Preparation!

With 18 members present and two guests (both of whom have decided to join), Brian Anderson led a picture-perfect, well-prepared, Marine-quality meeting as TMOD - with a theme of (you guessed it) - "Preparation"! Brian's performance was a tremendous example of how to execute the TMOD role effectively, efficiently, and with aplomb.

We had three excellent speakers, but no videographer (even though the camera seemed to be running from afar). There was a tie for "Best Speaker" between Robin Walker (Evaluate to Motivate module) and Alex Bein (who made his arcane thesis project understandable and fun). It might have been a three-way tie if Chance Litton hadn't gone overtime with his funniest speech since his Fall contest winner, which described his nominees for the five worst "bad-guys" of all time! For both Chance and Alex, it was their #4 speech in the CC manual. Robin did the Evaluation module his way, which made it much more useful and up to date. His outline is now on our Web page. Cathy Lee won "Best Evaluator" for her insightful evaluation of Robin, while Alex Bein was voted "Most Improved".

Emilie Staryak did a great job leading Table Topics on the theme of preparation or lack thereof, with new members Art Testani and Tito deJesus competing along with Fred Sadler. Fred won "Best Table Topics" largely on his uniquely skillful stalling techniques!

All the club's latest educational accomplishments have now shown up on the TI WHQ Web site. If they allowed us more than 10 goals, we would have 18 (including six CCs, five CLs, and 20 new members)!

With the recent and pending graduations of several very active members, our recruiting must continue. Our club has acquired former Toastmasters from other Divisions and Districts as members. This should enrich our club through the importation of ideas that have succeeded elsewhere.