I was asleep by 11.

Down here in S. Florida, you don't need to watch TV to know when midnight rolls around. The gunfire wakes us up.

Oh, sure, there's plenty of fireworks, but there's no mistaking the regular spacing of someone squeezing them off.

When we first moved down here, we would hear pop, pop, pop of small caliber handguns.

Then the neighbors escalated to BANG, Bang, Bang, Bang.

The economy improved and they soon graduated to BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! and increased numbers of shells.

About two years ago, the sounds changed to BRATTTTTTT, BRATTTTTTTT, BRATTTTTTT as assault weapons became more common.

There seemed to be a little downturn in both the caliber and quantity of gunfire this year. I guess the flagging economy is reflected in cutbacks everywhere.

Geez, don't these folks have any clue that what goes up must come down? I have to confess that it was a family tradition of ours back home to open the basement door at midnight and pop off one round from an ancient shotgun, but we lived out in the country where the nearest house in that direction must have been three miles away.

Anyway, 2009 started out OK. They all missed us. I'll have to check the paper in the morning to see if everyone else was as lucky.