I work fo' da Church, foo!

Well, it's time for another division meeting! Gotta love 'em. And it was only scheduled to last 4 hours! Fabulous. Fortunately, it only ran for 2 1/2, which was still 2 1/2 hours too long. However, I've learned from past experience that notes on what Tianna and I are thinking are far more entertaining than notes on what's actually happening. And now, some humorous anecdotes and jewels from my "notes." (Unless otherwise specified, everything in quotes was actually part of the presentation. Believe it or not. Everything else was between T and me.)

• We started off with my boss, Mike, singing to himself before the meeting actually began. This is how I knew it would be an Awesome Meeting. For the record, Mike can't carry a tune for anything (and he'll be the first to admit it), but he has a marked tendency to burst out into "song."
• Our main gripe about these meetings is that we're required to attend, only to hear hours of gobbledy-gook that is all about all the other teams in the department/division. We are never discussed. It's like they hate us or something. But directly after the opening prayer, Dennis (my actual boss, above me and below Mike) was called to the front. "Here we go!" we thought. But no...he didn't actually discuss us at all. He was just presenting an award to somebody who was recently transferred to our team for working here for 20 years. [sigh] It was a serious letdown.
• Ransom (the division head running this shindig) had just finished saying "I want this meeting to be an open forum for discussion" when a guy got up and left the room. No open forums for him!
• About 3 minutes in, Ransom's cell phone rang. We think it was his boss. He explained that he was in a meeting with about 40 people. Then, the classic line: "No, you can call him—he's not here."
• I managed to write on the back of my left elbow. I didn't just smear ink on it; I wrote on it.
• We're dealers! We're trying to get people hooked.
• "People...have told the Vatican to take a hike! That's the kind of relationship and rapport we want to maintain around the world."
• Really, the excruciating boredom was all my fault. Ransom kept asking stuff like "Is it necessary to go through all of this?" and "Is this helpful?" I just didn't have the guts to stand up and say "Hecks no! For the love of all that is holy, let us leave!!!" Sorry, y'all. I fail.
  
• "I don't have official sanction. I'm just moving forward."
• It's like he expects us to remember stuff from our past meetings!
• "How do you do rap? What is rap all about?...Who are we trying to embrace with the rap program?" (It's possible this was actually some sort of acronym. But he didn't explain it—mayhap it was also addressed in one of our prior meetings?)
• "When is the beginning?"
• I now have smudged boredom.
• T: "Hurry! Run! Be a straggler!"
• I learned that Tanna's shoes are teeny and transform me into an Ugly Stepsister.
• Mike: "Our success came from the war chapters in Alma."
• "I can't pronounce it, but I am one!"
• "Well, on the back end, it's archery."
• BRAINS...LIQUEFYING...DRIPPING ONTO THE FLOOR...