It’s been more than two weeks since I last put together a blog entry.  There have been some topics that I have thought about for a while to write but haven’t had the chance to do that yet.

Anyway, I’m still in TM and still with the Arlington Heights and North Suburban clubs.  With the new Toastmasters year underway, the Arlington Heights club is off to a great start!  We signed up 7 members in the last couple of months and the last couple of meetings we had three speeches each.  The meeting we had last night was the 1st time we’ve had 3 Icebreakers since I’ve been in that club!  Also we have a new set of officers that looks very promising.  Our new club president has some great ideas on growing the club, including doing joint club meetings, expand publicity and conduct educational topics.  She also is putting a system in which none of the officers will take the brunt of keeping the club going by putting together teams of two officers to work on implementing these ideas as well as rotating the Presiding Officer position so each officer can explain their responsibilities and learn how to handle club business.  I don’t remember another July in which we had such a great start, with great turnouts and great attitudes.

North Suburban last month achieved Presidents Distinguished for the 2007-2008 year!  It is the 1st time the club reached any Distinguished Club status since the current DCP program started in 1999, primarily due to low membership in the past.  We recently celebrated our 60th anniversary with a special club meeting – the club is the 3rd oldest District 30 club still in existence (Long Grove/Lake Zurich and Speakers Forum are older).  The club will be moving to what we hope will be our new permanent location at the Glen, where the Glenview Naval Air Station used to be, as we’ve outgrown the Glenview Community Center and the Glenview Police Station hasn’t worked out for us in terms of scheduling and acoustics.  The club president is the same as we couldn’t find anyone who wanted the job and she is also going to be the Area Governor this year – I think she’ll do a great job as she’s very enthusiastic about Toastmasters and wants to know more about how the organization operates.

I think this will be a great year for the two clubs I belong to, as long as most of us do our jobs and continue to contribute.  I’m glad to stay and help out.