22 September 2016

"Mein Fuehrer! I can walk!"

A week ago tonight (15 September), I took in two events in one night. First, I made a brief appearance at the International Institute of St. Louis (https://www.iistl.org/) campus in south St. Louis. (This was the former St. Elizabeth Academy campus.) It was a party for volunteers who worked the Institute's Festival of Nations the previous month. I munched on a buffet and chatted briefly with some other volunteers from the Festival.

After a brief stay there, I headed to Creve Coeur Airport (http://www.crevecoeurairport.com/) for this month's Missouri Aviation Historical Society (https://moavhist.org/) meeting. This meeting featured a speaker talking about the McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing) C-17 Globemaster III, which made its first flight 25 years ago. (The aircraft were assembled in Long Beach, California, with some components made in St. Louis; hence, the Missouri connection.) It was quite a fine program and I learned quite a bit about the C-17 that I never knew before.

After a busy Friday at the rental branch, I relaxed at home. (Miranda, who recently moved to our Airport location, came by to help up late on Friday, which was most appreciated.) Back the next morning (17 September), I worked at the branch that morning before coming home to catch up on some rest. That night started at Smugala's Pizza Pub in Sunset Hills (http://smugalas.com/smugalassunsethills), where I caught the Pub2Park bus to Worldwide Technology Soccer Park. After hanging with the St. Louligans (http://stlouligans.com/) in their tailgate, I marched with them into Marshall Wireless Stadium for Saint Louis FC's (http://saintlouisfc.com/landing/index) final home match of the season, against Louisville City FC. Despite a sell-out crowd, Saint Louis FC could not hold its early 1-0 lead and lost 5-1. (A sending off of a Saint Louis FC player soon after the goal for a vicious foul didn't help.) Still, it's been a fine season with some good memories, and I will look forward to 2017.

Sunday night, I joined with four others from the STL Screeners Meetup group (https://www.meetup.com/STLScreeners/) at the AMC Chesterfield 14 (https://www.amctheatres.com/movie-theatres/st-louis/amc-chesterfield-14). We came to a screening of one of my all-time favorite movies, "Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/). This was a national revival screening from Turner Classic Movies (http://www.tcm.com/) and Fathom Events (http://fathomevents.com/). This was the first time I saw Stanley Kubrick's 1964 satire on a big screen; all the previous viewings were on television or home video. It was a blast, and the rest of our group really enjoyed it. I only wished more people were in the theater that night; we just had a few others in the theater.

Work has been good this week. A bit warm heading into the end of Summer and the start of Autumn today, with temperatures hitting 90 degrees F (32 degrees C). Next week is shaping up to be cooler, though.

Right after work Tuesday (20 September), it was off to Calvary Presbyterian Church (http://calvarypresbyterianchurch.org/) for the IPMS/Gateway meeting (http://www.ipms-gateway.com/). We had a recap of our Invitational earlier this month, and our quarterly model contest towards Modeler of the Year. I did not have any contest entries this month, which left me free to help judge the contest. We had 50 contest entries, including 20 in the Worn Out special category--a great turnout.

The next night, I was back at St. Louis Community College at Meramec (http://www.stlcc.edu/MC/) for the beginning Portuguese class, which went into more verbs, possessive pronouns, and present progressive verbs. This was the fifth session of eight, and our instructor Priscila gave us some homework to do for our next session this Wednesday.

This morning, my off day at work, I bought some doughnuts from Krispy Kreme (http://krispykreme.com/) and dropped off a dozen each at the Manchester and Kirkwood Enterprise (https://www.enterprise.com/en/home.html) branches for my colleagues there. They very much appreciated the gesture. I'll do the same for my mates in Ellisville tomorrow morning.

Later.