Capital City Toastmasters

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Dear Capital City Friends,

Hostess with the Mostess Maria Harp made her debut as Toastmaster today.  The theme was ‘Restaurants’ and she was cooking like Betty Crocker!

For our appetizer/invocation, we were served some sad news - member David Jorgensen is leaving our club and moving back to Utah.  But he left a tip - a lead to an Ethiopian restaurant near IH 35.

Table Topics were a buffet of the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Steven Sharpe explained how spicy food leads to babies. Rey taught us how to make a waiter hate us.  Hard to decide which made us retch with more conviction: was it Patrick Reznik’s tale of ordering a hairy blubbery delicacy in a foreign country, or Corky “Hannibal” Logue’s favorite — oh forget it — I can’t even repeat it.  If you want to be party to this sort of thing, you’ll just have to come to meetings.

Our sweet treat was visitor Qiong [pron Chung] Wang, aka Miss Cheesecake, who not only took a Table Topic good naturedly, she just may join our club!

Lora Schneider told a beautiful, touching, heart-wrenching story of addiction taking its toll on a family.  It takes a true champion to not only summon up the courage to share a painful experience, but to craft it into something poetic, with an enduring theme of love and hope. Lora, you inspire us all.  Thank you for giving us so much to take away from your story.

What’s in a name?  If you are Eric ‘Petie’ Peterson, plenty.  Poor good-natured Eric has suffered from sharing his last name with sex offenders and serial killers all his life.  The plot thickens when Eric finds there’s an Erik Peterson in his own neighborhood terrorizing good folks with vicious petty e-mails.  Ah, but take heart: what’s infuriating for Eric is hilarious for us.

Congratulations to our Ribbon Winners:

Best Table Topic: Corky ‘Eat-your-heart-out’ Logue
Best Speaker: Lora ‘Angel’ Schneider
Best Evaluator: Patrick ‘Can’t-believe-I-ate-that’ Reznik
Best Humor: Eric ‘Petie’ Peterson
Most Enthusiastic: Qiong Wang (Guest)
Best First-Time Toastmaster: Maria Harp
Best job of mentoring a First-Time Toastmaster: Louis Burns
Honorable Mention for off-color, in-your-face Chuckle: David Jorgensen

Okay so I’m not Keith.  Or Jenny.

Hope to see EVERYBODY back at the meeting next week!!!

Respectfully submitted,

Amy Samet

Greetings and Taco Bell Everyone!

You may have heard by now that there were South Americans at our meeting and that they found it “interesting”, “different”, “fanspecial”! It was surprising to hear our club’s reputation has spread throughout the Americas. It makes me want to scream, “HAY MUCHOS LIBROS EN LA BIBLIOTECA! ” It was great having them and thanks to John for continually adding some spice to our club with the guests he brings.

Wendy ran with the theme, interjecting interesting facts about South America while deftly directing the show as the Toastmaster. Did you know Chile’s national sport is the rodeo? Stuart was THEE man, picking up two roles as invocator(sp?) and evaluator at the last minute. Stacie timed a little too well some might say, catching a couple of people going over time then ripping one to shreds when all that person wants is to be loved. Our grammarian, Jenny, presented the word of the day to the gaggle of folks at the meeting, though I forget the word. She owes us a solo of the song “Brazil” which she promised to perform at the next meeting. Jason slipped in late to give us a chuckle and his tardiness will go on his permanent record. But at least it didn’t totally slip his mind and he didn’t miss the meeting for no good reason whatsoever. That’s what we call “pulling an Amy”. As in - “Hey Bob, why weren’t you at the meeting?” “Oh man! Was that today? I totally pulled an Amy!”

Some of our South American guests presented the Table Topics questions. Will Patrick dance in Argentina with an attractive stranger? Yes! All night long! T-A-N-G-O baby! What’s Grace Jennings doing in Chile? She’s dancing too with a gorgeous Chilean. What’s Alberta doing in Brazil? Showing off the results of his sex change operation wearing a skimpy outfit dancing around at Carnival. But that’s how he answers every table topic question.

Stephen gave his ice breaker, telling us about his path to his current career as editor of ‘Texas Architect’ and giving us a humorous education on the way normal people speak and how architects speak. And he wants us to know he’s not an architect but he does play one at the office.

Maria’s evaluation - Good eye contact, work on a stronger closing.

Taline gave an inspirational speech about setting a goal, working towards it and accomplishing it. Her goal was to compete in an Iron Man contest - 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride, 26.2 mile run (all in 16hrs, 33 mins). When I thought of doing that myself, I almost choked on the twinkie I was eating. Besides, I gave up swimming because the water kept putting out my cigarettes. (QUOTE OF THE DAY - “I really don’t care about the size of your ass, how big is your heart?” Effective motivation from a friend, not a great pick up line at the bar)

Stuart’s evaluation - purpose well defined, good structure, should give clues as to the purpose, needs to project voice. (Stuart went over time. *pshhh*, loser)

Keith simply offered the club immortality. He went a tad overtime. No one understood his reference to the Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer. That “frighten and confused” Keith. The club obviously isn’t ready for human preservation but Stephen thinks his mother-in-law is ready today!

Louis’s evaluation - looked sexy in his suit, 1/2 speech contest perfect, 1/2 boring, 1/2 funny, posture of a wedding attendant, needs more humor throughout, a smidgen over time, looked damn sexy in his suit.

Can’t forget Lora who did a great job as general evaluator but somewhat crunched for time thanks to Stuart.

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Ribbon Winners
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I didn’t really pay attention at this point so here are my winners

Table Topics – Alberta
Speaker – Taline
Evaluator – Maria and Louis tie
Enthusiasm – Taline
Humor - Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer

To honor and respect Amy Samet’s dignified term as magnificent yet modest president of our club, the theme chosen for today’s meeting was equally dignified: “HOORAY FOR SHORT SKIRTS!!!!”  Amy headed up the short skirt brigade followed by several other pairs of legs, including Carlos’.  Keith wasn’t distracted in the least bit, and stayed focused on his Toastmaster duties, especially getting into the short skirts…   you know, he really played up short skirts…   He liked the theme is all I’m sayin.

Wendy, showing off some serious ankle in her long skirt, squeezed in some great table topic questions for John, Drew and Eric. No surprise that John had a international flair to his story while his students were visiting today and of course Drew was very comfortable putting it all out there, reminding us all why we miss her so much!!  Eric was not as comfortable talking about cross-dressing as Keith always is, so he kept it very short — a cute little mini.

Staci Livesay was a knock-out today, and her speech wasn’t too bad either.  Actually, it was one of those Toastmaster ‘ringer’ icebreakers that are so great you forget it’s an icebreaker!  Well done!  The next skirt giving a speech was Maria, who is on her 8th! speech already!!  She provided us with even more eye candy than we already had with vacay pics from Jalisco, Mexico.  Finally, the one, the only Amy the love doctor Samet gave us a simple 3 step test to tell if we’re in love, which was fantastic but I stopped listening after she mentioned my guy Dillon… **daydreaming**  

And as a final goodbye to last year’s rockin’ officers Louis, Lora, Drew, myself, and Rey & Leeanne in spirit, Amy gave each officer a big thanks and a hug.  Which reminds me that this is also my last recap, but never to fear — I am being succeeded by a very energetic and creative tag team of writers: Keith Smith & Taline Manassian!!

Ribbon winners:
Best Table Topic: Drew
Best Speaker: Staci
Best Evaluator: Lora
Best Humor: Keith
Most Enthusiasm: Amy!!!!!!!!

Dear capital city folk,

Don’t hate - appreciate!  The meeting was full of haters hatin’ on mad issues, like them crazy cockroaches and rats that be up in Wendy’s crib at night, giving our otherwise smooth Toastmaster some crazy eye twitch thang.  Wendy’s topic hit home with everyone, because who doesn’t love to hate something??

Table topics master Rey despises spiders & dried-up milk glasses, and her table topic victims had a few pet peeves, too.  Amy killed us with stories about her meddling stepmother with a shrill NY accent; I divulged my hatred of Yellow Jackets (human and insect); and soon-to-be District Governor Paul (sorry forgot last name) gushed about his sister who thinks garbage disposals are magic devices that don’t need to be turned on in order to DISPOSE of the GARBAGE!

You might only love to hate the speakers we had this week because they’re so good!  Jason gave a motivational speech - it was what it was.  ;)  Patrick performed a mono-drama-liloquy from Frankenstein, to put the monster to shame!

Then, from the special occasions advanced manual, Lora graciously accepted an award for her hard work and innovation in work performance evaluation!!   It was fictional, but it sounds like something she ought to win for real!!

The guests were especially wonderful this week, and egregiously complimented the CC TM website.  Hope to see both Jeremy and Terry again soon.

Crank up the envy, here are your winners:
Best Table Topic & HUMOR:  Amy the table topic hater Samet
Best Speaker & most ENTHUSIASM!!:  Jason “I HAVE A DREAM” Callender
Best Evaluator: Stuart “it is what it is” Cook

Have a good weekend!!!

Jenny

This week, everybody LOVED *my* theme, “Spoiled Rotten”!  IT WAS GREAT!!  Wendy gave a fabulously narcissistic invocation and then everyone followed suit.  Staci was a stand-out timer, and of course, Albert took his sweet time in the limelight as grammarian.

Maureen generously handed out table topics… and Jason, David, Taline & Maria got all wrapped up in themselves in their self-centered stories.

Eric was wayyy off topic in his speech, which was focused on selfLESSness, and doing things for OTHER people. Pshh, what’s that all about?
Stuart got it right, though, in his speech wherein he touted himself as doctor of grammar, and schooled us in the ways of who vs whom, proper use of this, and other things that didn’t go over well with the audience who pummeled him in the Q&A session afterwards.

Thanks once again to Corky for stepping in at the last minute to evaluate Eric’s speech.

The spoiled winners are:

Best Table Topic: Jason??  I dont remember for sure but dangit they were all good!
Best Speaker: Stuart
Best Evaluator: Amy/Corky split!
Best use of Humor: Stuart
Most Enthusiasm: Me!

Who ordered the special??

Today’s meeting was overloaded with special guests, special speeches, special events, and especially good PIZZA thanks to Rey! Toastmaster Stuart Cooked up a storm today, throwing all kinds of pizza lingo at us, and even managed to say the chuckle that Albert planned to serve up later. (It was OK - do you really think Albert would be left without something to say??).

As usual, Patrick came up with some tasty table toppings, really in-depth and philosophical questions like “when is the best time to eat leftover pizza?”, for me, Brendan, Keith and Stephen to chew on. Brendan and Keith were both hilarious despite their handicaps, one mental the other physical, while newcomer Stephen owned his table topic question “Why is pizza so much better in a box?” with a saucy and creative explanation, delving into the ‘essence’ of pizza. Bravo!

Maria was dressed to kill today for her speech on the job interviewing process, after what she told us, maybe she was actually dressed to KILL that guy who didn’t give her the job she was after.

CONGRATULATIONS to Wendy, who gave her 10th fabulous speech today, simultaneously finished her CC manual, AND fulfilled the last requirement for our club to become a Presiden’ts Distinguished club, yay!!!! Not only that, but Wendy is also one of the new officers who were inducted to the club today. She’ll be the new VP Membership, taking over Drew’s old position.

Grace Jennings presided over the officer induction with great ease and ..what’s the word?.. style. Steve Lockwood was there to give us a swanky award for being awesome. See? Told ya it was a special meeting!

The new officers are:

Louis Burns, President!
Rey DeVeau, VP Education
Jenny Brookover, VP Public Relations
Wendy Fisher, VP Membership
Jason Callender, Treasurer
Taline Manassian, Secretary
Lora Schneider, Sergeant at Arms

And this week’s ribbon winners are:

Best Table Topping & HUMOR: Brendan
Best Speaker: Maria
Best Evaluator: Louis
Most Enthusiasm: Wendy!!!!!