Author: Greg

So we made it to the UK safe and sound, recovered from the jetlag (eventually). Now we’re sitting in the first class compartment on a GNER train that just pulled into Darlington, enjoying the endless supplies of complimentary tea, the rolling countryside vistas and free wifi. Yes, life is pretty sweet right now.

In about 3 or so hours we should be pulling into London for a few days in the big smoke before heading waaaay up north to Inverness for some monster hunting before heading back to the Glasgow/Edinburgh central belt area before heading back to Atlanta next Tuesday.

Since I’m going on vacation, I thought I’d try somethng different… Since I probably wont be online much if at all, that means I wont be here to flush out the deluge of spam comments I get, so while I’m away I’ve added a counter to the top of the screen so you can see how much shit I have to deal with on a regular basis… The last time I’m going to flush it is right before I leave for the airport at around 1pm EST.

Should be interesting as to what the final total will be a week on Tuesday.

Also I’m not sure how many camera phone pictures I’ll be able to send as Flickr has been a bit pissy about accepting MMS messages, plus the cost of sending them from the UK and all.

As you know, I’m scheduled to go on vacation on Friday, but recent events almost dictated that I may not have actually be going at all. I hope you like stories, cause this one is a doozy, one of those kinds you wouldn’t believe…

Flashing back to May 25th, that was supposed to be the date of my final residency interview, Robyn and I were told it was pretty much a formality, and indeed it was when we got to the USCIS office, they didn’t even need to look at the mass of information we provided to prove our marriage was real, but we were also told there was a slight problem as my fingerprints hadn’t been taken, but it would be sorted out quickly if I went to the fingerprint office that day, which I did. We were then told it should only take a week or two before we would receive the receipt to come to the main Atlanta USCIS office downtown so I could get my passport stamped to I can get back into the country should I leave…

Well it’s been almost 3 weeks later and we had received nothing at all, and as we are due to leave on Friday we were kind of stressing about this small issue oh so slightly, so our lawyers arranged an appointment for us Tuesday at 2pm, or what we thought would be a sit down appointment where we could ask what was going on, but instead it was the immigration equivalent of the deli counter, take a ticket and wait your turn, and to say there was at least 50 people ahead of me in the queue would tell you how busy this place was… So by 3pm (and 27 people still ahead of me) I had to leave to come back to work for a meeting, I then arranged the earliest appointment I could for yesterday morning, which was 6:30am. So I get downtown at 5:45 and even then I’m like 10th in line.

And once I get seen, the person behind the desk basically ignored everything I said explaining my situation and said if I don’t have the proper receipt, I don’t get the stamp and sent me on my way…

So I call Robyn and she’s stressing something chronic now, so she calls the USCIS hotline and they suggest getting an Emergancy Advanced Parole document, but apparently this would take up to 90 days to get, pretty much negating the emergancy part… But at the 11th hour the lawyers came through and arranged for my passport to get stamped at the USCIS office in Sandy Springs.

Sure, it’s all sorted now, but for a few days I was cursing everyone involved in this near miss… Now I can relax and go back home tomorrow.

So the US suffered an embarrasing 3-0 loss to the Czech Republic today… A shame really, I was hoping they would avoid a repeat of the France 98 catastrophe.

It’s not that the US were bad per se, I mean, had Claudio Reyna’s shot that hit the post at 1-0 went in the net, we might be talking about a different match altogether, but once Tomas Rosicky scored the Czech’s second it was pretty much a formality, the Czech’s aren’t ranked number 2 in the world for nothing. But it’s not all over, if they can get even a draw from Italy and Ghana can get something from the Czech’s then they are right back in it…

Mind you, I’m Scottish, I’m used to hanging on to mathematical improbabilities in major competitions, the one hope I do have is people over here dont look at this result and think “WE SUCK! SOCCER SUCKS! US CANT PLAY SOCCER!” as the support going into todays game was great and the US soccer market has made a lot of progress off the back of the 2002 World Cup. It ain’t over, not yet, not by a long way…

45 minutes until kick off, I can’t wait… I have my month all planned out.

Now, I can only hope that the BBC aren’t blocking international listeners from listening on Radio Five Live online, otherwise it’s gonna suck.

EDIT: Yep, BBC suck… But not as much as talksport who teased us with the first 5 minutes and cut off mere seconds before Germany scored. Looks like I’ll be bringing in the XM radio next week.

Upcoming Calendar

Originally uploaded by FLC.

Who knew working a 9 to 5 gig would be so tiring? Well, it’s more like an 8:30 to 5:30 gig, but I’ll round it up/down for arguments sake… I’ve been here just over two weeks now and I’m beat, though yesterday was a long day as we were rushing to get a site launched.

Anyways, a lot has changed in those two weeks, for one, I now have a car, nothing special, just a little 1988 Honda Accord that one of Robyn’s co-workers parents used to drive, it’s in pretty good condition and only got 90,000 miles on the clock, weighed in at under a grand, though it’s not without it’s problems, namely no AC… Otherwise it’s great, incredibly fun to drive.

Weird huh? I’m 28 and I’ve just bought my first car… Good thing too, that MARTA commute was really starting to wear me down even more, I’d gladly take a car with no AC over MARTA anyday of the week, who needs AC when you can do 4×60 down 400 in the morning?