Happy New Year - 2014, get thee behind me!

2014 is almost gone, and I can't say I'm sorry to see it go. Still, for all of the dark spots of this year, taken as a whole I will call it a good year. I've lost too damned many people this year, and I was almost one of them, but I'm too stubborn to "go gently into that good night."

Two months ago, I had a VERY nasty accident -- one that by most standards I should not have survived. Instead of pushing up daisies, I am less than a month away from being finished with my brace, and only one remaining issue still do deal with.

2014 was the year this world tried to kill me. I have a scar on the side of my head that I'll carry the rest of my days, and I'm strange enough to consider it a good-luck charm. I have come to realize what a scar means: that something did hurt me, but that I was stronger than whatever it was, and the scar is the proof of that.

I hope 2015 brings better things for all of us. And when it hits those dark spots, I hope that you'll do what I've found works well for me, which is to remember and follow the advice given in Stan Rogers' song, "The Mary Ellen Carter:"

And you. to whom Adversity has dealt the final blow,
With smiling bastards lying to you everywhere you go,
Turn to! And put out ALL your strength, of Arm and Heart and Brain,
And like the Mary Ellen Carter...

RISE AGAIN!