Weather permitting, we’ll be boarding a plane and heading to Virginia Beach this week. The weather between the two of us is snowy, so I’m hoping it holds up so we can at least fly there and get back as planned. I’m sure it will be fine.

This will be the first time Ian and I have flown together. We’ve done a bit of flying to see the other, but never have been on the same plane together.

He was surprised that we can’t fly directly to Virginia Beach. We have a stop-over in Detroit.

are wandering off to Italy for 3 years for a new job assignment. It will be an exciting place to visit, in addition to England. I have still not seen London. We’ve always been so busy seeing people, that we’ve found it less important to see the scenery. Funny, eh?

travel

In Immigration News,  we’re seeing some good progress on Ian’s “I want to stay in America with my wife” paperwork.

His card which authorises him to work for an American employer went to production, his paper which allows him to come back into the US if he has to leave temporarily (for holiday or emergency or what-not) is approved and on the way.

The request to remain (green card approval) has skipped over the interview phase and gone straight to California for approval, which is good.

This is what immigration used to look like.

Yesterday was not so much of a happy day.  Why?  Because I let people get to me when, in the overall scheme of things, they’re either being stupid or I’m being intolerant that day.

Maybe it’s a combination of both.

I’m trying positive comments in my head.   They’re comments about how lucky I am to have the people I love in my life.   It’s working well.

Please note that if you have made purchases or written checks that result in your balance being greater than thisnew credit line, you will have 45 days from the date of this letter to make payments to bring your balance below your credit line. If your account is overlimit, after this 45-day period, your account may be assessed an overlimit fee and the overlimit status could result in your receiving notice of an APR change on your account.

Which is complete crap.

I was under the new limit, but still, a bank can just half your credit limit, regardless of what your balance is, and tell you you’ve got to pay off the excess within 45 days or be charged an overlimit fee?

I sent them a note letting them know how bogus I think that is. And, even though, essentially, I’m glad to not have that much credit, the point is that they reduced it for no reason, didn’t inform me in advance, still send out those little checks saying “please use these convenience checks”, showing my former credit limit to entice me, and they’d expect me to repay money in 45 days if I just happened to be over the limit.

A nice way to cost people who are over the limit lots of fees, if you ask me.

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This week, Ian was able to get his state ID.   This means that he has his first official piece of US identification and no longer has to rely on his passport and his about-to-expire landing card for ID.  

We managed to locate the USCIS office downtown to show up on time for Ian’s biometrics appointment.   It is an interesting story in itself, involving a car with no working windshield wipers, lots of road splatter from melting snow and the fact that the USCIS office building is SO new, it was not locatable “exactly” by the satnav.   The satnav got us in the general vicinity, but we had to rely on building numbers to figure out if we were supposed to be proceeding east or west… by the airport, where street numbering is a bit opposite of what we are used to.

At one point, the satnav refused to offer up instructions as quickly as needed, especially when I had to choose to either get to the far right lane of the interstate or the far left, because of a horrific accident involving at least one flipped over vehicle. 

It was a mess, but we made it exactly on time.   The people at the biometrics office were nice and also quick, and another tickmark is checked off the “things to do” list to keep Ian in the US.

Wednesday, we managed to obtain the medical form, which USCIS requested  in their “did you send us all the correct paperwork” review.   It was filled out and signed off on by a Civil Surgeon, who is a special doctor appointed by immigration to address medical issues.   You can’t just go to any doctor you like.  

We sent the paperwork back to USCIS the following day, and it arrived Friday.  Soon, we’ll be getting an email saying, “Thanks for the submission.  Your case is being processed again.”

Aside from that… Work was very busy.   I’m putting a new Intranet together using Wordpress at the hubby’s suggestion, which is quite interesting (and works well) .   Lots of other things going on there, as well, but I don’t want to put anyone to sleep. 

It’s the weekend.  Thank God.  

Ian and I visited the Joslyn Art Museum this weekend. We happened to pick a day when the main exhibition had just changed. I’m not sure what the last exhibition was, but the new one was “THE HUMAN TOUCH: Selections from the RBC Wealth Management Art Collection”. It seemed to be about the human form, as you might surmise from the title.

You can see some of The Human Touch Collection here.

I think my favorite things this time were:

The miniature asian sculptures

The Degas ballerina.

I have to admit that some of the art made us laugh… like the big canvas that was painted black and each corner was a squared-off section painted in another color.    It didn’t seem like something anyone would pay a lot of money for. 

So, New Year’s Eve is over. We spent a quiet night at home and had a special dinner consisting of crab legs, steak, mashed potatoes and cheese cake. We dozed off long before midnight, and woke up around half-past. I can’t really remember the last time I stayed up till midnight.. maybe the day Ian flew in around November 1, and only because he arrived at 11:30pm, and driving half-asleep would be bad.

It’s been nice having 2 short weeks in a row. This is normally when it becomes blatantly obvious that work is going to consist of 5 long workdays for quite a long time.

On the immigration front, we received a couple of communications from USCIS. One was a biometrics appointment, set for January 13. The other was an RFE (Request for further evidence). We’re waiting for the letter that identifies what else is needed, we’ll send it in super-speedy, and it will all be fine.

It’s the extra incidence of special mailing that’s annoying, but it’ll be fine.

Other than that, we’ve been buried in snow. Some of the heaps of snow have been stacked up to 8 feet. When they plow the snow, they have to stack it somewhere. The only problem is that it’s difficult to see around an 8 foot pile of snow when you’re trying to see oncoming traffic, so the driving is a bit hazardous, but so far, so good.

Tomorrow is my dad’s birthday. You should stop by and say hello.