Epril's visa application got lost being sent from the USCIS in California to the National Visa Center in New Hampshire. I had to wait 3 weeks before I could officially file a request for somebody to look into what happened. As best I can figure, Epril's via application was just sitting around in California on somebody's desk, forgotten. Tack on another month I'm apart from my wife because some stupid fucker couldn't figure out how to drop something in the mail properly.
I went and saw "Super 8" yesterday, which should have had the subtitle "No More Mr. Nice ET". I think that action movies are starting to be written by computers now: they are so formulaic. Super 8 was simply a mashup of every government-alien-conspiracy / group-of-kids-adventuring summer blockbuster since Close Encounters Of The Third Kind and The Goonies. (But yes, it was a fine movie, all things considered... just not clever; movies need not be clever to be good.)
I was going to see Cars 2 until I saw that the summary/average of reviews on RottenTomatoes.com was even worse than the recent Pirates Of The Caribbean, which was so bad that after watching I almost stopped to bitch at the theater employees on my way out the door about it... something I had never been inclined to do before.
I've recorded about 200 of my favorite songs from Grooveshark, and now have them on my Walkman for... well, walks. However, it has been raining every day lately and I have used that as an excuse to sit at home and record more music instead of actually walking. Yes, okay... I'll go today as soon as the rain stops.
New direction in life: I'm going to start studying to be a court reporter! I found this article ("Surprising Six-Figure Jobs") and court reporter was listed. Considering I type well above 100 words per minute, used to play classical piano, and have learned several foreign languages, I figure (hope!) that I will be a natural at court reporting. Nice thing is that since the medical transcription job has me working evenings, I'll be able to do both jobs for as long as I can handle it.
The medical transcription has surprisingly picked back up for me as well. I'm not sure what has changed... probably just me. I went from struggling to do 1,000 lines in a day up to 1,500 without a problem. My daily production has not been this high in years. Of course, with all the expenses associated with getting Epril here, a vacation to New York coming up this summer, the thousands needed for Court Reporter training, and saving up to move into an apartment when Epril gets here, I need to have that extra output.
I've been out to shoot pool a couple of times lately. My game is slowly returning. It's now at about 33% of what it was at my peak. (When I break and run out in 8-ball 50% of the time, then I'll consider my game fully recovered.) Oh, another expense: I left my pool cues in The Philippines. I need to get those shipped back. They are actually the most valuable things I currently own... quite pricey when I bought them 12 years ago, and only appreciated in price since then. Yeah, I'm thinking it too: Thousands of dollars entrusted to the mail service that has served me so poorly of late. Good idea.
I'm about halfway through the fourth book of the "Tale Of Fire And Ice" series (also known as "Game of Thrones series"). What a let-down this book is. In the third book, the author killed off half of the 20 principal protagonists at the end. Now in the fourth book, he has simply stopped writing about half of the remaining protagonists and those protagonists that are being written about are either (literally) stuck somewhere when it is obvious they need to be someplace else to move the story forward, or they are wandering around aimlessly, not sure where to go.
Well the fifth book of the series is going to be hitting the shelves at about the time I finish the fourth book, so we will see whether or not the author has any idea how to kick this tale back into gear.
Just finished my walk after the rain finished. I won't do that again — at least here in Florida. After rain time comes gnat time, and apparently my bald white head is the handsomest thing your average gnat has ever seen. I must have killed 1000 of them during my 20-minute walk.
Jil. Have you looked into any airline resv. Or ticket prices yet??? Are you going To travel there to bring her back or just let her go it alone??? You may want to start looking into those if not. I'm going back in Nov and about the best thing I can find is carhey pacific. JFK to Manila is $ 1150 right now. It has 1 stop in Hongkong but it's only for about a hour. And was pretty hurry up when I went through there before. But was a nice flight. Oh. That's the round trip price.
ReplyDeleteCould Epril bring your pool cue with her when she comes, rather than trust the Post office?
ReplyDeleteI thought about Epril bringing the cues with her on the plane, but she is already going to be having a lot to think about, a lot to carry, and the cue case is about 15 pounds and is unwieldy in shape. As a favor to Epril: No, it would be better to ship it using well-insured Federal Express.
ReplyDeleteMike, I can't afford to fly out to pick up Epril, much as I would like to. I expect her 1-way ticket to cost under $800.
ReplyDeleteAre these the same federal employees who are going to handle our healthcare?
ReplyDeleteIts typical that somebody just have to forget Eprils application. I really hope that will get solved without further delays. Same happened to a close friend of mine here. He married a girl from Nigeria and the police somehow orgot to interview him. When he called and made them aware of this mistake they admit their error and it was taken care of pretty fast. Lets hope they can do the same in your case and file this so that Epril can jump on a plane and get there to florida. When time comes I assume you will take the trip to NY to meet her in JFK. That is a really really big airport
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