Will Gets a Present!

Merry Christmas? Tonight is the last night of Chanukah! Okay, Merry/Happy Christmas, Stroock's Books Commune. 

We always know what we were doing on this day 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago.* Heh, Christmas 1982 was the year we got Coleco Vision, which was totally cool. Christmas 1987 we got a rookie Don Mattingly baseball card. In 2012 we were getting ready for lunch at the Algonquin in Manhattan. In 2018 we woke up in the Stroock Northern Strategic Direction, six weeks after our mother died. Our dad was there too. We decamped for New Jersey that morning and ordered Thai food that night. 

Beginning in 2018 Mrs. Stroock took the girls to Indiana to see her father, whom we lost this year. We treated the last few Christmas days like any other day. We got up, made coffee and got to work. We'd have gone to the gym if it were open. At night we'd watch a movie, then some whisky and a cigar. So this is the first time since 2017 we've had our family with us on Christmas morning. Which is nice. Still, we've noticed these last few years that we awake on the 25th with a tinge of sadness for all the things we've lost in the past, childhood Christmases, family. 

Twenty years ago was our last Christmas with our mother's family in Kentucky. That was our last drive across Pennsylvania, Ohio and Kentucky, long a Stroock family epic. Five years ago was our last Christmas with the Stroock family at the Algonquin. One year later both our grandfather and mother would be gone.  We can already sense the things we'll miss and regret in the next years as the girls grow up.  We need to go watch It's a Wonderful Life, or something. 

Holy crap! Hot Air picked up my 19fortyfive article. So did FARK, a website I was vaguely aware off. Click the link. The hate comments are a riot and someone did a deep dive and found a photo of me with a Soviet necktie and flag. They found that, but not...you know what. This unsolicited attention resulted in no sales or traffic spike. But the link sent lots of traffic to 19FortyFive, so they'll probably want more stuff from us. Okay, that's a nice Christmas present, we admit. 

In any evet, Merry Christmas, folks. 

*Yes, we grew up celebrating Christmas as most of our Hindu neighbors do now.