Catching my breath

Oh, I hardly know where to begin. Mainly it's because I haven't blogged in so long that I have no idea where I left off.

Item: The latest instrument of torture to evolve in the realm known as The Meeting almost wiped out the math department here at humble little community college on the hill. I am speaking, of course, of the webinar. It used to be the case that the dungeon master had to be in the same room as the jailbirds. Now the disher of the punishment can be thousands of miles away and oblivious to the fact that his or her droning voice is causing your brain to leak out of your ears. I am not kidding when I tell you that fifteen minutes into the long-distance powerpoint presentation, I was asleep. Proximity is not a variable in the function that calculates the pervasive potential of powerpoint to pulverize perspicacious perceptions. When I came to, I heard the woman answer her cell phone—for the second time—and not miss a beat as she inserted the phrase "I'll have to call you back" into the description of how the counter on the screen will increase as more students sign in. And as we know five is greater than three so we know two more students have signed in.

Dante could not have imagined this horror. We thought Grizelda (not her real name) could hear our comments via speaker phone. The first clue that this was not the case was when I and a colleague were on our feet, bent over the table and screaming into the phone, "Grizelda! Can you hear us?!?" Her shpeel, which was appropriate only for elementary school-aged children, continued unabated. It was so odd because she did pause moments earlier and was responding to a question she must have heard. Well, given evidence that she couldn't hear us, L started packing up his bag while R and I started to laugh about Grizelda's obliviousness and mind-numbing voice. She was still droning on and on and on and on when suddenly L knocked the receiver off the hook and—we hope—disconnected Grizelda. When I could stop laughing long enough to open my eyes, I couldn't see R until I looked under the table. He had fallen out of his chair and was on all fours, pounding the floor and laughing so hard he couldn't breathe.

It's a good thing the windows to the conference room are frosted. Let's just keep this little incident between us, shall we?