Century Toastmasters Meeting Minutes 12-15-04

Theme: Holiday Cheer
WOW: Merriment; with laughter, jollity, frolic

We had a good response for request of pot-luck snacks with a range of cookies, brie and crackers, candy, and other sweets, finished off with Starbucks coffee drinks.  Thanks to all who brought some. With a light turnout, not all goodies were finished.

President Dick Larkin started off the meeting with good thoughts for all and encouragement for making the club a success.  Our club is more dynamic because of its members.  Dick handed off to Deborah Fradelis as Toastmaster.

Deborah started it off with introductions of all and asked about holiday successes and tragedies.  We re-arranged the schedule to allow the guest speaker to arrive.  Deborah decided in the morning that she would be speaker #2 and prepared her speech in a couple of hours. Her subject was the history of dogs, something she already knows by heart. Her speech was peppered with lots of facts and history. It was very informative. I evaluated Deborah's speech.

Next up, your truly presented Table Topics for a short while and noted the introductions are like mini-table topics speeches.  Frida Vissuet gave a brief talk about her holiday plans and invited us for her holiday party.  Jude Awiylika and Dee Williams talked about their holidays of present and past.

Guest speaker, Fran Cannon arrived and started off telling us about his professional seminars on the magnificience of everyone.  Tony and Frida have both taken his seminars and enjoyed them.  Fran thought that Toastmasters provide a critical and structured environment for speaking and encouraged people to speak outside of Toastmasters and thought it more relaxed.  His real message is that we are all maginficient and we need to reinforce the positive image of self.  This will overflow to others if you can see yourself as magnificient.  Fran talked about the different levels of brain and emotional development from 2 years where we start developing the emotional brain to age 26 when the brain should be fully developed in its emotional, hormonal, and consciousness states.

Fran ran time out and so there was no GE, Grammarian, or Timer report.  Dee won Best Table Topics.  Next meeting will be January 5th.  Enjoy your holidays, cheers!

Byron Shovlain, Secretary
Century Toastmasters

Please note that the volunteer website from yesterday's meeting is <www.volunteersandiego.org>.  I initially used the .com suffix, which is incorrect.

Byron Shovlain, Secretary
Century Toastmasters

Century Toastmasters  Meeting Minutes 12-8-04

In the absence of Sgt. At Arms, President, and VP Education, yours truly called the meeting to order, led the pledge, and quickly handed the meeting over to Toastmaster, Frida Vissuet.  We forgot our theme of Vision and WOW of Sagacious except for one small mention.  We concentrated on the holiday season.  Frida looked striking in a bright Christmas-red dress and talked of her easiness with giving but need to feel more comfortable with receiving.  She also was happy for a Christmas present of a new grandchild due soon.  Frida  described a Mexican Christmas that started on the 24th and continued on until the next day.  She then asked us to introduce ourselves and talk about the holidays.  Joe Stewart gave a good Educational Moment about earning your ATM.

Frida introduced Emily Waters as the first speaker.  Emily has had many different roles throughout her life.  Her main roles are daughter, sister, friend, and girlfriend.  She related a closeness to her family and their enjoyment of life, including margaritas at Casa De Bandini. She is cosmopolitan and metropolitan, and likes living downtown and formerly in San Francisco, aka, "The City".  She graduated from Santa Clara University and enjoyed the Bay area except for the constant cold and moved back to her hometown of San Diego.   Her profession is Public Relations, formerly in San Francisco and now with Katz and Associates on the Port District account.  She is adept at writing and speaking.  She enjoys movies, dinner parties, and Texas Hold'em poker. Welcome, Emily, we enjoyed learning about you.

Next, Molly Frisbie spoke about her passion of human compassion.  Molly urged us to volunteer to help make the world better.  Molly has lived her talk, volunteering at soup kitchens and homeless shelters since she was in school.  In encouraging all to volunteer, she gave us the website of www.volunteersandiego.com  to find a cause you like, not necessarily the one most worthy.  All volunteering is worthy and Molly suggested to figure the time you can give, consider what you want to volunteer for, and go for it.  Thanks, Mollie, your speech was very heartwarming and thought-provoking.

Andy Crabtree was Table Topics master and asked about Christmas presents.  Tony Gutierrez spoke of a watch given to him by a homeless person, whom Tony helped.  Deborah Fradelis told us of her protective cockatiel.  Alan Colton told us of his joy of giving to his children.  Doug Goodman told us of Dexter's new teeth and "feather" fur.

I served as General Evaluator and introduced Cher Vargas, who evaluated Emily and Tony Gutierrez, who evaluated Molly.  Jill Pasqueletto served as Grammarian/Ah Counter and Matt Greenbergs served as timer.  Emily won best speaker, Cher won best evaluator, and Tony won best Table Topics.

We will meet next week on the 15th in CP4120F and hope to have a pot-luck snack exchange.  Most members didn't want to meet on the 22nd or 29th because they were busy with the holidays. 

Byron Shovlain, Secretary
Century Toastmasters