'Tis the day after Christmas and I was wrong in my last blog 'bout things returning to normal - far from it.

I find myself missing my brother, Jon, at the oddest times and places. I was his caregiver every Saturday and Sunday on the second shift, in addition to seeing him various times during the week. On weekends, we would always talk about completely unimportant things, like custom hot rods we might have seen on some TV program, Alabama or Illinois football (he was an Illinois grad), or - our favorite - Braves baseball. Its these conversations I miss and which will bring me to tears quicker than anything else. I'll be cruising along on autopilot, as I do more and more lately, and a random thought, sight or sound jerks me to a halt and the brain goes, "I've got to call Jon about this." , or, "I've gotta get a picture of that and e-mail it to Jon." That's when the empty feeling in the pit of the stomach hits you and your gut starts doing flip-flops. To those of you who read this and have lost someone close, none of this is new and certainly not unique to me, but it does give me something to write about and , hell, it may even be somewhat therapeutic.

Ambush, the Alabama State Championship Shoot, went off without a hitch, although I did not accomplish my goal of improving on my last place finish. Yet, due to category choices and lack of other competitors in my age group and category, I was the 2009 Alabama State Champion Senior Frontier Cartridge Duelist. Funny as hell, isn't it. Jon would have gotten a big kick out of that and would have told me not to worry about it.

At the end of November, I had the second revision to a total knee replacement on my right knee. That makes the third surgery on that knee this year. I'm still on a cane and going to therapy three days a week for that and the docs can't tell me if the surgery was successful or not.

My wife and I moved back to Tennessee in November, also, and now live in extreme south-central Tennessee.

Well, that's it for this post. See y'all on down the trail...