Fast start, slow finish

Up with the alarm, more or less. Spot planted himself in the cat bed by the window (I moved it from the guest room to the bedroom). Spook has spent all day on the kitchen cat tree, except maybe for a litterbox visit.

Watched the start of the Ravens game, then went to the local Toastmasters meeting. It's close by and 11:30 am on Sundays. Convenient. But almost all Indians, with the usual accent issues. Well-run meeting, though, they don't care if you're a member or not if you want to participate, but they do encourage joining TM. There were two speeches, one a first ever speech and the other by an experienced speaker. The new speaker was all over the place physically and organizationally.  He ran over time, which by TM rules may mean it won't count toward his CTM. His speech was supposed to show how goals don't work as well as having  System. But he didn't have  system, and he mostly showed how his goals worked for him.

Second speaker did a really good job of explaining how being prepared was key to giving a good speech, but then he wandered off into using big game hunting as an analogy. Q&A time I asked him what caliber weapon one should bring to a TM speech. He got the joke, but his answer didn't follow through.

Table topics was done differently from how I'm used to - the leader had a list of "resolutions/New Year" questions and asked one person at time to speak for a minute. I spoke.

Next week is Howie's memorial, so I won't be at TM.

It rained all day. Home, watched the Ravens lose. I baked a pineapple & pear upside-down cake. It came out kind of dry, but I have leftover juice from the pineapple & pear cans.

Janice bailed on me - tired and didn't want to go out in the rain.

I watched the Bears not beat the birds.

Not much on Twitch or FB today. Or Tivo either. Fired up Netflix and took a look at the first thing which came up, Bird Cage, or something. Grim & gruesome and not for me. Then the Unbreakable Kimmi someone, which was just phony & over-acted. Finally found Marco Polo and took up where I had left off at Google, where it was a test video. Grim & violent too but the acting is great and so is the tech. And very nice fight choreography.

Breakfast was my last hard boiled egg and a banana. Lunch was late - TM ran till 1 - was supposed to be chicken soup but I had a sweet and sour chicken steamer, dessert was the last of the cobbler.

Chopped liver & onion sandwiches for dinner, a piece of upside-down cake for dessert.

Took out all the garbages, including a full shredder bag. Yesterday they ran a street sweeper to clear the culverts but a huge windstorm this morning (45° angle rain) blew even more leaves in there so I got out the big long broom and pulled the leaves out onto the street. That made a big difference.

Plans for tomorrow:
Job hunting
Bama-Clemson game
BASFA if the weather clears up