A Brief Summary

Crikey - last time I blogged was October!!!

A lot of things have happened since then, 1 - of course - I went to UK for the pre-christmas visit. We can't afford to go after Dec 1st unless we want to take out a second mortgage on the house!

Mum and Dad and all the friends/relatives, etc are all fine and I managed to get Xmas pressies for family which was one of the main objectives of the trip.

2, I came back into the US - oh boy was that fun. So we have these parole documents which mean we can travel without any hassle right? wrong! oh soooooo wrong. At Gatwick, when I ask which - if any forms I need to fill out they tell me NONE. They lied, at MSP, my point of entry first I had to fill in a white form - which usually means go to the back of the queue but to cap it all the guy didn't have the right stamp for my parole doc so he sent me to the immigration office where I had to take a number and wait around to be served. Now I had a one hour lay-over, alongside me were a lady going to Idaho via Salt Lake and a guy who works in Minneapolis and was moaning that this happens to him every single time and he is having to go for citizenship because of the nature of his job. When I finally got served they told me I needed all three copies of the parole doc - who knew?? but "we'll let you off with a warning this time." (ohhh big of you!!) anyway by the time they let me go (without stamping my customs form - more of that later) mine and the nice english lady from Idaho's luggage were the only 2 circling the belt. At customs I got sent back AGAIN!!! to immigration because of the aforementioned non-stampage. I was well pissed off by the time I got to the gate and tried to phone C and the phone ate my money. In short everything that could go wrong - did.

We got our "you almost have a greencard" notices from the Dept of HLS and we dutifully went - this morning actually with all the documents they asked for down to yet another immigration office in SLC. I went first and guess what - we had the wrong type of photos. Those turn to the left (or whatever) and show your ear to the camera ones are old hat. Now they use the same bog standard passport photo that the rest of the world uses, face front and for christ's sake no smiling. I think the real reason they've changed is not to "make it easier" as their website claims but to allow facial recognition software to be used on everyone.

And the last piece of news, we have a cat, her name is Dory and she lived next door until Christmas Eve when they asked us if we wanted a cat for Christmas, they bought a dog in the summer and it terrified her. Currently we are working on getting her to come in through the catflap - she can go out perfectly well but "in" needs a bit of work................