Oakdale and Toastmasters

So yesterday I got back from Oakdale. Spent the first 3 days there babysitting Riley the dog. She barked on and off until 12 at night. She was overprotective since the parents were gone and it was just the 2 of us guarding the house. As for the ghost issue, didn’t hear anything during the day. But Saturday night, I woke up without my glasses on and thought I saw a glimpse for 2 seconds of someone standing in the entryway of the living room. The dog got up and ran toward it and barked. It all happened in an instant and I can’t be certain what I saw. But I did think I saw someone and the dog obviously saw something. What else could it be since I was home alone? But it was late and I didn’t exactly have my glasses on. The dog barked and ran toward it then 2 seconds later turned around and came back into the living room like the problem was taken care of. Weirdness.

We picked up Sarah and Thomas from the airport Monday. Hung out with them until Tuesday when I had to go back home. Also went to lunch with Grandma Cookie and Grandma Margo. It was interesting hearing what their side of the family has been up to. A girl named Katie I haven’t seen since she was 2 is now 8. Crazyness.
Had Toastmasters today. I was all prepared to talk during table topics about phobias. I could have handled the first 2 questions in table topics, but the last 2 were kind of out there. Either way it didn’t matter because I didn’t get called on. I was relieved and disappointed at the same time, because I did feel like I was prepared enough to handle getting called up there.

4 people gave speeches today. My favorite 2 were from women named Josephine and Dawn. Josephine talked about Susan B. Anthony and recited her speech she gave to congress justifying a woman’s right to vote. It was pretty inspiring, especially when you consider the fact that now we’re getting close to having a female president.

Dawn gave a speech on stem-cell research because she works for a science lab that is working on develop and implementing it. The most interesting part of her speech was when she talked about where they get the stem-cells –an issue that any consider to be controversial. She says you can get stem-cells from inside people’s brains, but the surgery is too dangerous. The easiest way to get stem-cells is from 3 to 5 day old embryos. Their stem-cells are like clean slates that can change into whatever type of cell is needed. Most people take issue with this because they think they get the embryos from abortion clinics and that, in theory, people could try to get pregnant on purpose just to abort the embryo to go towards stem-cell research. But Dawn says they get their embryos from fertility clinics. A batch of embryos is made for potential mothers who are having difficulty conceiving. The best embryo is elected and given to the woman while the others are discarded. The embryos are essentially made in Petri dishes. Embryos are like the ingredients to make a food dish put together, but not the end dish in itself. Like dough you would use to make bread, but without time and development does not become bread. Maybe that’s why they call it a bun in the oven. Either way, it’s just the materials to make potential life, but embryos at that state are not alive and should be used towards stem-cell research which can cure people of many types of diseases.

Phobias

That's the theme for next weeks Table Topics. I have issues with table topics because they ask you questions you have to respond to off the top of your head - not my strongest skill. So here are some thoughts I can look back to use on Wednesday. The theme is phobias.

When I think of phobias lots of things come to mind:

Clay Aiken is afraid of kittens and Kelly Ripa once tried to frighten him on The Regis show by showing a newspaper with kittens on the cover to him. She practically shoved it in his face. Cruel.

The Maury show had an episode regarding phobias. One woman was afraid of snakes and by the end of the show she could hold snake boots. Someone was afraid of balloons and another had issues with kittens. Why kittens?

My friend Allison in high school once said it was strange that people have all these fears and phobias, when you'd think the ultimate fear for anyone would be death - not all these different things that could possibl cause harm.

Step-mom has a fear of snakes. Snakes on a Plane came on and she freaked out. She couldn't watch Indiana Jones Either.

My sister has a fear of heights, but she makes fun of me for being araid of sharks. I can stand and look over the edge of a high building, but can't watch Jaws al the way through.

Philosophy class discussed phobias. Thay made an infant afraid of a white rabbt and the phobia transfered to stuffed animals that where white, then to white fabric. Fear spreads.

To overcome a phobia you have to commit to desensitize yourself to it. It's a challenge. I looked in books that had pictures of great whites, I read the book Jaws, I saw most of the movie Jaws witha friend, I bought Jaws Revenge the video game. Still have issues with sharks. Instinct kicks in and I try to look away. I have issues watching commercials for the new movie Piranhas . . . and that's a crapy film.

This Weekend Sept 24-28

I'm heading to Oakdale. Unfortunately i leave tommorrow, a Friday, and no one will be there until Sunday. My parents are going to be away and all my friends have moved so I don;t have anyone to hangout with. I plan on reading some Toastmasters manuals and watching T.V.

I'm afraid. I'e been bothered by the fact that my mom's house is haunted for the past several months. It's strange, but I think now I'm starting to come to terms with it and think openly about it. It's weird because I lived there from age 12-18 and then moved out. Now I'm 22 and whenever I visit I sleep downstairs in the gust bedroom instead of upstairs in my old room. It's haunted up there and you couldn't pay me to spend the night alone in my old room.

I don;t know why it's been bothering me so bad lately. I think it's because my sister's boyfriend said the house was haunted after he spent 3 nights in my old room about 3 months ago. Nobody told him it was haunted and he said a whole bunch of things happened. It's strange that an outsider picked up on somthing I have been quietly aware of for the past 10 years.

Now I have to go home alone, and I'm concerned about what will happen during the night. I guess I'll see . . .

First Icebreaker Speech

I started Toastmasters officially early this September. Yesterday I had o give my first Icebreaker speech. It went well, and I didn't have to use any notes because I memorized everything, which was had considering i hadn't written the speech until the day before. So here it is:

Hello Fellow Toastmasters and guests . . .
My name is Jessica and this is my first Toastmasters speech. The first of many. In this speech I will discuss who I am and what I’m all about. I’d like to begin by describing a day in the life of me, specifically yesterday. Yesterday I woke up at 3:30 Am as usual for no good reason. Then I went back to sleep. Then I woke up again at 6:00 Am for no good reason. I got up, fed my 2 cats, and then went back to sleep. I got up officially at 8, only this time it was for a good reason. I needed to write my icebreaker speech. I was originally going to write it 2 weeks ago when I first found out about it, but then put it off for a week. Then I was going to write last Friday, but put it off until Sunday. And then on Sunday I decided to do it Tuesday. Then yesterday I was going to do my speech around 9 or 10 in the morning, but then my sister Emily offered to take me out to lunch . . .
Lunch was quite an adventure. We went to McDonalds which is a place I rarely visit because it’s notoriously unhealthy. But yesterday I wanted French fries so we headed down there. I got a happy meal hamburger, with a Star Wars boy’s toy for my dad since he likes Clone Wars and a mocha frappuccino so I would be energized to focus on writing my speech. Then on the ride back to the house I looked inside my happy meal to steal a couple fries and was dismayed to find a small container with only about 12 French fries in it. Apparently McDonalds is trying to make kid’s meals healthier by lowering the amount of fries and increasing the amount of apple slices. 2 questions. 1. What parent is going to take their kids to McDonalds so they can eat healthier? 2. Why would a kid want to go to McDonalds to eat healthier? I certainly didn’t. If I wanted to eat healthy I would have gone to Togos. I purposely wanted the French fries and the hamburger because they taste good and I was procrastinating.
So then my sister and I got home. I ate my meal and stole some French fries from my Emily. I then went on the computer to begin writing my speech, but took a detour over to twitter to complain about my McDonalds experience. Somebody asked me why I didn’t just get an adult hamburger and fries, and I said because it’s not as cheap and it doesn’t come with a toy. Then I decided to write my speech, but ran into a problem when I was talking about everything that had happened on Tuesday and encountered the present in which I was typing words on the page.
So that was me yesterday. This week in general is pretty interesting and not just because I’m giving my first speech, but also because this weekend I’m going to visit my mom in Oakdale. I was born in San Jose, but raised mostly in Oakdale after my parents divorced. Oakdale is a small town out in the country near Modesto. They have a rodeo once a year and the town was known for its Hershey’s factory until Hershey’s decided to move to Mexico. I remember growing up at my elementary school and smelling the chocolate that floated in on the breeze unfortunately there was also a Tomato factory that’s sent would also carry over sometimes. Not as pleasant.
So my mom has a house out in the country. It’s a 2 story house with a backyard for our dog Rylie and a pasture for our horse Slider. The reason I’m going to visit is because my step-sister Sarah is coming over from Arkansas with her husband Tomas. I haven’t seen them since they got married in May and I’ve been looking forward to seeing them for a while. They come in on Monday so until then I’ll be in charge of taking care of the house because I just found out my mom and step-dad Dean are going to Street Vibrations in Nevada. Yes. Those are my parents. I’m not nervous about watching the house, but I m concerned about feeding the horse. He has bucked my sister and mom off when they were riding him, so I don’t like standing too close to him.
I think it was an interesting experience for me to grow up in the country, especially since I would often visit my dad in the city here in San Jose. I sort of grew up being exposed to 2 different worlds and points of view. I think the clearest differences between San Jose and Oakdale can be read in their bumper stickers, especially the political ones.
Growing up in these two places I always had one passion that carried over regardless of where I was. I love art. I have been drawing since the day I stopped chewing on crayons and started coloring with them. I remember drawing dinosaurs incessantly in kindergarten because my favorite movie at the time was Land Before Time. Around the 2nd grade when most kids had dropped their colored pencils and picked up regular ones I was overjoyed at the prospect of making my first diorama and cutting out figures I had drawn to add to the ones I made in clay.
My art flourished in middle school and high school and not just in art classes. Some of my greatest works of art were created on notepaper during Chemistry class. Since I was out in the country and there wasn’t much to do, I would usually come home, do my homework, and then start drawing. I preferred drawing animals because people’s faces were too challenging. I started seeing a local artist named Chloe Fonda after school during sophomore and junior year. Chloe is the greatest art teacher I have ever had. Chloe would give me paints in watercolor that I had never used before and just let me explore the medium. At first I was worried I wasn’t doing it right, but she told me to let the paint go where it wanted to and familiarize myself with its nature. Then after that she taught me how to manipulate the paint and find a balance between controlling the overall image and letting unexpected “accidents” occur within it by letting the paint run. It was a freeing experience and different from what every art teacher had taught me before which was to color in the lines. Chloe said art wasn’t about copying an image exactly as it was seen, but representing images or ideas in a new way that other people could see and connect with.
Today I aspire to be a graphic designer. When I was in college at Santa Cara University I was first introduced to Photoshop and Illustrator. I love creating images on the computer. I like the concept that everything printed and seen online from brochures to webpages has some level of art or design applied to it. I like creating images that can help take something that would be ordinary or unnoticed and change it into something that can be noticed and appreciated.
Now you know a little more about me and I look forward to finding out more about all of you and making more speeches in this club in the future.
. . . Mr. Toastmaster.