July 15, 2014 Theme: Clever Ideas to Simplify Lives

Robert was our toastmaster today; he picked "Clever Ideas to Simplify Lives" as the theme. Throughout the meeting, Robert shared many smart ways to use items that are not fancy, but can be seen everywhere, such as "turning your toaster sideways and adding cheese to the bread to get grilled cheese.”  

Jim was our first speaker, he accomplished the #2 project "organize your speech" in the Competent Communication Manual and his title was "What Makes Frustration Frustrating". Jim demonstrated 4 types of frustrations, the elements that caused frustration, the definition of frustration and tips that help us cope with frustrating feelings. 

Kathy was our second speaker. Her topic was "resolving conflict" in the Successful Leadership Series. Kathy showed us step-by-step the types of conflict, methods to deal with conflicts, how to solve conflicts collaboratively and how to brainstorm solutions.  

Today we had a very powerful and positive meeting, and we had Gary join us as a guest. From the messages given throughout this meeting, we all learned how to live more smoothly with smarter "inventions" and better attitudes towards frustration and conflicts in life. 

July 8, 2014 Theme: Puzzles

Barb was our Toastmaster today. She picked puzzles as the theme. We had a full round of people attended the meeting and especially welcome 3 guests. Telly, Lynne were first time here and they found our club very friendly and persistent on time. Also Carrie, who came back the second time, officially joined our club. We look forward to their coming visit and growth at our club :)


Robert was our first speaker today. He has moved on to the advanced competence manual and brought us a really interesting book as he was to make the story alive through his speech. He showed us the adventure that the author Bill Bryson had in Australia and we could feel the peculiar experience and dangerous events the author had through Robert's interpretation.

Jean was our second speaker. Her goal was to show us the steps to effective public speaking. She used the quote from Lao Tsu "a long journey begins with a simple step"to start her speech and she did a good job demonstrating what and how simple the steps are.

Today we also had very fun table topics from Sue that we saw some antiques that no one hardly figured. Life sometimes is full of puzzles or perplexing things, at today's meeting, we learned to laugh about it and move on to a new chapter. Hope more people can come and feel this energy!