Tashie’s Alternate Reality

Well here’s the update of what’s going on. We went down to the USCIS which is the US Citizen & Immigration Service, our appointment was for 1.45pm and we were seen by the first lady at a little booth, who wasn’t particularly nice at all - everything was fine until she asked for proof of my Dad’s illness, I replied that we’d had a phone call that morning at 6am, that he was in hospital in the Bone Marrow Unit that he had leukemia and septicemia and what other proof did she require, she said she’d need a fax or something from a doctor.

I very quietly told her that my father was dying and I hadn’t thought to ask anyone for documentation on this, that I just wanted to get home, hopefully in time to see him and burst into tears… she immediately went to talk to her manager who said “approve it”, we went to the next window where the woman had a face like a smacked arse, she asked similar questions and I was still teary and said the previous lady’s manager had said to approve it, she nodded and said she knew, we were sent to a cashier counter, the lady there way lovely and waited for us while Wags ran to an ATM to get some money to pay for the document (we hadn’t thought they wouldn’t take credit cards or Efpos).

So we paid, took our documents to another special area where there were some interview rooms and waited. A lady came out and called us in, handed us some papers, told us she was sorry for the wait, that they didn’t normally deal with emergencies like this, she gave us an original and two copies of the document that will allow me to travel back to the USA multiple times up until July 2008 and told us to make sure our Immigration Paperwork was being checked for in the mail by someone while we were away because or official appointment time would be due and we’d be out of the country and would need to be able to ask them to reschedule the appointment because failing to turn up would mean we were abandoning our case.  She shook our hands, told us her thoughts were with us and to have a safe trip - so of course I cried out of relief again.

We got to the car, phone the travel agent who had pre-booked out tickets and told her to go ahead and pay for them. So we are leaving on Monday (going Air New Zealand) and arrive into Perth on Wednesday night.  We’re going to look at a cattery here near us today, it’s actually less expensive than having them board at the Vet’s and has much bigger areas for them and as we are going to be gone for a month I think the larger area is better.  Java is going to be staying with Wag’s folks and some friends are going to be responsible for checking our mail.

We will have our laptops with us and my Dad does have broadband so we can keep in touch via email but in Australia you pay for your bandwidth usage and Secondlife takes up rather alot so the chance of us doing more than logging on to reset staff pads, give someone a tag to set up their vendor space or little things like that are very slim.  Thank god for rattie who keeps things running there on a daily basis for me and who I talk to every day on the phone anyway so i’m never far out of the loop.

For my friends who read this thank you all for your good wishes, thoughts, prayers and love - i’m sorry that i haven’t been online much to talk to you all - things have been rather turbulent here as i’m sure you can imagine, swinging from incredible highs like our wedding to incredible lows like this in less than a few seconds.  Please know that the Island isn’t going anywhere, the pads weren’t removed for “financial” reasons, so feel free to earn on them - I know it’s very quiet there now but hopefully with out new little branched out group we can have some more parties and stuff and grow in a healthy way with just friends and sift the shit out - Love you all and hopefully I’ll be able to chat more soon.