Sign o' the times

Forget what the talking heads say about the current economic meltdown, I've got a new indicator for our current economy. Last week, during our weekly departmental seminar, the seminar chairman passed on an announcement regarding the long-held tradition of having cookies at seminar. The departmental budget has shrunk to the extent that, unless people donate money, there will be no more cookies offered at seminar.

I've weathered several other budget crunches at Virginia Tech, but we've never had to cut out the seminar cookies before now.  It's a sad, sad state of affairs when we can't even afford two $2.50 packs of Kroger-brand cookies once a week.

Even worse, those cookies are an absolute necessity at seminar. I've made it through many a less than scintillating presentation by rationing a bite of cookie over the 60 minutes. Sometimes even the cookies can't save me from falling asleep, but that trick has kept me from making a fool of myself (or worse, drooling in public) on multiple occasions.  And I know I'm not the only one who depends on those cookies for the very same reason.

We have seminar this afternoon.....sans cookies.  God help us.