[Joe Wicked]

Rough weekend for me. I found out that my uncle made Staff Sargent, but is going back to Iraq for the 3rd time (1 during desert storm, and now 2 times this round). Good news this time since he is an E8, he will be assigned operations duty at the command post. I am not sure where yet, but he leaves in October.

Thursday night there were tornados in Nebraska (were I grew up) and we still have not heard from a couple of family members. My sister tried to go to my uncle's farm on Friday, but the state troupers had the highway and back roads shut down. She didn't return my phone call yesterday, but she did tell me on saturday that the power and phone lines were down in that area. The good news is there are no reported deaths, and no John/Jane Does in the hospitals. It is just stressing until you hear their voices.

Last night, my bad ankle collapsed out from under me. I have had 2 surgeries on it so far, the last one 1/2 of my tendons were removed, and then the good ones were split up to even them out. My surgeon told me that if I take care of it, I will be lucky to last 5 years before they need to fuse it. That was in 99, so almost 9 years. This time it is very swollen and it did not go down overnight. there is brusing on both sides of my ankle, so i know it is injured pretty bad. I don't know if it will have to be fused or not, but I will have to make the appointment.