Tuesday, 24 April 2011
Today, in class, we watched a documentary on the hostage crisis of 1979-81. I didn’t catch the name of the documentary, and we only watched the first 45 minutes of it (the professor said it was an hour long). Before this documentary, about the only thing I knew about the hostages were from the American Embassy, they were in Iran, most were held captive for 444 days, and they were released just minutes after Ronald Reagan became President.
The professor told us to watch the rest of the documentary on our time but, as you can probably surmise from the first paragraph, I couldn’t locate it. So I read about it on Wikipedia. I think that’s exactly what Universities encourage their students to do.
Anyway, I think I’ve gotten to that point in the semester where I am no longer interested in the class. I thought things would get more interesting after Vietnam…but no. Now I just sort of internally wrestle with everything I read. Maybe because know we’re covering history that I lived through, and I sort of feel like Pee-Wee Herman in that scene at the end where Dottie asks him if he wants to stay and see the rest of the movie.
Wednesday, 25 April 2011
Today, in Toastmasters, I was the Table Topics Master. This is a great job for me, really, because I hate giving Table Topics speeches and, when I’m in charge, then I don’t have to call on myself.
I wanted to start out by saying that I dislike difficult Table Topics, um, topics, and that I would therefore be keeping it simple for everyone. The word of the day was “Esoteric,” so that fit in perfectly, and I got to begin by saying: “Know what I hate? Esoteric Table Topics.” I then taped a sheet of paper up to the wall that said:
“Tell us about your _______________”
And I explained that the last half of the sentence was in the jar in my hand. I even made the topic easier by telling the group that the next word(s) in the sentence were either “first” or “most recent.”
Since we were actually under time today, I got to call on eight people, then I asked for volunteers (I got one). The seconds halves of the sentence included:
“first day here at work”
“last day of high school”
“first car”
“first date”
“most recent trip to the theater”
and “first time in an airplane.”
Thursday, 26 April 2011
This evening, Jennifer and I joined about 15 of my co-workers (and their significant others) at Toast Wine Bar and Cafe in Minneapolis. We went to support Dining Out for Life, which is a yearly event in which restaurants donate a portion of their night’s proceeds to AIDS research. I volunteered to locate a restaurant and make the reservations, and I selected Toast for its high percentage of donations (they said 50%) and for being centrally located between my company’s three metro-area locations.
And I gotta say, the food was awesome. As was the wine. If you ever have a chance to eat there, do it. Of course, since it’s in Minneapolis, parking is a nightmare. Oh – and the other weird thing is that the restaurant shares a building with an apartment complex, so (not knowing there was a separate entrance around the corner), my wife and I went into the lobby of the apartment building, and asked someone where the restaurant was. They directed us down a hallway, past several residences, and then into what’s pretty much the back door of the restaurant. Oh well. Once we sat down, we had an awesome time.
So, write this down for yourselves:
*Eat at Toast at some point in the near-future.
*Support Dining Out for Life in 2013.