1-900-IMMIGRATION

After talking to Irish Declan and possibly Welsh Maria on the British embassy's 900 number (at the low low cost of $2.49/minute. Hey, wait a minute. Aren't 900 numbers exclusively for phone sex? I thought that was a law. Well, they were both a bit breathy when they told me my "affairs were being handled with the utmost care." Declan especially) I decided it was time for a slice.

Greenfield has been globally warmed to a delightful 73º Fahrenheit and it's exactly perfect outside though I'm not sure it's supposed to be quite this nice in New England in early May. Also, there are wormy little caterpillars hanging from just about every tree in town. They hover at about eye-level and get caught in what's left of my hair. It seems that since I've left these guys have basically taken over town and why wouldn't they, Greenfield is lovely, the perfect place to raise a gypsy moth family if you ask me. We can thank Etienne Leopold Trouvelot, artist, astronomer and immigrant, who moonlighted as an entomologist, for introducing the little bastards to America by way of Medford, Massachusetts. Thanks Etienne, you've proven that armchair entomology is just as ridiculous as the name suggests and that even if a town builds a thousand clipper ships and provides a home for the writer of "Jingle Bells" it's legacy can and will be forever tarnished by a single bug-loving Frenchman.

I'm closing Wikipedia now.

So I'm at the computer despite the excellentness of the day because I needed to kick this blog off and if I don't do it now I'll just have to do it tomorrow. When the weather turns to shit. Hmmm...

The process for getting a visa for me to live in England has proven a bit more technical than Kristy or I suspected. I think we thought we'd just send them some forms and then the Queen would send me a letter on flowery stationery and written in a loopy, royal hand inviting me to the Kingdom. Not so. Not at all so. But while the process is more difficult than we'd hoped I would guess that the difficulty I'm having getting out of America pales in comparison to the trouble people have getting into the U.S. (something K and I will be undertaking in the not-so-distant future). I've browsed through chat rooms where the people are swapping advice along the lines of:

fancypantsexpat9: I thought the D77-k11 form covered all immigrants from EU nations?
strangelyknowledgable67: That was true until the Patriot act was reauthorized, now you need file an amendment form D77-k11-C along with a copy of the original form. And one of your fingers.

So I'm glad I'm not going through that. Yet.

I was thinking about taking all my old blogs from Japan all the way on up to the present and repackaging them here, in chronological order with little pithy intros, so that might be the next project. What I most definitely will be doing is chronicling our travels through Asia and Europe, also with pithy little intros.

I'm all about the pithy little intro.

I'm going to wrap this very first blog up and get some sunshine.

I will be talking at you again soon.