Calling out more faux outrage

To be a Theocon, one must pair any number of conflicting beliefs that, in a sufficiently developed intellect would be tantamount to mixing matter and anti-matter.

But those screaming about America's "moral" obligation to avoid saddling "our grandchildren" with stimulus debt are largely the same ones who don't give a rat's backside about trashing the world those grandchildren will inhabit.

So, folks: Why so...selective in your high-horse sense of "responsibility?" (And I thought it didn't matter anyway, because you all would be Raptured out of any consequences?) I'm dying to hear the rationalizations: Dazzle me.

Bulldozer tracks

I once quipped to a friend that the problem with setting out to bulldoze your past is that sometimes it bulldozes you instead.  I spent a chunk of this morning pulling old greeting cards and letters (that had just been pulled from storage boxes) from their envelopes and putting them into piles to be stored in a smaller box until after the next move.

Sobering enough to read the writing of those now dead, in some cases almost hearing their voices read the words.  And humbling--with the telescoping of twenty years or so--to see how faithfully cards had been sent at birthdays, Christmas, sometimes even Valentine's Day.  But, most of all, deeply shaming to realize how little I reciprocated.  A futile and utterly childish exercise, crying the way I did--wishing I could have those folks back for even a few minutes to tell them that I really did love them, despite being the selfish and self-absorbed @$$hole that I was...and still largely am.

So I guess if there's any point to this post other than sheer navel-gazing, it's to encourage my gentle reader to visualize reading each greeting card or letter they receive twenty years hence.  As much as I've avoided contact with Christmas, though, the experience has changed my thinking on digging out the boxes of cards and reviving the tradition of sending them out.  

D minus 130

Huzzah, three more documents rolled in today. That leaves four apiece for Dearest and me. And the passport photos. But those are an instant gratification kind of thing, so I'm not really counting them.

One little mystery solved

According to the folks at Kourtaki wineries, 85% of retsina is made from a grape called Savatiano. So now I just need to track down a flavor profile and try to approximate it with the kit wines on the market. Oh, yeah, and find pine resin suitable for food use. But if wine-making isn't an adventure, then you're doing something wrong...

D minus 131

Frabjous day, three sets of school transcripts arrived in today's mail, leaving only one of those in the "pending" state. Not that I'm feeling complacent--just a bit of gratification.

I couldn't help but notice, though, that the attorney's flunkie wouldn't give me a straight answer to my timeline question. Even more frustrating, the Canadian Immigration website won't release processing time estimates, purportedly because they don't have enough data after jacking around the process to jiggle the queue. (Ummm...I'm expected to do it, and with far more unknowns, folks!)

But even another baby step forward is encouraging at this point. I'm just hoping we make it out before the crazee gets too thick.

Another meal for the monkey

Oh, awesomeness. Double-dipped-in-dark-chocolate awesomeness. Cheeseburger poisoning at its finest, hot off the intertubes:

1. A corrupt California legislator is caught accepting favors from a lobby directly under his jurisdiction.
2. Sexual favors.
3. Kinky sexual favors.
4. From two (2) women, one nineteen (19) years his junior.
5. Because he bragged about about it without realizing that the mic was hot.
6. He's (of course) Republican and married.
7. And opposes same-sex marriage.

Short of Duvall living at C-Street and being a DC pol, does it get much better, I ask you? I think I'm going to start rating sex scandals on a scale of one to a hundred, just like wines are rated. Might even develop my own vocabulary, too. This one's solidly in the lower-nineties.

D minus 132

Yay, something to fret about! Dearest is missing one employment letter of reference and a diploma. So not quite everything is in flight, even after yesterday's jaunt to the post office for certified letter and money order. Oh yeah, and we still need the passport photos. So that's something else to take my mind off the exercise of wondering whether letters/checks were lost in the mail or are being ignored until the last minute by a bureaucrat (public or private).

You've no idea how badly the geek in me wants to plug all this into project-/bug-tracking software like Mantis...

D minus 134

Well, it seems my reputation for being the ever-so-slightly more organized one. Dearest emerged from the dusty-box spelunking adventure with the high school diploma and college degree; I only found the former. So it will set me back forty clams and 6 - 8 weeks to get a copy of my Bachelor's degree. Still more running around in the morning on behalf of other documentation that will cost only $20...but requires the nuisance of a money order.

Fortunately--in a silver lining sort of way--I already have to stop at the Post Office to send a registered letter to the afore-mentioned previous employer who, I suspect is the proverbial dry husk of its former self. The other real prize of my foraging among old papers and other memorabilia is more documentation for my time with that employer--things like performance reviews, recognitions, etc.--in the event that my gut feeling is correct and they will ignore all requests for documentation.

Hopefully, though, tomorrow will see the last of the requests going out the door. Between the processing fees Canadian Immigration, the extra we're paying the lawyer to help us dot "i"s and cross "t"s and the (partially self-inflicted) nickel-and-dime "incidentals," Permanent Residency is not a trivial expense. Canada had better be the Promised Land, I tell ya... ;-)

After tomorrow comes the hard part--a.k.a. the waiting. Actually, no--scratch that. We still need to have a handful of passport-style photos taken. Maybe I'll procrastinate on that so that it doesn't feel quite as though waiting is the only option. ;-) ;-)

D minus 137

Kind of mind-blowing, really, how much of the day just a few letters/forms can chew up. I'm sending out requests for school transcripts and getting the info. for Plan B, if things like degrees/diplomas/etc. can't be found in the boxes in the garage.

If I gave bureaucracies any credit for human introspection, I'd suspect that the paper-gathering required for this move is not only an attempt to weed out those lacking will, but also to force people to think about the past from which they are--geographically--distancing themselves. There's a bit of that, but it's the proverbial two-edged sword. Writing to my high school to request transcripts brings back fond memories of the playground it truly was (after the prison that was junior high), but also makes me feel chagrined at the disparity between the then-certainty that I would do something enviably remarkable, and the reality that is the latter-day workaday me.

But, don't they always say at commencement that every end is a new beginning? I can sip a of rejuvenative hope and perhaps even courage from that bowl.

And with that, it is time to send several pieces of paper through the printer and out the door...

D minus 139

Eek! In the stressing over the extraneous personal check, I totally missed the fact that the visa applications were actually delivered yesterday. That would have been D minus 140 for producing the rest of the documentation. Nothing like an extra shot of adrenaline to go with the coffee-spiked milk I just poured...

Am officially taking Friday off to make all the calls that would be impolitic to do at work, even over lunch locked in the coat room with my cellphone. Still wrestling with the issue of whether or not to trust my current employer to be adult and professional about this, though. Gotta make the mind up soon...

This is your brain on a caffeine deficit...

As part of the Canadian visa process, Dearest and I have to have documentation from the FBI that shows that neither has a criminal record. We bundled up our fingerprint forms and credit card authorizations and such up into separate envelopes last night, which was all well and good.

But when I was at the FedEx office this morning, I completely spaced the fact that the credit card authorizations were in the packets, had a minor panic, scribbled out a check, and tossed it into the packet. Now I'm fretting-fretting-fretting-fretting-fretting that the folks at the FBI will take one look at the check (which is not a valid form of payment) and use it as an excuse to can our apps without even opening them.

Frack, frack, frack, frack, freakity-fricking-frack.