpage just craps out when I try to publish it. I switched to Dreamweaver, which is a much better program for web site creation, but it doesn't even know how to deal with the "Borders" at all, so it's just one thing after another to do a simple update. Yeah, I shoulda thought ahead and used XML or something, but hey... I was a little preoccupied at the time playing with chemo and stuff. LOL!

     So, for awhile now, I've been faced with re-creating the whole thing from scratch, which is just about enough to make even a strong guy like me shed a few tears, or come up with some other solution. And now I've got it. This is the last update I'll be doing this way in this journal. From now on, I'll just BLOG it!

     Now, just in case you haven't been keeping up with the times, "BLOG" is short for "WEB LOG", and it's a quick, painless way to share your thoughts on the web, and it's totally FREE, and REALLY EASY, so any of you can do it too, and won't that be fun?! You bet it will!

     Eventually, I hope to move all the previous entries, links, photos, etc., from this journal over to the blog, even dating them there as if that's where they originated. It's not that I'm trying to be sneaky. I just want the whole story in one place, and for it to stay in chronological order. Once I get that chore done (figure it'll take months at the minimum), then I'll delete this journal from here entirely, and use the web space for something else, like my artsy-fartsy photos, more cartoons, and stuff like that. Hey, it's good to have goals, right? Right!! LOL!

     So, here's the deal... If you want to see the latest update (notice how I somehow avoided telling you the latest news in the "Buckster Cancer Saga"? Hehehehe....) then you have to go to the new BLOG to read it. Once you get there, you might want to bookmark the page into your favorites, so it's easy to find it again. I'll park a link on my front page as well, and on the cancer page, and maybe a few other places on the web site here too, but if you want to keep up, you might just want to cut to the chase. LOL!

     Now, this is going to make a bit of a change in another way as well. See, it's so EASY to do updates with this blogging thing, I'll probably be updating it a LOT, and it's not always going to be about my cancer. In fact, it's probably mostly going to be my thoughts on other things - whatever is on my mind at the time. After all, I've got LOTS of stuff I think about besides cancer, especially at times like this, when I'm in remission and don't really even WANT to think about cancer and all that goes with it.

     No doubt, when this remission's over, and I'm ponied back up to the chemo bar, it'll be on my mind quite a bit again. I'll still give updates whenever there's any change in the way I feel or after a doctor's visit, just like I did here. It's just that there's so much MORE to life with cancer than just the damn cancer! In fact, I'd say my attitude is not so much "life with cancer" as it is "cancer with LIFE", and I'm LIVING IT!! LOL!

     Oh, I almost forgot... On the Blog, YOU are going to be able to participate! That's right! I invite you all to leave your thoughts, comments, well-wishes, or whatever right there in my Blog as well. Now, THAT'S COOL! You'll love it, and it's as easy as email. Of course, you can still email me anytime you want, in case you don't want anyone but me to see what you have to say. But c'mon... Let's have some FUN with it!

     Okay, so that's it for this update, and that's it for this journal. Here's the link for the Blog, and I'll see you over there!

http://buckcash.blogspot.com/

Buck