Checking In

Well, the calendar on the wall says that I haven't posted in 2 weeks! Two weeks?! You'd think a lot would have happened in that time.

There hasn't been a whole lot going on.

Rumors are already swirling around about the next batch of referrals. Everything from "they'll only cover a few days" to "they'll go well into August LIDs. We'll see when we see.

Meanwhile, our fingerprints that we had to have taken to adopt expire today. We have received a letter allowing us to go get re-fingerprinted, and we will probably do that on Saturday. It kind of makes me laugh that we even have to be re-fingerprinted... As if I've become Jimmy Hoffa in the past 15 months. I understand that taking the fingerprints generates an FBI criminal check and that they are really just seeing if we've been naughty, but it seems like there should be a way to do that without taking the fingerprints again.

It's strange that each office of the USCIS (Immigration) has different procedures. I was expecting to have to pay the $70 per person fee for fingerprinting again, but apparently in Dallas, that is not the case. Thanks to a woman on one of the yahoo groups that I'm on, I was able to email our request to be re-fingerprinted on 9/7/06, and we received our letter on 9/9/06. Yes, that's a 2 day turnaround. That's the quickest action I've seen on any of the paperwork we've received during this entire process.

While I haven't been blogging, I have been working on getting a website up and running to sell handmade jewelry. I've become addicted to making jewelry over the past several months, and I have high hopes for others actually liking it, too. Blogging is much easier than e-commerce. I will post when it's actually up and running.

And finally, since I've been thinking about it all day, I have to make mention of today's date. I can't believe it's been 5 years since we were all glued to the TV in disbelief as those insane people took down the towers. Today, I watched a little bit (only a little bit) on CNN.com as they streamed the broadcast from 5 years ago. It was still unbelievable. It was very surreal watching the reporters talking about events as they unfolded, knowing that they didn't know what was coming. It was like knowing the future and watching as everyone else found out what I already knew. I remembered the disbelief, the confusion, the sadness. I remembered all of the flags that flew for days and months afterward. Then, I took a little drive to the grocery store and I was a little annoyed that I didn't see many houses with American flags out front. I didn't see flags at half staff in front of businesses. I know with all of the media coverage going on this weekend and today, that it's not possible that people have forgotten.

But, have they remembered?