08 January 2015

A Model Display and a Movie Amid Cold Days

After finishing a good week of work on Friday (2 January) to start the New Year off right, I got some models together and was at the Cliff Cave Branch of the St. Louis County Library in Oakville last Saturday morning. There, myself and three others from Gateway Chapter, International Plastic Modelers' Society (IPMS) set up a display in the lobby display case. We had a nice variety of model subjects--aircraft, armor, ships, cars, science fiction, and figures. Plus, we had flyers about our club and the IPMS/USA Region 5 Convention we're hosting on 12 September. The display will be in the case for the rest of this month. Info on our club at http://ipms-gateway.com.

A good work day on Monday (5 January) was followed by a good movie that night. I joined others from the Monday Indie Movie Club Meetup group at Chipotle in the Delmar Loop for dinner before we walked a short distance to the Tivoli Theatre. There, we saw "The Imitation Game," a marvelous docudrama set in World War II and starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing, the British mathematician who helped his country crack German codes during the war and laid the foundation for modern computers. We all very much enjoyed the film and each other's company, and look forward to meeting again soon to see another fine movie.

The temperatures really dipped that night, and we were below freezing in both temperature and (more so) wind chill factor. This made things a bit more difficult at work, at least when I was outside bringing vehicles in for and out of cleaning and for driving these vehicles with customers and ferrying the vehicles. Fortunately, there was very little snow that fell and no freezing rain to complicate things. I did dress in layers under my work outfit, so that helped.

Tuesday night (6 January) after work saw at Mark Twain Hobby Center in St. Charles for the monthly IPMS/St. Louis meeting. Only two of us were present, so it was not much of a meeting. I did hand over the presidency on an acting basis to the other attendee, who is the new chapter contact. I'm glad to not have to do so much of the day-to-day work on this group.

Off work today, I did clear out some old emails from my computer. (It really needed it.) Also, I installed some newly acquired foreign language learning software from Rosetta Stone. I selected Portuguese (Brazil), and just had my first lesson a few minutes ago. It was pretty good to start, but I feel I want to redo that lesson so I feel more comfortable with it. Wish me luck!

Later.