I had a major, debilitating vertigo episode Wednesday night, while visiting some of Pam’s relatives. Spent a couple hours on their bathroom floor, the world spinning around me. Not fun. And not exactly civilized behavior for a guest.

So I’ll be seeing a specialist on May 5. Seems a long way off, but from what I hear of Canada’s system, I probably wouldn’t be able to see someone before Christmas. Of 2010. So 10 days isn’t so bad.

Four things aggravate Mineire’s Disease: salt, caffeine, stress, and alcohol.

• Salt. At the grocery, I read the sodium content of nearly everything. Most frozen foods, especially TV dinners, have outrageous salt levels. Banned from my life forever.
• Stress. Can’t control this one. Had quite a bit of stress the past few weeks, just very busy at work leading up to the unveiling of our new brand. Stress levels fluctuate.
• Caffeine. This one pains me. I switched to decaf coffee a couple years ago. But I’m afraid I need to cut out even decaf, which still has some caffeine. I love everything about coffee. Hate giving it up.
• Alcohol. That leaves alcohol. I guess I’ll need to forgo the Bud I have when…oh wait, I’ve never in my life tasted beer (unless beer-battered fish counts). Maybe I can handle this one.

The Executive Leadership Team for our denomination met last night and today. Good meeting. Today’s lunch was at Huntington University. We had a taco salad. It was okay, after I scraped off the sour cream and guacamole. But not what I would have picked. Not that I got to pick.

Susan Hoopingarner was the administrative assistant five administrative assistants ago. Yes, lots of turnover lately in that position. Anyway, Susie always ran the menu past me, so I could pick something that I most definitely liked. I’m sure our meals were a bit boring back then, because I’m not culinarily adventurous. Ham croissant, chips, salad, cherry pie. Something like that. That’s what I would pick.

Then Susie left. Sherry, Erinn, Marsha, and now Cathy–none of them have deemed me important enough to review the menu. And so, everyone ends up with a tremendous taco salad that THEY all think is pure heaven, but which I’m not so sure about.

Just one of those small sacrifices I make for the cause of Christ. I’m sure my reward will be in heaven. Preferably with a butterscotch topping.

Visited the eye doctor this morning. Three years since the last exam. I’ve had to squint to read the wall menus at Starbucks and Panera Bread; the lettering keeps getting lighter and lighter. So it was time. Or past time. I’ve been intending to set up an appointment since November.

Every time I get a checkup, I feel like I’ve waited too long. And yet, every time, the doctor tells me, “Well, you have a little change, but not much.” That irks me. I KNOW there’s a big change. They are MY eyes. I can TELL. (I will now stop shouting at you. I apologize. You didn’t do anything to me.)

I don’t trust that machine, the one where you play the game, “Which is better, A or B?” Well, it’s not always that easy. I’m sure that I gave the wrong answers, thereby resulting in his diagnosis of only minor change. He wants an A or B answer, and I keep wanting to qualify it–B is lighter/darker, a bit blurry, I’m seeing double, that might be an E or an H, but I think it’s an E. The doctor doesn’t want to hear stuff like that. He wants a definitive answer, so he can go on to slides C and D (which are not much different).

I believe the doctor, who is nearing retirement age, just makes assumptions about what I need based on having done such exams thousands of times. So we play the game for a while, he writes out a prescription, and he tells me to come back in a couple of years. And I’m left thinking, “I know I should have told him A. I’m so STUPID!”

As I write, I’m having trouble focusing on the computer screen, thanks to those dastardly drops he puts in my eyes.

Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, wrote an interesting piece called “What are You Destined to Be?” on his popular Blog Maverick blog.

“Going to college should be about experiencing as much academically as you possibly can, but more importantly, it should be about learning how to learn….Once you have learned how to learn, then you can try as many different things as you can….”

Upon reading that, I realized, “Hey–I’m good at learning.” Which is something I hadn’t really considered before.

In my work, I continually confront new learning curves, usually computer-related. (Lots of people do, so I’m not claiming any great uniqueness.)

I remember back around 1983, I returned from Christmas vacation in California to find an AT&T MS-DOS computer (2 floppy drives, no hard disk!), an Okidata dot-matrix printer, and several unopened software packages sitting on my desk. I’d never used a computer before. But I dug in, and a month later was producing the denominational magazine on that computer (actually, just putting the text on a floppy, which a printing company turned into long strips of typeset copy, which I laid out over a light table). Remember–this was MS-DOS, for goodness sakes! The entire user interface consisted of Courier text on a green monitor!

In 1988, when I got a Mac and a laser printer, I gave myself three weeks to learn Pagemaker and crank out the next issue of the magazine (this time, with little need for the light table).

The truth is, I enjoy conquering learning curves. And I enjoy the crash-course route. That love-of-the-last-minute may not be a good trait, but it’s most definitely an aptitude.