Talk About Chilling Out

After a mild time to start 2012, January really arrived early this morning (12 Jan.), as at least 1 inch (2.5 cm) of snow fell and the wind brought the temperature well below freezing. Tomorrow looks like a real cold one, with the temperature picking up a bit this weekend. Good time to stay inside as much as possible, as long as it's a warm place. I did sneak out of the house this afternoon and took a photo of the snow-covered landscape.

The slight improvement in the weather forecast for this weekend will be quite welcome. I'm refereeing matches in the United States Youth Futsal/Adult Futsal Midwest Regional Futsal Tournament in town this Saturday and Sunday. I have my games at Creve Coeur Racquet Club both days. I like that facility, as they have good sized, well marked courts which I really appreciate. Should be good action this weekend. Plus, I'm going to a friend's party this weekend. More on that in my next post.

Last Thursday (5 Jan.), I drove to Thai Pizza Co. in University City for dinner with the Dine Out on a Dime Meetup. It was pretty good; definitely something different. Not so good was my drive, when I tried to put my car in reverse, the transmission would not work and I had to put the car into neutral and push it back. The forward and park gears worked fine. I took my Saturn into a repair shop the next day and they said they transmission needed replacement, with that to cost at least $2,000. Ouch! That's probably more than the car is worth. (It's a 2000 model with about 145,000 miles on it.) I told the service place no thanks, took the car home and began talking with my parents about getting a nice used car. Rather frustrating after all the repairs I had to put into my car over the years, complicated by my financial situation. When it rains, it pours. At least mom and dad will help in that.

Speaking of futsal, the season resumes last Saturday after taking the Holidays off. The three matches I worked that night at Christian Academy went well overall, although the middle match (a high school boys' contest) had my partner and I real busy. However, it did end well and that's fine.

Tuesday night (10 Jan.), I was in downtown Clayton for a Yellow-Tie networking happy hour at AEGIS Professional Services. It was nice, seeing many of the usual crowd and a few new people. I chatted with several of them and exchanged business cards with many of them. Hopefully, they will lead to some job leads--that can't come soon enough.

I did get some more proofing work that night, from the client I had been working with the past two weeks. I completed this most recent assignment this morning; this was a real easy one for me.

Yesterday, after struggling with keeping my checkbook balanced, I broke down and bought Quicken software, which I downloaded and installed on my computer. It was a bear to get my recent financial details loaded onto this software, but I feel my finances will be handled much better from now on, knowing just what I have available.

That's it for now. Stay warm, fellow St. Louisans. Later.