Stephanie is a type two diabetic. After feeling crummy for a few days, last night she woke up several times vomiting. She got dehydrated. Imagine boiling a pot of salt water. The salt-to-water ratio gets higher. Blood sugar is like that. The more dehydrated she got, the higher her blood sugar went. For a while I was telling her she just had the flu, which may have been the case. But when her blood sugar hit the 450s, when it was in the 470s after I gave her insulin, and when she became delirious and incoherent, I decided we needed to get her to the ER. Continue reading “My Wife is in the Hospital”
Category: Reflection
On Having “Too Much Style”
Today, I published an article in the Huffington Post in which I describe what would happen if God made a “your momma” joke. This got me thinking about feedback I got on a presentation this week; I was told that the levity in my presentation was incongruous with the gravity of the content. Continue reading “On Having “Too Much Style””
Work Woes
Work has been kind of a struggle for me lately. Working at Vanderbilt has been a blessing, but over the past couple years I have watched my primary job responsibilities become my secondary job responsibilities. I was initially hired as a “term” position to help bridge the academic and residential sides of our flagship summer program, and later took a permanent post working almost exclusively with academics—recruiting, training, and equipping instructors to teach academically gifted youth. But now, through a series of accidents, I am mostly tech support. Continue reading “Work Woes”
Thursday Shmursday
I have discovered that Thursday morning is the morning that my body says to my ambition, “Go to hell!”
Funding My Theology Habit
It is never a good idea to announce online where you work. People get fired for saying stupid things about their places of employment. So I will not tell you the name of the university. But if you were to guess, “Vanderbilt,” you would be right.
I am staff, not faculty. I do not teach at Vanderbilt the university. I am an educational consultant for a department that offers services to support academically gifted students. What that means is that I help put the classes together. There is a large technology component to my job too, which happened somewhat by accident. Continue reading “Funding My Theology Habit”
On Being a “Vulgar” Theologian in the Orthodox Church
My parish priest recently announced that he was retiring, and my immediate thought was, “Oh crap!” I love my priest. We do not always see eye-to-eye, but I respect and appreciate him. I know I have not made his life very easy sometimes. Every so often, I will say something online which will send the trolls to the interwebs to try to figure out where I go to church, who my priest is, and how many ways they can report me. Like I said, my priest and I often do not see eye-to-eye, but he also understands that there is a difference between theological opinions he disagrees with and heresies that deserve excommunication. I know for a fact that there are some priests who would have withheld communion until I shouted the error of my ways from the rooftop. I have wondered what I would do when faced with that kind of a decision, and I honestly am grateful that I have never really had to think too hard about it. That may change. Continue reading “On Being a “Vulgar” Theologian in the Orthodox Church”