Well, I received a referee assignment that will see me referee the University of Montreal against the Impact Academy. For those who are not in the know, the Impact Academy team is the farm team to the Montreal Impact. The Academy also play in the CSL, which is the Canadian Soccer League, and is Canada's professional soccer league. Soooo, this is definitely the highest level that I have ref'd so far. I did do the Academy a couple years ago but I was 4th official so I did not feel the pressure of the game - although I did get pressure from the coaches!! But that's a different kind of pressure.

So, just another step closer to my goal. I still truly believe it's within my grasp. I just need the right assignments at the right time and the right evaluations on the right games. I feel I have the necessary experience and attitude to represent our region and our province at the National Level... we shall see...

ok, so this past weekend was a full weekend but the stress level wasn't that high. Saturday, I went to go pick up "V" but had nothing else scheduled for the day. On Sunday, I had a triple-header at Catalogna that went really well. It started with a Div4-women's, followed by a Div1-women's and then ended my assignment with a Div1-Men's. The men's game saw only one caution - I felt I had pretty good control of the game and managed to call it nice and tight.

This week will see a couple of high school double-headers, a couple of LLO practices and then next week is the Futsal stage, which should be really interesting. I've already started to go over some of the specific rules and there are a lot of interesting little rules. it will definitely take some time to get used to them and to be comfortable enough to differentiate between Futsal and regular football and the high-school rules...

ok, so things have obviously been quite hectic (how many times have I said THAT before).

Reffing in the High School league has started up again with a double-header this week and I've already managed to get some Regional and Elite League games out of the way for this year. So, it will be piling up again real soon.

One thing I am looking forward to is I will be taking part in a Futsal conference coming up in a couple of weeks. Futsal is the FIFA version of indoor soccer and is really big in the rest of Canada and the rest of the world. It just hasn't caught on yet in Quebec. However, that's supposed to change this year. I've already take a Futsal instructor's course last year and now it's the Futsal referee's course (I know, it's odd that I can take an instructor's course before becoming a Referee, but oh well). There are a number of rules and regulations that are quite different from high school indoor leagues and certainly many difference when compared to outdoor 11 v 11 games. But it does look interesting and it will be awesome to get another certification under my belt.

LLO is back in full swing and things are coming together nicely. There are still issues with a few scenes but they'll be ironed out in the coming weeks. At the end of the month (Jan 27th), we are taking part in a concert called "Hail! Unity" which joins together the three G&S Societies of the island (although this year, one of them isn't doing a G&S show so that's kind of odd...) Last night we practiced what it is we will be performing and it sounds pretty good. I will have three of solo verses so that will be fun to be able to perform that for the first time.

And lastly, the LLO programme is moving along really nicely. I've managed to get one of the programmes all laid out so I just need content (ads). The second programme (because we decided to produce two programmes, one for each show) won't take very long because it's just a matter of deleting pages from last year's programme so that it, too, is all ready for content.

One bad thing that happened was my scanner went kaput!! "It's dead, Jim!" So that means I need to pick up another one. This one's last me about 5 years, which I guess is pretty standard. I would like the next one I get to be a wireless-networked printer. The one that just broke was networked so other computers can print to it. But I think I would this the next one to be wireless so that it eliminates some wires. plus I could put it anywhere... We'll see what Future Shop or Best Buy have on special...

Not sure I will want to do this next year. It's definitely a lot of fun to produce but it really is a ton of work - so much so, that I have to take some days off of work in order to complete it in time. But that's next year - who knows if I'll still be President!!!