Review of May 2nd

Hello all,

This last meeting was the business meeting, where our current officers talked about how we have grown by quite a few members, and are close to our goal for becoming distinguished, only needing three more members to get to 20 members. Lauralee announced that we hit our goal of 3,000 people reached, and now will be focusing on engagement. The last part of the business meeting was the important elections! Our new officers will be: Brian as president, Diane as Vice President of Education, Lee as Vice President of Education, Lauralee as Vice President of Public Relations, Laurie as treasurer, Christa as Secretary, and Paul as Sergeant at Arms.

The Toastmaster of the day was Avital, whose theme was "what if", which was a question posed to her during a recent training. She talked about the possibility of achieving your dream, or getting the job you want. The idea was that if you believe something will happen, your positive outlook will help you achieve your goal. She was evaluated by Laimons, who said that her ability to improvise was good since the speaker did not show up to the meeting, but it would have been smoother if she had started the process of finding a hotseat speaker at 5 or 10 till seven so they would have more time to prepare.

Dave was chosen as the hotseat speaker, who gave his speech called the Happy Hooker, which talked about fishing. His love of fishing started when he was very young, when his grandfather took him fishing for the first time. He was so excited that he caught a fish, he threw his pole in the water! Dave's grandfather helped him reel in that first fish that was surprisingly still on the hook. Throughout his life, he continued fishing, even when he was in Vietnam, though they did not appreciate fishing with grenades. While he traveled the United States, he went fishing in several different states. While fishing with his friend three fingered bill, a snake fell into their boat, and Dave jumped into the water. His friend informed him that there were more water moccasins in that water than in their boat.

Leanna, a guest, came to our meeting, and was the speech evaluator for Dave because he was scheduled to be the original speech evaluator. She described what a sandwich method was for the new members and guest, saying that she would first say what Dave did good, then give him some advice to improve the speech, and end with something she liked a lot. Leanna said that she liked how his voice conveyed the story, and his talent of storytelling. One thing she would change though is how he started with "fellow toastmasters" since the beginning of a speech is so important to catching the attention of the audience. Instead, she said she would switch when he said that he was hooked on fishing, and put that before saying "fellow toastmasters".

Brian was in charge of table topics, whose theme was also what if. He asked John what he would do if he found a genie in a bottle on the beach. John said that he would first ask how many wishes he would get. After that, he would start with a large wish that would include everyone, then start on asking for things for himself. Lee was asked if he had all the time in the world, what hobby he would pursue. Instead of talking about himself, he said that his wife, who quilts, would need all the time in the world to finish every quilting projects she wants to do because she has two rooms of materials and projects. Paul won table topics saying that at his family reunion, he asked them to share an embarrassing story. During his mini table topics session, he discovered the wording of his question affected how people answered.