Our last meeting was held on February 10, 2010 at Middlesex Community College. It was a full house and a very exciting meeting!
Members present: Amy Alvord, Tom Alvord, Anne-Marie Cannata, Jen Cimilluca, Craig Fresher, Charnaie Gordon, Kay Jeyapalan, John Keppler, Cheryl Mason, Pam Mulready, Deb Nason, Dianne Olsen, Kim Price, Murali Pemmaraju, Pete Plotica, and Rob Schaff. Our guests were: Bob Briggs, Monica Lozano, Erin Mulhern, and Sarada Pemmaraju (Murali’s wife).
Two memorable events have recently occurred for two of our members. Kim Price had his 2nd grandchild and Ramesh had a baby girl born on Valentine’s Day! Congratulations to both of you!
President Cheryl Mason led the meeting with announcements:
· Snow cancellations: We follow the MxCC Co
llege class cancellation policy. If classes are cancelled, we will not meet. The Web site features a red bar that will appear on the home page when the determination is made to close classes. http://www.mxctc.commnet.edu/· Amy Alvord is our newest member! Welcome Amy!
· Bowling Event: our Club recently had a bowling event and 5/6 lanes were filled! High scorers were: Tom, Jen, and Barry (Charnaie’s husband).
· Our Club has achieved 8/10 goals for the President’s Distinguished Club status
· Saturday, May 22, will be the District Spring Conference, St. Thomas Seminary, Bloomfield, CT
· Rename the District 53 Yankee Activator Newsletter! All toastmasters are invited to submit a new title by March 31st. The winner will be awarded a $25 gift credit to the Toastmasters store and a $20 gift card to Borders Bookstore. For more info: http:www.district53toastmasters.org/index.php/district-newsletter or http:www.district53toastmasters.org/file_cabinet/YA/YA10_winter.51.46.pdf
Vice President Charnaie Gordon also had announcements:
· Congratulations to Deb Nason for receiving a district awarded certificate for completing ½ of her CC manual!
· March 11 – Club Speech Contest – International & Tall Tales – please sign up for a role!
· March 25 - Open House will be at Middlesex Community College, room 808 A&B. We will have a guest speaker, Jerry Aiyathurai, and are looking for past guests to come. If you know any that you would personally like to invite, please do so. We also need people to help out with refreshments.
· April 8th – Area C5 Contest, International & Tall Tales, hosted by Middlesex at MxCC.
Area Governor Rob Schaff was our Toastmaster for the evening. He did an excellent job, managing to fit 5 speeches in and still have Table Topics!
Table Topics Master, Pam Mulready had a variety of questions she pulled off the Internet, and prospective speakers pulled them randomly out of a bag. John, Kay, Anne-Marie, Craig, Amy, Tom, Kim, Pete, and 2 of our guests, Erin and Monica, all participated.
Five very different and wonderful speeches were given as follows:
Jennifer Cimilluca – (Persuade with Power) - The Mission of Mercy
Deborah Nason – (Vocal Variety) - Putting It Out There
Dianne Olsen – (Research Your Topic) – The Germs Lurking Around You (This was Dianne’s 10th and final speech in the CC manual!)
Murali Pemmaraju – (Get to the Point) – Global “Warming”, or is it “Cooling”?
Kay Jeyapalan –(Vocal Variety) – One Memorable Day of the Past
General Evaluator for the evening was Anne-Marie Cannata. Anne-Marie graciously volunteered for this role at the last minute and did a terrific job! Fantastic evaluations were done by the following:
For Jen: Tom Alvord
For Deb: John Keppler
For Dianne: Craig Fresher
For Murali: Charnaie Gordon
For Kay: Kim Price
Other roles:
Wordmaster: Pete Plotica – “Ubiquitous” – being or seeming to be present everywhere.
Ah-Counter: Amy Alvord
Grammarian: Pam Mulready
Timer: Cheryl Mason
At the end of the meeting, our guests were asked if they had any comments to make. They summed it up very nicely with these “ubiquitous” comments
Bob – “the meeting was interesting;”
Monica – “people learn to express themselves;”
Sarada – “it was very good, Table Topics was really nice;”
Erin – “pleasantly surprised.”
