It took me a long time to make this connection, but it seems that MS PowerPoint is affecting my .NET Application and/or my .NET Application is affecting MS PowerPoint.
I have been writing several MS PowerPoint presentations on my .NET Application(s), and I noticed that MS PowerPoint was super slow (it hung), then I noticed that my .NET Application(s) started to run super slow. I closed one of the apps and the other app went back to running at full speed.
I played around with it and it is totally reproducible.

Has anyone seen or heard anything like this?