Meeting Etiquette 101

I don't have a whole lot of patience.  With anything.  This is something I continually hope to improve, but I also accept that it is the way I am, and that there are positive things about it.  For example, I am extremely efficient at running meetings.  I like efficiency.  It means that we get done what needs to be done, do not deal with extraneous crap, and finish in a timely manner.  I run good meetings.  I like running meetings.  I do not, however, like sitting in meetings that most other people run.

Case in point, last night's meeting, in which a bunch of ministers engaged in typical minister meeting behavior, such as: speaking with a pompous affect, using a lot of Christianese so that people feel unholy when they disagree, and talking four times longer than is necessary.  Someone made an announcement about a seminar he is teaching, but none of us need to go, because we got at least 2/3 of the lecture in the announcement.  Also, I'm all about worship and all, but when we have a meeting that begins at 7pm, and the business is likely to take at least two hours, I don't really think we need to kick it off with an hour of worship.  Sing a song to gather us, pray for guidance for the meeting, and get on with it.  No one wants to be in this meeting until 10pm.  Especially when it's out in the boonies an hour from anywhere.  And the NHL Western Conference finals are happening.

End of rant.

In other, less frivolous news, my nine year-old niece is having terrible seizures, worse than she ever has, and no one appears to be able to do anything about them.  She's on a four-month waiting list to get into the Mayo Clinic, but having several seizures a day, I'm not sure she's going to make it four months.  Also, a cousin (second? third? something removed?  I have no idea) has a son with cancer and a bastard husband who has left her in the middle of it all and is trying to vacate his adoption of her son, and she also has some issues with her dog who is being "cared for" by her idiot brother and sister-in-law, who have announced that they are going to shoot the dog if she doesn't pick it up today, although her son is in surgery 4 hours away from them today.  I know all of this because it is ALL over Facebook, which makes me feel even worse for all of them.  If one of my deeply Minnesotan relatives is flashing her problems all over a public forum, you know she is seriously at the end of her rope.  Prayers for all of the above are welcome and appreciated.