Friday night, I went to Johnstown to attend the Area 21 International Speech and Tall Tales contest. It was held at Arbutus Church of the Brethren, the meeting place for the Johnstown Toastmasters club. Representing the club were members from Johnstown and Allegheny Mountains Toastmasters clubs. You might ask yourself, did Johnstown have home field advantage in this area contest? I met some old friends from Johnstown and Allegheny Mountains and made new friends as well. I’ll be planning visits to the Area 21 clubs in March and April and these will be online. As for the contests, the speakers in the International Speech contest gave very heartfelt speeches. The Tall Tales speakers had us laughing and even doing a little disco dancing in our seats. The contest chair did a great job with the interviews. One of them does baking as a hobby and is quite talented at making Springerle. He led a session on AI at Winter TLI this past December.
After the contest ended around 7pm, we hung around and socialized. Our contest chair treated us to pizza from Capri Pizza. I was familiar with this pizza place and others when I was a college student in Johnstown. This location was in the Richland Towne Center, formerly Richland Mall. There were also baked goods at the contest, with the cookies made by our speech contestant and fellow DTM Dave Jones. Now that’s a random act of baking! I may have missed M’s birthday party last night but I was happy to be in good company with toastmasters last night.
Before going to Johnstown, I stopped at Cutie’s (like I said I would on Thursday) and kicked off my St. Patrick’s Day coffee run. I ordered a Samoa Cookie latte (came with a Samoa). Next week, I’ll get the Thin Mint latte (which comes with own Thin Mint). I was missed because one of the baristas hadn’t seen me in a while. I almost got a second one too because the owner thought I didn’t get mine initially. I enjoyed my drink en route to Johnstown and a podcast from Mayim Bialik where she interviewed Danica McKellar. That will be where I close off the blog.
On Thursday, I highlighted the epic pod swap that I listened to and I’ve been enjoying the rewatch podcasts this week, as well as a few from Mayim Bialik’s podcast. I’ve gone back to 2021 and 2022 on her pod, listening to interviews with Candace Cameron Bure, Alanis Morrissette, and yesterday Danica McKellar. Her interview with Mayim and the one from three months ago with Pod Meets World were almost identical. Danica talked about her time as a child star and The Wonder Years (one of my favorite shows growing up that I still enjoy). She also talked about her college years at UCLA and getting her degree in math. Danica has published books related to math and has done pretty well for herself. Like most child stars of the ’90s, she has appeared in Hallmark Christmas movies as well. Overall, it was a good interview and I’m feeling enriched with all that I’ve listened to this week on the pods.
I’ll do it all again tomorrow with a new YaJagoff!
Stylish 🍒 