The Speech

After I posted my speech here, I memorized it, and then went to the meeting downtown to deliver it. The meeting was nice. There was pizza (from Costco!), fresh fruit, cream puffs, soda and water. Most people are charged ten dollars for attendance of these contests, but I was comped because I was the test speaker.

A fellow club member had been a test speaker before, and said that you are treated like a star, with everyone wanting to talk to you. I found that it really was like that. After I gave my speech and the evaluation contestants finished, there was an intermission. I was trying to get over to the food table, but I couldn't because people kept approaching me and engaging me in conversation.

As for my speech, it went all right, but could have been much better. I got a number of comments which I expect to be helpful when I give my next speech. Actually, the response was more complementary than I would have expected.

Now, that was on Tuesday. On Thursday we had our regular meeting, as well as another contest that evening.

The meeting was a little rough. One issue was that we were in a different room which lacked a computer setup which one of our speakers needed. In spite of any troubles, the one guest who had never attended our club before seemed quite impressed nonetheless.

Thursday night's contest was much like Tuesday's, except that I had to pay. Also, I was pestered to buy into the raffle. It was pretty neat to be out at an event like that with a number of people from my club. I was there to count ballots, and found it to be rather different from the same task in a club meeting. I think the judge supervising ballot counting was frustrated with me at first, but I got the hang of it.

It was interested to know the results some time before they were announced. Now, we had two club members participating. One placed first and will advance, and the other placed second. It was a good showing. I had gone to on the subway, but when I mentioned that to the president of my club, she insisted that we find me a ride, which was very kind.

Unfortunately, because I went to that contest, I couldn't go to improv, but will do so next week.