I had the opportunity to mentor Toastrix Toastmasters, a club at Citrix in Santa Clara, during the end of 2019 and early 2020 – mentoring them let me fulfill the last requirement to complete my second Distinguished Toastmaster before the “legacy” education program at Toastmasters ended. As it happened, the last Toastmasters meeting I attended in person before the lockdown was at Citrix – as I was driving home from there, I saw a billboard for a company called “Zoom” which talked about the joys of remote meetings. Little did I know…

At any rate, I continued on as their mentor until my term ended in May, 2020, and I’ve continued to attend meetings on occasion (not on Zoom, though – they used GoToMeeting until recently and have changed to Microsoft Teams). Yesterday, they reached out to me and asked if I could fill in as a speaker at today’s meeting – I agreed and presented a speech for the “Write a Compelling Blog” project.

The goal of the project was to write at least 8 blog posts within a month and then to give a short speech about the experience. The last time I considered doing the project, 8 blog posts in a month seemed like a stretch – this time, it seemed a bit easier.

I talked about my blogging history, going all the way back to my first post in 2000; I prepared the timeline at the top of the page, which has a red square for every day I did at least one posting and a blank square for days I missed. There were years where I did only two postings, but of late, I’ve been very consistent!

I also talked about the most popular postings on the blog, all of which have been postings where I’ve written about something helpful to others: finding a refill for a strange pen, Amsterdam Dos and Don’ts, Paris in the Rain and Two Great Things to Do In Paris, and even a post about dealing with Coldwater Creek’s rewards program (no link because it’s no longer applicable).

There have also been a few popular technical postings, and the occasional “meta” posting like this one.

Navel-gazing can be fun!

We got out of the house for an early walk, and went about twice as far as we usually do in the morning. That was a good plan – the much-needed rains started just before lunch and haven’t really stopped since. And while I more-or-less believe what I heard in Norway (“No bad weather, just bad clothes”), I wasn’t really interested in going out this afternoon anyway.

We tried another new recipe tonight, a paleo version of Arroz con Pollo using cauliflower rice, made on a sheet pan. I don’t see cauliflower rice replacing rice for us, but the chicken and spices were pretty good. I can’t find a link to the recipe (it was in the Merc’s Spry Living supplement in early December), but I’ve typed it into the Paprika app, so if anyone wants it, let me know.

I visited my dermatologist last week for a routine check-in and full-body exam. I had noticed an itchy spot under my right ear, and she took it off; she also found a spot on my right shoulder and took it off, too. Today, she called me and said that the shoulder spot was benign, but the spot under my ear was “early-stage squamous”, and just like that, I’m scheduled for Mohs surgery on the 8th of February.