Green Beat Green and Yellow, Blue Shouldn't go Silver and Black

Good afternoon, People of Stroock's Books and Happy Veterans Day. Since Veteran's Day used to be called Armistice Day, commemorating the end of the Great War, might we suggest our own Pershing in Command?

Here's our great grandfather, the man for whom we are named, a pilot in the Great War:

Of course, he flew for Der Kaiser. The man took one look around Germany in 1919 and bugged out, to Louisianna. Here his daughter eventually met our grandfather, a New Yorker stationed with the 127th Medical Evac unit (that's what he called it). Our maternal grandfather was an officer with the 407th AAA Battalion, the 'Buzzbomb' Kings'. An uncle on our mom's side was with Merrill's Marauders. 

Last night we had our first legitimately cold night with temps dropping to freezing. We didn't write the actual temperature so as not to confuse British, European, Canadian or other reader(s) handicapped by the gay and retarded metric system. For American reader(s), 32 degrees in wimpy metric numbers is pretty hot, like turn on the AC hot (which the Euros don't have, uncivilized cretins).

Oh my, last night's Eagles and Packers game was a defensive slug fest. Enjoyable. The Eagles won 10-7, in Green Bay. Impressive. The Eagles defense looked, you know, big, strong and tough. The best teams in the NFC are Philadelphia and Los Angeles. Expect a playoff rematch. 

New York sports suckhole...many online Giants pundits say the Giants should hire Jon Gruden. We admit Gruden's a good coach; good not great.  Gruden won Super Bowl XXXVII with Tony Dungy's roster and playing against his old team, the Oakland Raiders. Gruden knew all the Raiders' tricks. Speaking of.... during his 3 + year second stint with the Raiders, Gruden went 22-31. No thank you. Very overrated. 

Writer's lament...It's been ten years now since we set foot in a classroom. Everything written before 2016 - every novel, blogpost, or magazine article - we wrote while doing a job. Those jobs included Social Studies/English teacher at a second-rate Yeshiva in Passaic, permanent sub at Bernards High, and college professor at Raritan Valley Community College. 

When RVCC imploded we told ourselves we'd go home and write more. And so we have. It was for the best, we know. Mrs. Stroock and we decided that with the girls getting older it was better for us to be around the house more. And so we've been. Still, our world has shrunk. Our vision has narrowed. We've missed a lot. Sometimes we think we should have taken that vacuum cleaner salesmen job we were offered in 1998. [Stop whining you whiner-Ed].

DOGE Report: the Thatcher's War international chapter looks pretty good. We got the next nuke novel short story started. As noted yesterday, this week the heavy will be the nuke story, which means we don't have to wrench ourself from this blog and start thinking about IRA ASUs vs the RUC, UDR, UVF, UDF, and UFF. Which is nice.  These Irish and their military/paramilitary/police/terrorist acronyms.