Dwarves, Sunsets and Mission Funding

  It has been a long but interesting week.  A few of the highlights.  We mailed off the paper work to the Zambian Embassy in Washington, DC, in an attempt to purchase our multi-entry visa.  Lynne spoke with them via telephone before we took that leap of faith.    Veronica Roth unveiled the title to the 3rd book in her series  .  .  .  the title is Allegiant. The cover of the book will be unveiled on May 9th.  I have to say I loved the Hunger Games trilogy, but this one is EVEN BETTER!!!  You can test drive the first book by reading the first 100 pages of Divergent at Harper Teen.   The school system finished the last two sections of the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test.   As one student put it, "this school year is in its death thrall!"  If the number of fights and referrals is any indication, it is a restless, violent death.

   Probably the highlight of the week is the school-system moving from GroupWise to Google Apps.  Blew me away!!!   Now I can merge my home Google account with my school account.  I  promise not to rave on, but "Welcome Troup County to the 20th Century!"  Why did I not says "21st Century?"  We are upgrading all teacher workstations next year, and we have indication of the OS we will be using or how up-to-date the computers will be.  In the past, the system has bought execess hardware from HP, wiped the hard drives and loaded Windows XP (no longer supported by Microsoft ).  So I am withholding the "21st Century" moniker until they roll out the new hardware.

   This next week is shot week for Lynne and I.  I need Tetanus and Yellow Fever.  Not sure what shots Lynne will be getting.  The last shot I got with "fever" in its name was the Black-Water Fever shot I got in 1986.  I was sick for 3 days.

    Interestingly we were watching an episode of the CBS show Elementry and they made reference to the Zambian ban on diphenhydramine.  It was said in passing, but Lynne and I caught it.    We really appreciate your prayers.   Pray that our visas come back this week (they told us the turn around is 3-5 business days), and we get our passports back soon.