(Non-Writing) A Productive Phone Call

I spent an hour on the half on the phone with a certain VP of a certain department at a certain parent corporation yesterday (no names mentioned, but let's just say that the acronym for the department in question is "IA"), trying to get clarification on (what I thought) was a simple matter. This VP saw it differently. Actually...I'm not sure what he saw. Perhaps colored lights, or pretty sparkles. In any case, 1 hour and 25 minutes of that phone conversation was spent explaining/focusing/trying to get him to stay on topic. The actual productive part of the phone call came at the very end, and took about 5 minutes. I was pretty much ready to law down on a table saw at that point.