At last that trip is complete! It actually went pretty well, but took a bit longer than we thought it would. Having a 1:00 p.m. appointment at the INS office apparently means you’ll be allowed to begin your three hour wait at 1:00, instead of 6 a.m. like everyone else. And here I thought that actually meant we’d be in and out of there quickly, pssh. Oh, note to self: Upon returning to Miami, take a book when going to the office. It’s better than chatting with the slightly psychotic parking lot attendant across the street, who acts like he’s jonesing to off somebody.

After my wife finally got through the long wait and went in to get her new passport stamp, the attendant at the counter checked into the status of her case and discovered—well, realized, I suppose would be a better word—that they have no idea what happened to her green card. It’s been 16 or 17 months since processing on it began, and according to the attendant, it’s supposed to take no more than 10. The woman basically admitted that she had no idea what had happened, but it was pretty safe to say we were never going to see that green card.

Fortunately, my wife had the incredible presence of mind to bring along several copies of photographs of herself, from the same lot we took the last time we applied for a green card. This ended up being extremely fortunate, because the INS attendant decided to go ahead and file another green card application for us right then and there. This requires new fingerprints and new photos! So if my wife hadn’t brought those pictures on a whim, we’d be SOL—and we’d be going back to Miami again in the near future to apply for that green card. We’ve just been saved a trip back to the city of vice! WOO HOO!

The best news of the day was that my wife got an updated work & travel authorization stamp in her passport, good until 2/26/2005. You can believe that this time, we’ll be calling the INS hotline and doing the prerecorded “replacement green card status inquiry” every couple of months along the way! No way I’m letting them fuck this one up. But in the meantime, we can travel wherever we want, so now we’ll just decide what we’re going to do.

Now that we’re back, and just in time for the weekend thank God, it’s time to relax. The traffic wasn’t too bad overall, and since we didn’t have to stay at a hotel this time, I was able to take a slightly different route into the city that bypassed the heart of downtown, plus got us in and out quicker. But I-95 was still bumper-to-bumper for the most part on our way out. Thankfully, I-75 West (Alligator Alley) was peaceful and quiet, just as it usually is, and we were able to relax for the last 95 miles or so.

On a side note, I received an email just now from NewEgg.com that they received the faulty RAM sticks I returned to them, so it should be 2-3 business days before they ship out a replacement. Can’t wait can’t wait. That tiny taste of 1 GB of memory, running in sync with my system bus, was enough to tell me that I’ve got luxurious performance ahead of me if I can just get two modules that work. Come on NewEgg, send me some good shizz.

That’s all for now!