Current events

Kerry is about two weeks into her year-long course of study in clinical investigation (research). Her current coursework includes biostatistics, epidemiology, ethics, research writing... I think there's another one, but it escapes me. These courses are through the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Hopkins, so some of her classes (eg, biostatistics) are very large, with 300-400 students. I've been struck by how quickly she's gone full-blast into student mode, reading and doing problem sets without ceasing. I shouldn't be surprised; after all, she's always been a good student. The funny thing is, between undergrad and med school, she's been a full-time student for five of the eleven years I've known her, but this is the first time I've actually lived with her as a student, so maybe it's reasonable that I don't recognize her academic habits. Or maybe, having worked for a few years, her habits have changed somewhat. When I started at SAIS two years ago, I felt that difference.

But speaking of being together for eleven years, we celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary on Sunday. (Thank you for the cards and calls.) Kerry took us to a nice restaurant in Baltimore, Taste. It was a fairly quiet night at the restaurant, as one might expect with the Ravens opening their season against the Colts at the same time. We had a lovely, leisurely dinner under the canopies of rope strung wall-to-wall. We enjoyed everything we tried from the eclectic menu, including some froofy martinis and a piquant sweet potato soup that was far too spicy to be in Maryland (which means it was delightful).

After a lull in late August, when vacations ruled the earth, things have picked back up for me at work. The biggest item on my plate right now is building a generic financial model for a company that develops power projects. (That is, they plan out a facility, do all the regulatory legwork, then sell the concept to a big firm that actually builds and operates the plant.) This means I'm spending lots of time creating in Excel. Since I'm a big nerd, this is a good thing.

Last Sunday was my first day teaching senior-high Sunday school. Actually, I'm co-teaching, and one of my two colleagues has been doing this for the past few years, so that first day wasn't near as hard as it could have been. In fact, for all the warnings, it went fine. I knew the majority of the kids from youth group, and they acted about like I expected. Sitting here five days from my second day teaching senior-high Sunday school, I'm thinking that the class time itself may not be the biggest challenge; rather, it will be the time between classes, trying to come up with what to do during the class. Any advice (beyond prayer) would be welcome.