I have spent the larger part of this week playing with new technology for the classroom. I’d like to say that it was a huge success, but due to various limitations (wireless, my ancient computer, me), I did not accomplish the real-world task I had set out to do. Hey, at least it wasn’t a real goal with a real deadline and I learned a lot about the features and limitations of three different programs. I now hope to find a single solution that can do everything I would like to do – it must be out there somewhere.

I’ve also been doing a lot of “Footsteps of Paul” tour correspondence, since we announced this week that the application and initial deposit for this trip would be two weeks from now. We’re doing this so we can see how many people are actually going. I suspect we’ll have around 12. We need 32 minimum for this trip, so I will need to cast a much wider net.

What I have not done this week is study any of the 20 or so history books on the desk behind me. Those books are for the long-term sub job that I may now not be teaching. As I had hoped, I got a call yesterday from personnel; I will interview for the Social Studies position Tuesday morning. I was even the first one they called! Based on the three available half-an-hour slots, I assume that I’m one of only three candidates. I had been told last week that personnel were only going to interview on Tuesday AM, so no lengthy process for them. This all bodes well for me, but it only takes one better candidate to bump me from the position and my assumption is that the other two are pretty qualified. My advantage is that I’m a known entity, and I’m well-liked at the school.

Now, I got the call while setting up for VBS at our church. Like most years, this is a pretty big production. And for the third year in a row, we’re putting the “sky” up in the sanctuary which requires a lift. I gathered a crew to assemble the lift and then get the lift into position – no easy task since the lift is two tons and we had to go up some stairs. We used wood planks and levers to slowly ease this beast up the steps. The “sky,” by the way is a 25’ tall cloudy bed sheet/curtain. Well, I guess we were a little aggressive in taking the curtain down last year because when I got up to the rafters, 25’ in the air, I discovered that we were missing several hooks with which to attach the curtain. We had to send folks out to get more hooks, duct tape and drill bits to re-drill holes. This slowed production down a bit (since we have to set up the curtain before anyone else can set up the stage), and it wound up taking us 2.5 hours, much longer than our usual one hour. While we had the lift out, we also replaced all the dead bulbs in the church and in the big gym (the reason our church owns a lift in the first place).

Finally, the other thing that happened this week was mail-related. Our mail man gave us a note on Tuesday stating that we had to move our house numbers, since they could no longer be seen because of some bush overgrowth. I saw this as reasonable, so I moved the numbers. The note also said that if we failed to do this in two weeks, our mail would no longer be delivered. This was also reasonable. The thing is, we didn’t get any mail from Wednesday on, and so today, I will go to the post office to see what’s up. I had paid money for some expedited deliveries and nothing showed up. This is not right!