Brea Jones » Brea

Toasting Toastmasters

Brea — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 21:13:35 +0000

I joined Golden Gate Toastmasters this spring knowing I would give a toast at my sister’s wedding. Two other people joined with the same mission, and all of us have definitely improved our public speaking.

Delivering my Maid of Honor speech.

Toastmasters even gave me an opportunity to practice before the event! When a speaker dropped out at the last second on Wednesday, I had a chance to deliver a speech about Jarma’s piratical wedding and finished the speech with my toast. I won Best Speaker for the first time that day, but more important than the accolades was that this opportunity showed me how people would react to the toast and ways I could improve it.

When I stood before about 150 people dressed as a pirate wench on Saturday, I was confident I could use the humor and poise I learned at Toastmasters for my 1-minute Maid of Honor toast. Here it went:

In preschool we learned:

“Make new friends and keep the old
Some are silver, others gold”

Jarma and Justin are the gold kind of friends.

When Jarma first introduced me to her friend Justin,
I never would have thought he would one day be my brother. [pause]

But after 14 years, she definitely knows what she’s getting into. [pause]

And he knows her loving kindness, her quick wit, and her devotion to him.

Every other member of Jarma’s bridal party has known her for more than half their lives.
We all watched as Jarma and Justin’s friendship turned into a marriage.

Jarma, left, and I before boarding The Gaslight in Sausalito.

So here we are, dressed in pirate garb to celebrate their nuptials.

Love and laughter
Meat and mead
Friends and family

May the joys of today
Be those of tomorrow
The goblets of life
Hold no dregs of sorry

Whether the waters ahead
Be smooth or rough
May the wind fill your sails
May your love be enough. [pause]

To Jarma and Justin! [pause]
Drink up me hearties!

Party plates: compost or wash?

Brea — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 02:37:58 +0000

In the Bay Area, many restaurants and grocery stores offer disposable goods made out of materials that will easily biodegrade. “Compostable in 60 days!” “Made from corn!”

When I first encountered these things several years ago, I was all about spud sporks. But I have since tried to reuse utensils rather than dispose of them … even in the compost. And lots of people who buy these compostable materials toss them right into the trash, so it’s really just a gimmick, right? I know we should all just reuse whenever possible, but when I threw a couple of parties in the past two weeks, I did it.

I purchased paper plates.

I don’t have a compost bin at home, but compost is picked up in the Green Bin with yard trimmings in Oakland. So all of our food scraps and paper plates from the party ended up composted. But this was still the inferior choice, right?

In an effort to quiet my guilt, I Googled to find out whether this is really worse than if we had used every plate in the house and washed them. What I found was other people asking the same questions, over, and over, and over.

My favorite was “Confessions of a Paper-Plate Addict,” posted on the New York Times website. She explains that while she began using paper because of a surgery that made dishwashing difficult, she soon got hooked.

I can guarantee I am not hooked on paper, but I still don’t know how bad of a decision my bad decision truly was. Searching for answers in a sea of guilty consciences is not easy.

Clips for online

Brea — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 07:15:43 +0000

After two years spent producing and managing content rather than writing stories as a reporter, I’m finding it challenging to find ways to demonstrate my skills. What are clips when you work in online content production?

I tried to put some things together, including some stories from my writing days, so check it out. If you have suggestions for what else I should use as an example, please pass them along.

Fires on everyone’s mind

Brea — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:56:28 +0000

There is something strange about blowing away records and performing your best when others are in peril. On Tuesday, some of the worst fires Stockton has ever seen raged through a neighborhood. Smoke poured onto the highway and roads were blocked off. As firefighters did their jobs, I did mine.

I redesigned the top element of Recordnet.com to house all of the stories, video and audio from the scene and put all of our efforts on the fire. I built photo galleries, jotted down notes from reporters at the scene and worked with newsroom staff to build something thousands of people came to see and participate in. Thirty families were displaced and we set a site traffic record with 391,000 page views in one day.

It’s a sad irony, but newspapers really do show their value in times of devestation.

The content is no longer on the front page, but you can find it on a landing page:

I’m back

Brea — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 04:34:22 +0000

I haven’t done much blogging lately with so much going on at work. But I logged onto my Web site and realized it is in dire need of a facelift. This theme is temporary, as I’m planning a redesign of the site to make it more functional and fun. Thanks for stopping by. Check back for updates.