Ah the wonderful feeling of starting a Friday with little to nothing pressing to accomplish. I had promised to show a prospect one of my co-workers listings at 3pm... but there was plenty of time to prepare for that one.

The phone rings at 9:51am... of course my screen is broke on my phone so I can't tell who it is. The Chairman of the Toastmaster speech contest is on the other end of the line. His question, "so are you ready to compete today?" Although I told him a week prior that I was interested in speaking in the contest, he had never called back to confirm, nor was I listed in a mass email to the club listing contestants. However, his desperation over only having 3 contestants for the contest, led me to reluctantly agree to participate.

The contest would begin at 12pm on the west side of Little Rock. I would need to be there 15 minutes early and it takes 15 minutes to get there. According to my calculations that gave me approximately 1.5 hours to prepare a 7 minute speech good enough to win the speech contest. Where to begin? Since I was in my office, I have access to 3 crucial tools for successful speech writing: 1. computer 2. internet 3. dry-erase board.

There was an interesting example used in the previous Sunday's sermon on getting trapped. Luckily the sermons are posted online, so I queued it up and listened to how the example was setup. His example would not quite work for me, so I jumped on the internet to find other examples of traps. I stumbled upon something about monkeys that stick their hands into jars full of food, which are secured to trees. The mouth of the jar is large enough for the monkey to stick its empty hand into, but small enough where they can't get their hand out when full of food. This seemed to be just what I needed to work with.

As I sketched the speech structure on my white board, I started with the story of the monkeys, implemented two stories of people that seemed to be trapped, and concluded with a solid, "let's get real" session between me and the audience. I even had 10 minutes to spare to run through it once... for timing reasons.

Although I feel very comfortable speaking in front of this club, it is always a bit tough to "compete" in this type of situation. The speech went off without a hitch... except for a close call on timing. A speaker will get disqualified if the speech is over 7 minutes 30 seconds. I would be surprised if my speech wasn't 7 minutes 28 seconds. I thought for sure when the judges announced that someone was disqualified for timing reasons, that I was the culprit. However, when the results were announced, I was the big winner! A $20 gift card to Barnes & Noble and being qualified to compete at the next level was my reward. More on that to come.

The showing of the duplex at 10 Rosemunn was a success. Although the listing agent was in Dallas, and I didn't have all the answers... I believe I represented the professionalism and courtesy that our firm represents. And as always, I measure my effectiveness by the results. We received an offer from the client about 1 hour after the showing... and as of yesterday it is under contract. Now, if I could just get about 15 listings of my own I would be alright.

I decided Friday night would be a great time to watch a movie... and there was a showdown between Atonement & Vantage Point. Vantage Point won out, but I was fully prepared to sit through Atonement (I've since learned that this is actually a good movie). The movie was interesting, although a bit frustrating. Much like groundhog day, it played the same scene over and over again, only from the vantage point of different people. By the end, the audience was able to put together the full story... interesting and thought provoking concept.

However, each time the scene started over there was a very audible groan throughout the audience (I confirmed this with someone who watched it elsewhere as well). I have a theory as to why people react this way. As a society we are so anxious to move into the future or into a new situation before we really understand the entirety and complexity of our current situation. I think this is a result of our assumption that things always get better as we move forward... electronics get cheaper, your house value goes up, etc. However, I think on a simple level this movie reminded me to re-examine situations that occur everyday and explore different vantage points before moving on to something else. Over analyzation? Maybe.

And... to bed early to prepare for a long weekend at the horse races... off to Dallas... and back.