(no subject)

Last Thursday was the local round of the Toastmasters international speech contest, with two divisions: impromptu speech of 1-2 minutes, and prepared humorous speech of 5-7 minutes.

I entered the impromptu speech contest, as I always do, and finished up somewhere near the bottom[1], as I always do. I managed to start strong, with a good original premise in response to the prompt question, then as soon as it came to developing the premise in detail my mind went blank and spent most of a minute thrashing about until the time light came on and I could draw things to a close. Five minutes after I sat down, the details I'd been thrashing around for finally showed up.

Next year, I figure, I'll do it all again; the way I look at it, I'm not going to get any better if I don't keep trying.



[1] Toastmasters competition policy is to leave the lower placings vague, so that nobody gets burdened with the discouragement of officially coming last. If there are five or more contestants, only the top three places are announced; for four contestants, only the top two; for three, only the winner. I have have yet to see what happens if there are only two contestants.

(no subject)

On Saturday night, some friends gathered a group together to play boardgames, prompted by the decision that it had been too long since they'd last had a chance to play their copy of 221B Baker Street.

( 221B Baker Street was a new one on me, and I like it -- and not just because I won... )

After that, we played a round of Pictionary, then just hung out chatting until it felt like time to head home.