Your Post of June 3rd

Aye, Stroock's Books readers. A faire morning to ye all. 

After never settling in the night before, last night we slept the sleep of the dead. We are tired and groggy. 

Temps will climb to the mid-80s today. 

We still don't feel we're enjoying the late spring and are baffled as to why not. Too much to do, we guess. 

Do you people want a political roundup after yesterday's primaries? Neither do we. Bla-bla politics, bla-bla elections.

So this weekend we put together a rad-80s playlist of fun songs, including some forgotten 80's mystery clicks, as Ace would call them. Anyone else remember Lou Gramm's Midnight Blue? The list is mostly 80's stuff you've heard, Steve Perry*, J Geils, INXS, etc etc. Just good, fairly basic rock songs backed by a lot of talent. The kind of songs played at an 8th grade school dance in 1988.

Related....so we graduated from Blue Mountain Middle School in 1988. One of our teachers was a man named Joe Ryan. Mr. Ryan was a big man, 6'6 maybe. His voice carried, you could hear him all the way down the hallway.**  

Mr. Ryan was really into military reenacting, you know, like all those extras in the Gettysburg movie. Living history, Mr. Ryan called it. Well, if you were on his team, you were in his living history program. This meant on Fridays you picked up a toy musket and marched around the school parking lot. Students were required to have a blue or gray jean jacket and march under the proper flag. 

Last week we discovered Mr. Ryan is still around and living history.*** 

DOGE report.

Same really. We're in a good spot where we work on one novel in the morning, and another novel in the afternoon. We reverse the next day. So this morning we'll be focusing on the BAOR story. 

*Best voice in Rock and Roll. Probably deserved a better band. 

** During our own teaching and professorial days, we too were loud with a voice that carried. Thanks, Mr. Ryan.

***Ah, so we see we've blogged this before, albeit nine years ago. Such are the perils of running a blog for over a decade with 6000+ posts. Note that video at the link is from 1988 or 1989. We recognize those faces. One of them is the inspiration for Patricia in A Line through the Desert.