10 Years Gone

The title's a Zeppelin reference, of course...

There come times in a man's life when it appropriate to ponder and take stake.

This is one of those times.

Not because of the election, though.

Last night my daughter slept for the first time in her own room. Yesterday morning the furniture arrived. The day before I did some touch ups on the wall, having painted her room purple the weekend before.

Now, it was about this time ten years ago that I first painted that room. When Mrs. Stroock and I moved in, the room was a kind of brown/beige and she used it as her home office. With the impending arrival of our first child we converted it into a nursery. I painted the room a kind of light green, chosen by Mrs. Stroock of course. Me dad came down and assembled the crib.

Heh, yesterday I took that crib apart.

Ten years ago...I was 33. I had just really begun my writing career. I'd just had the lead piece in Strategy & Tactics #238 and #240 (Marlborough in the first and 1066 in the second). A Line through the Desert was freshly completed and being submitted to publishers. What a sucker I was.

My man W was president. We wondered if the Iraq Campaign could be won. The Dems, treasonous bastards all, had just taken control of congress. The term 'The Surge' was floating around Washington.

On a personal note my hair came down to my shoulders. I could play guitar but not much and not well. Certainly I couldn't shred the way I do daily now. I was a semi-permanent sub at Bernards High. My love affair with AC/DC was in high gear. I weigh less now than a did then.

Ten years gone, 90 magazine articles, eight novels one PRS guitar and three daughters later...


--Can't wait for the new Arrival movie. Of course 'Arrival' is a term used liberally in To Defend the Earth and To Survive the Earth. Coincidence? I think not. Legal Council has been retained.