How persuasive?

I've spent the last week practicing my five-minute speech on water law revision. Now I knew nothing about the subject before crafting five pages on the need for reform, but that mustn't stand in the way of swaying one's audience! I've had some excellent advice on the subject and my only fear is going over time, which consistently happens by about 5-10 seconds on read-through.

Mark and I attended the annual Auction Gala in Seattle last Friday, and it was a real pleasure to see at least five of my classmates in attendance. We felt lucky to be eating: a glitch resulted in Shari running around to find us a bid card and seats at one of the tables (thanks to the Washington Potato Commission and classmate Matt for hosting us) so we didn't have a chance to bid on any of the silent auction items. If we go next year, we'll try to be better prepared too: the dessert auction alone raised 28,000 for the Foundation. It's marvelous to see how much support exists for the Ag Forestry Foundation— and that means support for my classmates and I as well as the staff. Running a non-profit, big or small, is always a financial roller-coaster.

In just a few days the whole class will be here in Wenatchee, and I'm still running around to find a place for us to dine Wednesday night after our long day of speechifying, as well as running my portion of Wednesday's program and preparing for my own speech. I darned near got a ticket coming home a couple of weeks ago: it was nearly midnight and I was mentally rehearsing introducing my husband, who will be speaking at our first session. Damned if East Wenatchee didn't come up all of a sudden, and I still had the cruise control on 60! A State Patrol car pulled me over right away, and I confessed to woolgathering. Fortunately, there're probably more drunken fish to fry at midnight on a Saturday than a distracted speech-maker. Thankfully, he let me off, and I've learned to pracice my speech delivery at home or in the office rather than behind the wheel.