Vote scheduled on 12/23

With all that has gone in the last two weeks, it seems odd to even be thinking about the vote.  It is odd... but there are a bunch of dynamics to track in the process and it is one of them.  The vote actually seems to have "stuck" on the calendar for December 23rd... wouldn't that be a great Christmas present to see that get voted down.  Has anyone even see the version that was made available on 11/30?

In the immediate future the SDA moving to a new ministry is just as much of a wild card.  New people, new policies, probably less staffing given the 50% staff reduction targets the president put forward,  and an expectation they won't re-open after the holidays until some of this is worked out.

The almost humorous part of this is that essentially every key step along the way for us has not gone as planned and these things I was so concerned with had nothing to do with any of it.  We could still end up hitting up against these things in the end but they have been some of the least of my concerns.

For my work colleagues, I'll let you in on a little secret... I almost always have 3 ways to solve/approach a problem.  So if my first try fails I've got a recovery plan already thought through ready to engage.  Then Jamie pulls her hair out for a while and then decides if the crazy ideas can actually work into a plan.

At one time I treated the adoption as a project plan and it worked pretty well that way.  We got done with what we had some semblance of influence on in quite time but then had to wait an extra few weeks for the SDA app't beyond what we expected.  The SDA turned into the wild card causing all sorts of problems.  Their "rule for you" caused us to cut short or time in Lutugino and had to pushed Snezhana hard for an answer quickly -- this is not what we wanted but became the reality we had to work with.  Then we waste 4+ more days going to the next round of SDA referrals.

So what should have been 10 days we could leisurely split between the two orphanages getting to see the kids as much as possible and keep it pretty low key turned into 14days with 4 in Lutugino, 4 in Severodnetsk, and 6 dealing with the SDA and traveling.