I suspect I'm getting testy with age. I certainly don't enjoy the long banter of meetings like I used to.

I just want to get on with it, you know?

So as I spent part of my vacation time instead sitting in yet another fruitless meeting between our outfit, the feds and a major gas company, I was at times a little terse.

I mean, we've been having these meetings for over a year now, and are exactly no closer to setting the goals we were assigned to set than we were a year ago.

Yet, all the while, the company drills and drills. We all know, and even privately discussed, that the company is only here to stall.

Every month of stalling means another month of unencumbered drilling.

And more sage grouse habitat lost.

So, when one of the meeting's principles finished spending several minutes expounding, posturing and explaining her agency's point of view in response to a simple question, I asked...

So, the answer to his question is 'Yes'?

"Ummm, yes."

Probably not the best way to win points. Especially when she'd been kind enough to share the raspberries from her lunch salad with me.

(By the way... want a nice afternoon meeting pick-me-up? Take one of the bottled green tea drinks, throw in a few fresh raspberries and shake vigorously (quietly, under the table). Tastes great, and adds vitamin C and caffeine at the same time.)

So, this meeting ended as all the others have. With the setting a date for the next meeting. In this case, in January.

When a date was proposed, another of the principles of the meeting (of which I am not one, by the way) asked what day of the week that would be, as he didn't have a 2009 calendar yet.

It's the same as May of 2008, I immediately suggested.

To which the raspberry lady and one of her employees turned in real shock.

"Do you carry that stuff around in your head?" and "How did you know that?"

With all eyes now on me, I asked,

Is that question rhetorical, or do you really want to know?

"I want to know how you knew that right away."

Well, I heard him mutter under his breath that he hadn't put in his 2009 calendar yet when we first started talking about the next meeting, so I went through my 2008 calendar to see which month matched January, and then sat back and waited a few minutes for the question to come up in conversation.

Yes, people, our meetings are getting that predictable.

And futile.