Well, we finally found out why Jonnene hasn't received her visa from the US Consulate yet. They don't have the official envelope to mail it in! Back when she went to Sydney for the interview, she forgot to bring the envelope that had been provided. No worries, when informed that she needed that envelope she went to purchase one, returned to the consulate with it, and turned it over to the security staff to deliver to the official who had interviewed her. So she returned to Perth after being told that it should arrive on Friday (12 January). Well, it's now 18 January and a few inquiries had been left with the consulate on where the visa was...the post office said that such a package had not even been mailed yet! Jonnene had the tracking number but there was no such number in the system. Well, the consulate left a message on the phone today saying they had not sent the package yet because they still didn't have the envelope! Apparently, the security staff at the consulate had not delivered it like they were supposed to! Jonnene will call them on Friday and try to straighten things out. This is quite frustrating in that she did what she was supposed to do and we have no results because of it. I'll be waiting to see how it turns out. She only leaves for America on 30 January and it would be quite nice to have that visa!
We're still stuck with the possibility that it could be as long as 90 days before Jonnene can officially work in the States. Like most beauracracies in most countries but especially in the USA, there's a love affair with "make-work", almost a culture of creating unnecessary work to justify keeping a job within the immigration community. It's one of the reasons why it's so difficult for people who want to come here legally, yet Congress and other "do-gooders" trip over themselves to make things easy for those who illegally slip into this country. Since the legals are doing things right, they pay the penalty of huge amounts of paperwork, legal fees, application fees, and waiting, waiting, waiting. Then they do it all some more. Legals follow the law and suffer greatly....illegals knowlingly break the laws but appear to suffer few consequences.
The main thing is that she'll be here soon. We'll deal with everything else and make it all work. I feel that we've been through too much already that we can't let the little things in life mess with us. This should make us put our priorities in order and appreciate what we have, and make us stronger as a couple. Things will get better because we'll make them better.
The truck's at the shop getting some repairs done and getting a look-over for the trip. It's got over 187,000 miles on it and after we're back certainly some additional things will need to be tended to. Jonnene will get her own vehicle shortly after she arrives, making her independent and way more active around here.
My friend Paul is driving down from Little Rock Friday night to visit and drop off the luggage carrier that I'll be using for the Cali trip. He'll head back on Sunday morning. It'll be fun to hang out with him for a while and I might talk him into going to Monroe for the Warhawk's mens and womens basketball games on Saturday night. There'll be a reunion of the squads from 1981 thru 1985 there as well as a big crowd so I think we could have a good time touching base with people we know.
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