An Interesting Weekend with Books and Soccer

A week ago tonight (26 April), I worked as a bagger at the Greater St. Louis Book Fair in the east garage by Macy's at West County Center. It was my first volunteer assignment at this event, and it came off well. I also worked bagging and cash wrapping at the fair the next afternoon, then I did a bit of shopping that night and again Sunday afternoon. Found a few good reads at inexpensive prices. Currently, I'm well into one of those finds, the book "Rome 1960" by David Maraniss, about the Summer Olympics that year. The Book Fair will be back same time next year, so feel free to visit their website: http://www.stlouisbookfair.org/

Saturday morning (28 April), I refereed some games in Lou Fusz's Midwest Cup Tournament at the SLYSA Complex in St. Charles. I worked three and a half games in the small sided (8v8) games. One of the assigned officials didn't show for the three games I was scheduled for, so I had to do two middles and a line (instead of one middle and two lines), and use a club linesmen for those games. (However, a regular referee did relieve the club linesmen for the second half of the third game.) Then, I filled in as an assistant referee for one half while the assigned official for that crew was late coming from another field. A busy day under sunny skies. Not so that afternoon at St. Louis U. High for three league games. The first and third matches were cut short by severe weather (lightning and strong winds in the second half of the first match, my middle; a tornado warning before halftime in the third). At least all of us--players, coaches, spectators, and officials--stayed safe. Heavy winds and rain on the drive home caused me to stop at a Starbucks for awhile until the weather improved enough to drive home safely.

No weather problems the next day (29 April), as I worked three small sided (two 8v8, one 9v9) matches at the Soccer Park. No real problems on the field, although the first game was missing one team, so the side that showed up pulled players from adjoining fields to play a practice game. At least the kids got to play and the time was not wasted.

Monday the 30th started with a bit of website copy proofreading, which I got done with in short order. That night, I was at Fred Amos' house in Hazelwood for the 2014 IPMS/USA National Convention planning meeting. Things are looking good for the plans, with packets from the Convention and Visitors Commission on the way. I'll be finishing up our part of the packet by this time next week. Should not be a problem getting that all good to go.

I ran the IPMS/St. Louis meeting Tuesday night (1 May), which went well, if generally uneventful. Week's been rather calm. Dad's doing OK in his rehab, although dealing with a bit of pain of late.

I'll be back online this Saturday, 5 May, at 10 am Pacific Time (noon Central Time; 1700 hrs GMT) with this month's edition of Writer's Block from Naturally Autistic Radio. Tim Pylypiuk and I will be discussing comedy and horror writing during the hour. Hope you can tune in (or catch the archived show later that day). Info at http://www.naturallyautistic.com./radio-show. The show is steamed through Blog Talk Radio, http://www.blogtalkradio.com

Later.