I decided long ago that the best toast was on the light side, with a minimal browning and warm enough to melt the peanut butter on top of it smooth. I've even branched out to english muffins. I think I've mastered that kind of toast.
The other kind of toast - the public speaking kind - is beyond me. When a Toastmasters group started up at work, I was intrigued. It was scheduled to meet during lunch once a week and very conveniently accessible. I posted a Facebook status indicating that I was interested but intimidated and every single post in response was in favor. I rarely see that kind of unanimity especially on the internet. In honor of such an anomaly, I signed up as a charter member.
Thus begins a tale of heart-pounding anxiety, near death experiences and a lot of words. Spoken out loud. In front of people. People with laser-death-gazes. Why does anyone do this sort of thing?
Actually, I joined back in October and in light of the fact that I haven't actually perished from publicly speaking, I can report that it's okay.
For those unfamiliar with the format of a Toastmasters meeting, here's a brief runthrough. Most meeting roles are filled by the members of the club from the toastmaster, the table topics master, speech evaluators, timer, 'ah' counter, jokemaster, etc. The toastmaster plays emcee for the meeting, introducing the agenda and the various speakers throughout. The timer, armed with a stopwatch and red, yellow and green cards, times each speech and table topic speaker and lets the speaker know when they've spoken long enough. The 'ah' counter keeps track of how many verbal fillers such as 'um', 'ah', 'er' the speakers utter. There are two prepared speeches and two evaluators to give them public feedback. The aforementioned table topics are open-ended questions or topics that members or guests can speak about for 1-2 minutes. Table topic questions are meant to train extemporaneous speaking. The entire meeting is meant to give as many people as possible the opportunity to practice getting in front of a supportive group and speaking.
To motivate people to volunteer for the roles and speeches, members are provided a speech curriculum and a leadership curriculum. The speech curriculum provides assignment speeches that each focus on a particular speech-making skill. The leadership curriculum provides assignments to take on various Toastmaster meeting and club roles. I assume completing each set of assignments earns you accolades, parades, a feast and maybe a certificate. I'll let you know when I get one.
As of this writing, I have given three speeches in the Competent Communicator curriculum. I've completed a number of the meeting roles and I try to volunteer for a table topic talk whenever I show up to the meeting and don't have a role. I've signed up for a speech contest next week and I've committed to completing my 10 speeches by the end of June.
There are a couple of interesting things I've learned:
-I learned that I speak pretty quietly. Actually I lied. I know that already. People tell me that all the time. I still don't believe them because I can hear myself just fine.
-I learned that I can memorize the gist of a 5-7 minute speech just fine. It's the individual words that I sometimes draw a blank on.
-It's very difficult to get rid of all the verbal fillers. Replacing the fillers with silence makes for a randomly dramatic sentence.
-In order to perform a speech, I have to write it. Which is nice for making me write about a random selection of topics.
-The more nervous I am, the faster the speech goes. For instance, telling the speech to my car as I drive might take 10 minutes. Practicing it in front of Lee may take 7 minutes. The actual speech? 5 minutes.
-Talking for longer than a minute on an impromptu topic seems like an eternity. Talking for less than 7 minutes on a prepared topic seems really short.
I'm sure there'll be more things to learn as I go on. Stay tuned for the next episode of death defying speechifying.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Mastering Toast
Friday, February 5, 2010
My Top Five Video Games of All Time
That's a daunting title. I went through an entire discussion in my head why I don't need to do this (and honestly I don't except for I wouldn't have this blog post otherwise). That stating my Top Five OF ALL TIME would commit me to supporting this post for the rest of my life even if I change my mind and I would end up with a miserable existence supporting something I knew to be a lie and I would never respect myself again.
Then I took a deep breath and talked myself into a better perspective; this list is for fun. My criteria for the games making this list is whether I remember playing the heck out of the game. There are many other good games I liked, but I didn't repeatedly play it. This can be a misleading metric for me because of my obsessive tendencies. I may play the heck out of a game merely because it's the phase I was in at the time, but it doesn't necessarily mean it was good or I really liked it. Don't ask.
On to the list.
Dragon Age: Origins
This is probably on here because I'm still currently playing the heck out of this game. It's the source of ridicule from my gaming friends (and husband) but I don't care. In typical fashion with BioWare games, I replay the game because I want to see the story as a good guy and a bad guy. I'm currently replaying Dragon Age as four different characters concurrently, one of which is an exact (but better looking version) of a character I've already played through. If the 'obsessions' part of this blog wasn't evident before, here's some proof.
Final Fantasy 12
While I'd played previous Final Fantasy games (8, 10, and 10-2 specifically), this one snuck up on me. It was already out by the time I noticed it and I didn't even rush out and get it. I really enjoyed the characters, particularly one whom I consider Square's best character to date: Balthier. I had my share of annoyances with the game, but he made it interesting enough for me to finish the game. The story itself left some room for improvement. Without that, I wouldn't have been motivated to write my own behind the scenes interpretations to explain what they didn't. Perhaps I should thank Square for rekindling my interest in writing.
Dance Dance Revolution Series
Thus begins my music/rhythm game fascination. I saw these mini dance club floors in the arcades and at first thought it was silly to call playing Simon Sez with your feet 'dancing'. Then I found the home version (I didn't really want to spend time and quarters learning it in the public arcades) and played it on our PS2. Since that first game, I collected the subsequent releases with new music. I could play it to the point of injury after which Lee counseled me to put it away for my own good. It just so happened that one of those later game discs provided a preview of another game that had you singing into a microphone and dancing. Which leads me to the next entry.
SingStar/Karaoke Revolution Series
I grew up being told I couldn't sing and making people cringe when I attempted. This is why I was a band geek all through middle and high school instead. But I think I had some of my grandfather in me and I couldn't just leave well enough alone. (My grandfather would take any party as an opportunity to serenade my grandmother to her feigned embarrassment.) These games measured my pitch and timing, giving me feedback as to how far off the mark I was so I could correct myself. As a result, I could learn the right notes to hit and maybe inspire less cringing. I'm still not going to perform like my sisters can, but my car singing may be more palatable. I also played these games to the point of hoarseness.
Guitar Hero/Rock Band
I wasn't initially interested in these when they were plastic guitars only. Once they added drums and allowed a group of four to play as a fake band, I was all over it. Knowing myself, I would have played the plastic guitar to the detriment of my hands. But playing the drums seemed more ergonomically friendly and I looked forward to banging on plastic drums. And if I got tired of drums, I could switch to the guitar or bass and when I got tired of that, I could drop back to singing. Turns out I had to fight Lee for the drums, so I play guitar/bass more often than not, but it's still fun.
That's the five games. Three of which are music series. This was originally meant to be a Top Ten, but I only came up with maybe seven. 'Top Seven' doesn't ring as nicely so I'm down to Top Five with a few honorable mentions.
Monkey Island Series
This is a set of adventure puzzle games featuring an atypical pirate named Guybrush Threepwood. Adventure puzzle games have been in decline for some time because it takes a lot of resources to produce and not very many people play it. Nevertheless, I was delighted when they developed some recent episodes to visit with Guybrush again. (I still have 4 of the 5 episodes to finish).
Knights of the Old Republic
Another BioWare game and possibly the first one of theirs that I played. Again, I played it more than once. But it makes it on this list because I will occasionally quote myself to hearken back to myself playing the game.*
*Language deliberately obtuse to prevent spoilers. I guess this is only funny to Lee because he's the only one who's heard me quote myself.
And I'm done. No one hold me to this list because I don't want to have to live a lie. But I'll take cake.