My wife’s birth certificate came in from Puerto Rico this afternoon, AFTER she had already requested another copy using some funky online form that the P.R. Federal Action Administration (or something like that) pointed her toward. She’ll have two copies and wants to try to get a passport with one of them.
We’re off to the Caribbean. Hooray hooray.
Oh crud, now she’s gonna make me go shopping.
Personal stuff ahead, and it’s a long twisting story with no real ending to boot. So that’s two reasons you probably won’t want to read this update.
Still here? Okay: Donna (my wife, for those scoring at home) and I are going on a cruise. We don’t have passports, but we’ve gone in the past with just our birth certificates (which I understand you won’t be able to do after this year, but at the moment that’s still kosher). We came home and realized we had lost our birth certificates. Well, crap. But hey, we still had six weeks. We found an official document which sure looked like her cert, and I sent off for another copy of mine from the state, so all was well.
Donna decided she wanted to get a passport. Great. She filled out the paperwork, sent off her birth-certificate-like document, paid extra to expedite things, and we were assured that she’d get everything back in plenty of time. A few days rolled by, she tried on her swimsuits, we got all excited, etc. Then we got a call from the state department: Donna’s birth document was NOT a reel-O-fficial birth certificate. Well, double crap. Okay, so we’ll order her a copy and get that all sorted out. No problem, right?
Except for one tiny thing: Donna was born on an Air Force base in Puerto Rico. We started fishing around and discovered that a request for official documents from P.R. could take up to six weeks. At this point, we had about four until the cruise.
Multi-crap.
Donna immediately sent an official request to P.R. next-day air which they didn’t actually sign for until four days later. We asked my brother-in-law the missionary to call the Department of Records for us and speak some of that there Spanish to them, but they didn’t seem too interested to help out. She’s been looking into those companies which tout two-to-four-day certificate delivery service, but they all say the same thing: Ultra-Super-Fast Service Guaranteed except Puerto Rico, which can take up to 30 business days. The cruise line says she MUST have a birth certificate or a passport to get on the ship. The State Department says she MUST have a birth certificate to get a passport. The fact that she has documents which she could not have received without a birth certificate (driver’s license, marriage license, teaching certificate, etc.) doesn’t enter into it. Puerto Rico says “Get back to us after the World Cup’s over, okay?”
So now we’re taking it to the next level. I wrote letters to my U.S. representative and to the rep from Puerto Rico. Donna called our U.S. senator’s office today. She also got the number of the P.R. consulate in Orlando, Florida. Everyone she’s talked to today seems very willing to help. After a week of very bleak news, we think we’re finally getting somewhere.
We may have just paid cruise money for an $89 plane flight to Miami. If I post a big “WOO HOO” then we got her cert. Otherwise, prepare to read the darkest, angriest blog post in the history of mankind. The suspense is killing me. Literally.
I’ve spent a few minutes over at archive.org plucking up a bunch of my old Web updates and vomiting them like lovingly digested worms into the gaping mouth of my new Web site, so that it may grow healthy and strong with the history of its forebears. Good lord what a disgusting and convoluted analogy. I’m sorry you had to read that.
It’s not the entire history of my stupid little site (stretching back to 1995), and it’s not even comprehensive for the period I do have, but it’s content. I was also blogging before blogging was cool, so that should get me some points with all you young kids. Hey, this balding, greying 40-year-old is JUST LIKE YOU! Doesn’t that make you wanna accept me into your clique? I even listen to that rap music you guys are all excited over, and I have one of those Xbox 360s! We can totally play HALO 2 and hang our pants off our butts and talk about Howard Dean and how much fun it is to pierce our lips and … Hey, wait, come back here!
I notice that my traffic has jumped since I added some content on this site. For those of you passing through … er, hello there, don’t mind the dust, this site isn’t exactly live but it’s not “PRIVATE GO AWAY MY SLIP IS SHOWING” either. I’m moving stuff over from an old static site which I’ve been cluttering up with content (such as it is) since 1994. I know it’s not all that impressive, but it’s mine so bleah.
Real content will follow soon. I tell you what.
Where the hell have I been, you ask? None of your beeswax, I reply.
… Okay, okay. I have this amazing idea for a Web site redesign. I’ve been working on it off and on since even before my last update. Seriously, you guys are gonna plotz (in a good way). I wanted to get that new design up and out there before I resumed updating this site with whatever the heck it is I usually type here. Canning recipes or something. I forget.
Of course, the best laid plans of mice and men often prevent a person from getting Web sites finished in a timely manner. To be honest, the jay-oh-bee has a siphon attached directly to my enthusiasm-for-Web-stuff glands, so when I come home all I want to do is crack open some sitcoms and drool gently on the upholstery. New Web design? Oh yeah yeah I’ll get to that not much left won’t take any time to finish up placating hand gestures
Three-hundred-odd days of hand gestures later, here we are. I really don’t have much left to go on that Web design (honest!) but you’ll just have to bear with me. I’m easily distracted and none too bright. You know, a typical webizen.
Um. Not like you guys, of course. You guys are cool.
Anyway, new site’s a-comin’ one of these days. It’s based on a blogging engine but it’s not a blog … exactly. No more than this page is a blog. Well, maybe a little more. Aww, just wait until you see it, okay?
I’m back. The passing of my mother in January took a lot ouf of me. I’ve been tired all the time, scatter-brained, distracted, hard to concentrate on anything; sort of a cross between depression and ADHD. It wasn’t until April before my wife mentioned that I was acting halfway like my old self, and even then I’d just stop in the middle of things and drop into a blue funk for an hour or so. My wife, already long-suffering, deserves some sort of medal.
I’m probably gonna be a downer for a while yet. If you’ve come here to read something ha-ha funny, like more diatribes about Jay Cronley, you’ll have to wait until I can muster up some ire at his sophomoric writing style, humorless and uninspired subject matter, and poor grasp of paragraphing. Right now, I’m just not really up to it.
If you’d like to read it, I’ve saved my original post about Mom [below]. It’s hard for me to read even now.
In other news: I may start redirecting you guys to another Web site soon. I own about eight URLs and have a pretty nice Web space that has a lot of cool backend options, and yet for some reason I continue to plink around in this pansy Cox space that doesn’t even allow for really basic custom CGI. Laaaaame. So if the two or three of you who have this place bookmarked suddenly find yourselves redirected, don’t panic. Just update your bookmarks like good Interweb citizens and carry on.
So wish me luck as I’m about to enter … the blogosphere. Dun dun dunnnnnnn.
My mother passed away during the night last night. She was 77. The EMTs determined the cause of death as congestive heart failure.
After I got married, she fell in the kitchen, breaking her shoulder. She spent months in and out of hospitals. Her first operation got infected, so they had to excise a large portion of her upper arm bone and replace it with a piece of titanium, which never quite fit right and then IT got infected. She spent a lot of time in the past two or three years on antibiotics which upset her stomach and made it hard to sleep. Over the past couple of weeks, she wasn’t sleeping much if at all, eating very little, and then her feet and ankles started swelling. I had to hound her to call the doctor and make an appointment. She was going to do that first thing tomorrow morning, since her doctor was out of town for the New Year until then. I should have taken her to the emergency room, as we were all worried about her, but she constantly assured me that she was feeling marginally better all the time. I knew she didn’t want me to worry, so I took her at her word.
My mom was always such a huge part of my life that it’s difficult to imagine a world where she’s not right on the other side of the phone or a short drive down the street. She was the only parent I ever knew, since my father died when I was too young to know about it. I love her more than she could ever know. I’ve only ever met one woman as amazing, and she’s sitting behind me ready to jump in and help at an instant’s notice for anything I’d ever want. I hope I can be the kind of husband that warrants a wife this incredible.
The next few weeks will be hard for many reasons, but I know the pain will dull if not fade completely. The hope for a better future lifts the heart out of the utter blackness of despair. Not all the way, but enough. Just enough.
I love you, Mom. I always will. Tell Dad we all say hi.
Do you know what happens when you start developing Web sites? The next thing you know, you have seven or eight vanity sites cluttering up the Internet.
Yes, I just made yet another Web site for myself. I must have a brain problem. In my defense, I did put it on some free Web space that I just picked up … it’s a shame to have something free and not use it, y’know?
So anyway … now I have a blog related to System DL. I’m sure it’ll pall after a few weeks and eventually get deleted. Before that inevitable time, however, you can trot on over to the System DL Developer (NOTE: not anymore, me bucko!) and have a gander around.
Don’t worry, this site isn’t going anywhere. I wouldn’t want to disappoint the three or four of you that come here by accident while searching Google for “game crackz warez” or “gay horse porn bondage role play” or “Jay Cronley”. This means I probably won’t update this site as often. As if that’s even humanly possible. It’s also possible that the synergy of having another site will spur me to update this place more often. Ha! I crack myself up.
Now I just have to sit back and watch my page views soar now that I’ve included the words “porn” and “warez” on it.
Today being “Never Forget” day, I decided to remember to update my Web site. So, um, here we are. How you guys been? Good, good. I’m fine, thanks for asking. Nothing really new. I’m still in the same place, working the same job. Ho hum.
Well, there are two differences: I just got a tablet PC, which is really REALLY cool. And on the other end of the spectrum, my newly divorced brother-in-law is living with us, which is really REALLY lame. We took him in because he literally had no place to go. Now we kinda wish he would find someplace pretty quick. I didn’t realize how much I’d gotten used to walking around in my underwear until he moved in and stopped me from doing it.
Anyway, the tablet’s neat. I use it to sketch and draw as I dream of freedom. Someday. Someday.
Edge-On Gaming Ltd. is on the air! Now at last you have a one-stop shop for all your System DL needs, and if I want to publish something totally different, or even a computer game, I have a place to shill it.
That site again is Edge-On Gaming Ltd. Ask for it by name at the 7-11 or Shakey’s Pizza of your choice. I’m so excited I could pound holes in concrete. I don’t know what the heck I’m talking about either.