October 24th meeting

Brian was the Toastmaster of the day, whose theme was halloween. He talked about how the tradition of trick or treating is one that children get candy, which is a 600 year long tradition. Another fun fact Brian N told us was that the fear of halloween is called samhainophobia. The general evaluator of the day, Lee, complimented Brian N on being able to trim down the activities so that our meeting ran close to on time. He did mention that Brian H had not had the chance to give his review of the word of the day complement. 
There were two speakers of the day. The first speaker was Diane, who spoke about how to go on a scuba dive. The first thing she talked about is the equipment, and how before going on the dive you need to check all of your equipment. After getting in the water, Diane talked about how it gets tricky to communicate, so her dive buddy would need to know signs. Some of the important signs would be whether or not your buddy is okay, and if you see a shark. Diane ended by showing how you go up and wait for several minutes before finishing your dive. Her evaluator was Laurie, complimented how Diane used a full example of how diving working, by bringing in a person wearing full dive gear. One suggestion she gave to Diane was that she outline her speech more because she knew the material enough to do it without a fully written out speech. 
The second speaker of the day was Dale, who gave her icebreaker. She talked about growing up in New York, being born during a storm. She remarked that her sisters' name was Gale but Dale was the one born in a storm. Throughout her speech, Dale talked about how she moved to several different states finding who she was. Now she works for the National Park Service volunteering for  The Cape Perpetua Visitor Center. To emphasize her speech, Dale showed us a set of cartoon frogs she drew depicting herself at different stages of her life, from her teenage years to today. For her frog today, she shows herself being content and peaceful. Christa was her evaluator, who praised Dale for expressing her emotions so well. Another thing Christa complimented Dale on was the fact that she did not rely on her notes very much. The one thing she suggested for Dale to do is explain the first picture, a banana slug, a little more.
Laurie was the table topics master of the day, who asked Christa about the weather this weekend. Christa said when her dog was a puppy, she would take her dog out rain or shine to make sure Dutch got a walk. Now though, when it rains her dog knows that they will be staying inside that day. Brian H was asked about whether he had been dumped before. He said that he had been before and of course he was sad about it before but now he is in a happy relationship. Brian mused that he may need to recall this type of pain for a play later. Christa was the winner of the table topics award.
The timer of the day was Lauralee. Brian was the grammarian of the day.