Hello

We have a new year's eve tradition up here in North Portland.

Every December 31st most everyone - and certainly every yay-hoo, goober, ex-convict, mouthbreather and oxygen thief - hauls out the hogleg at 11:58 and starts blasting into the air (one fears) or the ground (one hopes). This brief fusillade or celebratory feu de joie is designed to shoot the old year dead, blast the new year into being or just make a pantsload of noise.

Either way, every year I rather idly expect that a spent round will come down through the ceiling - not in a particularly fearful sort of anticipation, but, rather, with the detached sort of expectation of an anthropologist watching the New Guinea highland tribesmen play hitsies with the sock full of fulminate of mercury - and every year it fails to happen.

I can't imagine all those projectiles going up and not coming down on someone. Perhaps they land across the river in Washington - they expect a certain level of barbarity in Clark County, so there it's probably not news.

We refer to this annual one-sided firefight as "Kasey Kasem's Pack of Savage Druze Militiamen On The Roof of the Beirut Holiday Inn Rockin' Mad Minute New Year's Eve".

Not sure whether it was the usual suspects' lack of enthusiasm for 2009/2010, my own weariness, or the heavy rain, but I slept right through it this year.

Excess fluid pressure and the desperate need to brush my teeth woke me about 1am, and after the necessaries were finished I stood for a moment looking out into the rain-slick night admiring the reflections of the one-a.m.-Christmas-lights in the minor lakes impounded by the curb.

So here we are. Done with a year where we lost Marilyn Chambers, Whacko Jacko, Les Paul, Tommy Henrich and Cory Aquino, any chance at re-regulating the malefactors of great Wall Street wealth as well as much of our real estate value, several hundred U.S. troopers in south-central Asia, the inheritance tax ("Dad, Mom, do you mind stepping over here a minute? Yeah, right under that "!0,000 pound weight" thing hanging there. This'll just take a minute. Thanks"), a Timbers' league championship (curse you, Vancouver) and the testicles of a Nigerian martyr wanna-be.

And let's not forget "The Pink Panther 2"

I feel like this year was pretty much a wash. Mojo and are are pretty much the same people we were but a year older. The littles changed a lot, of course, but they're designed that way. We got on well, pretty much, learned a little, grew a little, lost a little, too. Another year in the lives. We're all here, though, which is good and which we often forget is never a sure thing.

This blog seems to keep going, often of its own volition, it seems. 242 posts - down from the Big Year of 2008, where I posted nearly once a day, but respectable. A total of 883 posts since August of 2006, which seems like a lot until you think about the "big bloggers", people like Atrios and group blogs like Steve Gilliard's old site which have thousands of posts. Hell, the group blog we started up in June is already over 100 posts. which shows you what happens when you encourage talkative people to talk to each other. A tip of the tile to all my muckers; keep writing, guys, it's been a good year for blogging over there.

And not a bad one here. I've enjoyed our discussions, as well as your observations on the occasionally random stuff that comes out of my head. I have a bright, loving bride who is a wonderful mom and two kids who are almost always loving and usually entertaining. Always surprising, anyway.

As for me, I just hope that 2010 is better than 2009. Not that I have a tremendous amount of hope - that'd be unsergeantly of me - and we've had enough of all this "hope" and "change" stuff this year, neh? Not a fever of hope, a cascade of hope.

But a little.

Meanwhile, here's Mojo and the kids dancing in the New Year.