What does Orange County Mensa really do?

Mostly, we share with each other. We do this through monthly open houses and other social activities, and through monthly newsletters. We love thinking and learning new things, so when we can, we'll get speakers on any ol' topic - constitutional law, developments in genetics, you name it - and spend the evening expanding our minds. Our Speaker's Forums are open to the public.

Our local newsletter is important to us. It's got our monthly calendar, and it's another way for us to share our ideas, our writing and artistic talents, our humor, and the other things in life that are important to us.

Maybe even before the Internet had them, Mensa had its "Special Interest Groups" (SIGs). A lot of the events posted in the calendar are SIG activities: SIG interests can range completely all the way from the ridiculous to the sublime. Eight Ball? Blood donors? Classical music? Orange County Mensa has them.

Mensa holds many "Regional Gatherings" through the year, weekends where we'll convene at some hotel or other and spend the weekend doing what we enjoy most, sharing and learning (and eating and drinking and playing games and going to parties and...). In Orange County, we generally hold ours sometime in August. It's our group's big event of the year.

We support gifted children programs, education in general, and through the national group, research into the phenomenon of human intelligence.

True, we can't even agree on what this intelligence thing is (though some of us wouldn't agree with that). What we know for sure is that Mensa is a terrific group and has been very good for its members.