Dec. 20th: Agenda Changes for 2012: In 2012 the General Evaluator is ribbon eligible and we will still give out Best Speech, Eval & TT ribs but do it without a podium trip to save time for annoucements and networking. TIP. Check your CL book and see what roles you need to fulfill then let Kathy know before she makes the schedule. This way every time you attend you maximize your effort and help the club. Amanda, Alice, Bhanu & Mike are close to achieving plateaus in 2012.

There will be no Toasty Party this year as we didn't like each other enough to party, perhaps next year. I think the Chinese symbol for 2012 is PARTY.

Dec. 13th: Presidential Tasks Completed: Evaluation & TT Training was completed with Lindsey, Elizabeth, Ron, Ross, Pam, Amanda & Jared attending. Big news - Bhanu has finished his ATM Gold. Way to go Bhanu our Treasurer who also is on course to win a Toasty for Perfect Role Attendance. We will be having a special presenter Feb 21st... Our meeting was graced wth 3 guests today. One visiting from another club, one who is joining in January and our newest member Ron Bergen who joined today. Lindsey gave her best speech (1st ribbon) about weddings which was quite humorous and might be nominated for a Toasty in the Humorous category. ...Alice & Bill ran into each other at a party, no word on if a speech broke out...

November...

Nov. 29th: Alice is having her 2nd 29th B-Day party, stay tuned for announcement. Our meeting was well attended today with 2 guests and about 18 total. Ryan, Joni & Alice spoke and Ryan's succinct speech #2 easily won the ribbon. Jared the first time TM did an awesome job. Amanda won the evaluator ribbon, giving a very solid performance. Nov. 15th... Amanda and Jared spoke on the 15th with Jared ribboning. Amanda introduced us to water dowsing which many members had heard of. It isn't like water boarding at all. We city folks struggled with the concept. We had an interestings visitor from a Cary TT club who won the TT ribbon and was a very good speaker. His name was Basavana but we called him Guest. The meeting at Jody's office which is much smaller than our regular spot, was sub-heavy but still had some quality...I met with Amanda to help her with her next speech. Our new members have been a blessing this year. Attendance is great and they are eager to learn. They should remember not to be too hard on themselves in learning how to do speeches. It is a process... Our meeting will be at Jody's office on Nov. 15th. See address on home page. The Nov. 29th speakers have been set: Kathy, Ryan & SuperSub Alice. Thanks to Jared as well for volunteering and he will be a backup speaker... Is it true? Say it ain't so, Nancy Crossin finally missed a role. Unless something happens to the dependable Bhanu , he is going to capture his first Toasty. Nancy is in 2nd but just by one absence. Alice will overtake Greg for most times subbed. She has been a dependable sub since joining our group. It is nice to have one member be a "go to sub." BABIES: Congrats to Josh & Mike who just became fathers within the same week....BREAKING NEWS: Alice has stepped in as TM for the Nov. 8th meeting. Thanks Alice. ...November 1st... A very funny meeting with Nancy at the TM position, 2 icebreakers and Susan's speech on "time." We met in the upstairs conference room as our room was taken. But we still started on time. Ryan's IB took the speech ribbon in a revealing speech about recovering from stuttering. Pam re-did her IB, making it more personal. TT questions were very fun and Amanda put some thought into them, channeling her inner child.

October... Interesting video on trying to teach kids on how to avoid "uhs, ums, etc..," Go here. ...If you want to see an instance where Toastmasters might help someone, watch Tony LaRussa the St. Louis Cardinals coach explain the bullpen communication blunder that occurred the other night. While he explains the miscommunication you can't help but feel insightful as to why it happened in the first place as his explanation is a modern day "Who's on first?" routine.

Presidential Tasks Completed (PTC): Added 4 members' pics to the member page, attended area contest and served as ballot counter, finished compiling "New Member Documents" which are sent out to new members upon joining, conducted a Table Topic Workshop for new members and harassed two people about redoing speeches to make them better.

Our division area contest (we are div 91) took place Oct. 4th at the Cameron Village library and as usual it was a quirky, exciting affair. There were 3 funny speeches, a lot of college girls in attendance because they had to be and 67 sandwiches from Chick Filet. I highly recommend going to a contest as something odd usually happens and this time a speaker and the contest chairwoman began to ball room dance. I still have no idea why but it was though Yul Brynner and Chloris Leachman crashed the party; funny and fab. Another speaker took off a wig as part of her speech causing 3 of the college girls to pass out. The last contest I went to at the library, an employee came in in the middle of a speech to remove some chairs. Who says nothing ever happens at the library.

September ...September 28 : Al is presenting at the PMI conference this weekend in Charlotte. He will be trying to make Project Managers laugh at themselves. GOSSIP ALERT... One of the members of HN is recently pregnant or maybe it is his wife... Can you figure out who using the process of examination? ...September 27, Every member attended except 6 people! We also tried sitting at the round tables and this was better than being around the 1950's dinner table. More space and small competing cliques broke out with good gossip. Someone is pregnant! ... Pam and Ryan joined. Welcome our new members. Today Mike spoke on baseball, Andy on being a single dad and Alice on quitting a job just days ago. The meeting had drama, research and humor. All speeches are on our youtube...

So far the group "Uh" total this year is 123, our goal is to stay below 200... For people who signed up to be in the swim suit calendar to raise money for a new podium, there will be a meeting in November on suit selection...TIME KEEPER ALERT. If you go to our youtube page & look at videos you can see a more accurate time of a speech's duration. Remember to start the stopwatch when a person ARRIVES at the lectern not when they arrive at the building...HuMor(e) Workshop has approx 10 signer-uppers so far. ....People of Interest.... The other day I was talking to senior member Nancy Crossin who has started a cake baking business and it made me think how cool it would be if we had a member who was a caterer. They could cater all of our special events and we could pay them from our account or charge members who were attending that event. They in turn would learn how to grow their business by learning better communication and speaking skills from HN. I am sure caterers are never busy at lunch time. And then I started thinking we could really use a French member. We have members from Latvia, India and Taco the non-mexican from Holland so why not a French person. So everyone concentrate on finding a French person to join. Whoever finds one wins a prize. Just keep thinking about it and it will happen. Besides, with a French person we would have someone to blame for things and no one would have to do a fake French accent. (If you are French please go to another page.) And while we are at it how about a plumber member (a plumberer) who would give all members a 50% discount on plumbing. September 13- A fantastic meeting with 2 first time evaluators performing really well. It really helps to meet with the speaker you are evaiuating ahead of time. We continue to have new members join and are pushing 30. Ross and Amanda did their icebreakers and were quite relieved. The speech competition was very competitive with Dianne beating out the newbies. Special recognition goes to first time TK, Lindsey who wrote some original humor, "Ten Ways You Know You are in Toastmasters..."

August.... August 30th: Lindsey, Susan & Alice spoke with Susan ribboning. Alice gave a speech on speaking, equal parts helpful and entertaining. Susan spoke on avoiding worry and Lindsey spoke on running. All speeches available on our youtube site. The officers met and we'll be incorporating some minor changes but for the most part there is agreement that things are running smoothly. If you think of something to improve please speak up. A HuMor(e) Workshop on how to be funnier and get more out of your sense of humor will soon be on the calendar and geared towards Toastmaster people. Please welcome new member Josh who is a personal trainer.

August 23rd: Newbie Lindsey did her first evaluation yesterday and avoided a lot of the mistakes. It was concise and to the point with good basic info.See video. She may have only missed the ribbon because she was a few seconds SHORT on time and was up against Taco & Greg who split the ribbon. Kim did one of her first advanced speeches. Go to youtube to see it. How about GERG (Greg) still showing up despite having his DTM.... For information about how to do the different roles at a meeting go to the ROLES page.... Aug. 18th- The latest episode of The Newbie is ready for viewing here. ....Aug 16th- Improvising: Both Amanda & Susan have improv experience and you can tell after the meeting on Aug. 16th. Amanda's response to Nancy's TT was superb and it was her first TT effort. Susan's Grammarian report was some of the funniest talking ever seen at HN and will be nominated for a Toastie. Kathy gave a superb speech on Tea (she's a Spy for the Queen) and several tea lovers floated to the surface after the meeting. Kathy's speech is on youtube but you need to ask her for the link. Susan gave an ironic performance as Grammarian, watch here.

Mentor Pairings: Andy with Dianne; Joni, Lindsey & Elizabeth with Kim; Jared & Susan with Greg, Al with Ilze.... Photos: Our Photos have arrived. Each person will receive a disk at a meeting with their images....Mike K. had to adress his fellow employees last week and said it went well. Did he use the Word of the Day? Alice, one of our newest members, said her talk in Waynesville went well. Nice to know that members are using their Toastmastering in the real world, send in your experiences.... The 8/9 Training Meeting went pretty well. ALL of our new members showed up and several got to participate but the meeting could have been more interactive. We had another visitor, Nadia who said she would be joining. ... 4:12 PM Monday Aug. 8th; Al emailed Ilze to see what she was wearing tomorrow, wondering if they can wear matching outfits... There was something different about the August 2nd meeting; it was quality. Three excellent speeches and all 4 table topics were outstanding...Our first ever training meeting will happen on August 9th with specific training on 4 roles: Toastmaster, Grammarian, Table Topics and the most fearful of them all; the Evaluator... We will also be announcing Mentor & Mentee pairings on Aug. 9th....

Guest speaker and author Alice Osborne has been speaking at various places. Her website . Her next talk will be in Waynesville. See highlights of Alice's speech on our youtube page. Susan volunteered to evaluate Alice's speech; nice to see Teamwork away from the club. Susan gets the Teamwork Award of the month; having to drive to Wake Forest to complete this task. Bhanu deserved it last month when he showed up at the meeting just to let us know he would not be showing up at the meeting and we needed a sub. He also made a special effort to show up for the photo session but only for his photo. Apparently Bhanu is vain...Please let the club know when you have a speaking engagement outside of the club if you want help in preparation or someone to come and watch....

We've had an explosion of new members. Many of them could be considered young so I have been reading various manuals on young people so I know how to groove with them and hang 10 and chat and I am going to twitter about it...If anyone knows anything about young people please tell me what it is... Approximately 8-10 people have joined in the last few weeks. We are approaching 25....Don't forget end of year Toasties with categories such as Best Icebreaker, Best Dressed, Best Attendance, Best Overall Speech, Best Use of an Adverb, Most Semi-Popular... Ilze went shopping for clothes... Still no idea what to do about the people who missed the photo opp when it comes time to re-create the member web page....TM dues are going up in September/October according to our governing body. Thinking of joining? Join now to beat the increase. Dastardly! Submit your idea for the best way to improve the club.

July....Greg's Roast was very well attended. It was not the easiest space to work with but we survived. Greg is fairly unroastable according to his wife but she still gave some gems such as his disdain for being born in NJ and his naval call sign; "STEIN." See highlights here ....July 12th, Guest speakers: Author Alice Osborne gave a very helpful talk on writing attended by most of the club. Highlights. We also got our pictures taken that day. Our second guest (July 19th) was Resume Specialist, Dick Hart who answered members questions about their resumes. A couple of members; Donna & Don signed up for his class on resumes and said it was very helpful. There are several members who are either looking for work or considering changing fields. Let's keep our eyes and ears open for them.

June... Have you seen a club speech that is worthy of an End of Year Toasty Award? If so please nominate. So far Bill's, "Washing Dooley" has been nominated and Kim's, "It's Ok." New members Elizabeth and Lindsey have joined. Lindsey was sent by her boss Natasha a former HN member. Oh and one more thing, Ilze went shopping for clothes. If you wish to be micromanaged let Al know.

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