18 October 2014

Through Rain to Crisp Autumn Days

We've been having some rainy days lately here in St. Louis, certainly since I last wrote here. Fortunately, those days were just made for the enclosed wash bay at work. What a difference that bay has been for our branch in getting vehicles turned around and ready to rent. Yesterday, it was nice and sunny and so is today, with cooler temperatures more in line with this time of year.

Last Sunday (12 Oct.), I was at Columbia High School, on the artificial turf. I had a rather exciting under 13 boys match in the middle to open my set. One team took the lead late in the first half, but the other team leveled it at 1 about two minutes from full time. Then, the second game didn't happen because only one team showed up. (The other team may have had a schedule problem that caused them to missed this day and time.) Our crew hung out until the final game, a nice under 13 girls match although it ended a scoreless draw.

My mother's brother, Harold R. Koenig, Jr., came to town this past week from his home in Fircrest, Washington. He was here from last Sunday to last Wednesday and we had a nice time (although I only saw him in the evenings, since he was asleep when I left for work). He's doing fine, considering his age, and it was good to see him.

Thursday night, I joined six other non-fiction book lovers at Rich and Charlie's in Crestwood for the Big Ideas Book Discussion Group Meetup. Over a good Italian dinner, we talked about the book "Story of My People" by Italian author Eduardo Nesi. He writes about how globalization negatively affected him and his town. Nesi had to sell his family's clothing plant due to cheap imports from China. We had a great discussion and are looking forward to meeting again next month to talk about another book.

This morning, I was at the St. Louis Artists' Guild building at Clayton's Oak Knoll Park for the Missouri Professional Communicators (MPC) meeting. MPC is a group of writers and PR people, virtually all women, who meet to promote professional development. Today's program featured a local best-selling fiction writer, Susan McBride, speaking on her writing career. A rather fascinating program, I felt.

Tonight, I'm at the St. Louis Soccer Hall of Fame Induction in downtown St. Louis. More on that in my next post.

Later.