Torrefaction

I finally got all of the papers together, notarized, and certified by the secretary of state.  I walked them into the Chinese Consulate for authentication, thinking I'd ask for "rush" processing - you know, while-U-wait.  Then I saw the prices.  Regular processing (4 days): $20 per document.  2-3 day processing: add $30 per document.  Same/Next day processing: add $50 per document.  So I could pick them up in 24 hours for a price of $70 per document.  Now, if this is a passport application or other single doc, sure, no biggie.  But since I have 16 documents in my heap, I opted to wait until next Thursday to pick them up.

On the plus side, they were very nice, and when the gal at the window told me I needed to turn in a photocopy of my home study along with the original, she pointed me to a photocopier that was right there and waited while I made the copy.  So I got glared at a bit by people in line behind me but didn't have to go through the (LONG) drop-off line twice. Good thing I had some change in my pocket for the copier.

The other nice thing was meeting a Chinese family in the elevator.  The mom had a young baby girl in a carrier, and there was another girl of about 3 with them, as well as a teenage girl.  I, of course, kind of fixated on the baby and said "what a pretty baby" to the mom and dad.  Then, feeling the baleful eye of a jealous toddler upon me, I said "you're very pretty too!" to the very pretty 3-year-old.  At that point the dad smiled and said, with enormous pride in his voice, "Three daughters!" and "big family!"  I smiled and said "wow, that's great!" and then we were all happily on our way out of the building.  It was a nice little encounter.

Posted by alchemist at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A Notary is coming to my house tonight to notarize a bunch of paperwork.  This is more expensive than going to a regular, 9-to-5 at the currency exchange notary, but what I get is someone who knows what an adoption dossier is, knows what "true copy" notarization is, and comes to my house in the evening after work.  Yay.  Now I just have to stop pacing around while I wait.

In the land of paperwork, we're still waiting for the doctor's forms to be done...apparently hepatitis tests take FOREVER...and I had to fedex my birth certificate to Indiana last night to get it certified by the Indiana secretary of state.  Apparently you can't just certify state documents in whatever state you happen to be living in right now; they have to be certified in their state of origin.  Duh.  I would have known this earlier if I'd read all the way through my agency's dossier guide a month ago, or if I had called them to ask stuff, but I just couldn't stand to while we were waiting for the I-171H.  *slaps self*

The nice thing is that when you call the Indiana secretary of state authentication office with a question, you get a real live person who puts down the phone and toddles off to ask the girl who knows, and comes back with the answer you need.  Ahh.

Posted by alchemist at 05:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

when Susan died

we all sat in the lounge and cried

I phoned to tell Michael and Andre
Michael said "that's so heavy"
as if I'd dropped the news on his foot

as if he suddenly knew why people say
your nerves all end in your toes
it felt like when you mash
your toe into a crate
you can almost see the pain
crawl up your leg into your brain
if time would stop you'd tie
a tourniquet
the pain might not get past your knee
you could stop the nerves from clanging

but if you did you'd lose your foot
you'd limp around on a wooden leg
you'd feel the phantom of your foot instead
you could never scratch your itchy toe
you'd have to wear long pants and boots
or everyone would know

 

Posted by alchemist at 09:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I decided to take our local police letters, which come pre-notarized, to the Secretary of State's office to get them certified. The walk-in service office in Chicago is on State street between Old Navy and Filene's, across from Nordstrom Rack.  Know your Chicago Landmarks.  It's in a building shared by the Joffrey Ballet and a couple other businesses.

When I walk into the building, I see that the lobby is full of beautiful vintage light fixtures and brass and whatnot.  Every other light fixture has a pink bulb in it, which is presumably because October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, but I take the pretty pink and white, and the presence of a reknowned ballet company, as a sign that the gods of Architecture, anyway, are smiling on my efforts to adopt a little girl.  A little girl who will be raised as an ardent feminist like her mother and who will possibly have no use for ballet or the color pink, but still.  I'll take any good omen I can get.

The Secretary of State's office is predictably grey and dreary, but there's only one person in line ahead of me so I'm still feeling optimistic.  I fill out a form requesting certification of the documents - not a very complex form, but I forget what it says on it.  As I give it to the gal behind the counter I'm expecting a barrage of questions ranging from "certification? What are you talking about?" to "who do you think you are, trying to adopt a child!?!!"  Instead, she says "four dollars" and lets me figure out for myself that I should go sit down and wait for my name to be called.  About 5 minutes later, they call me and give me my certified docs. 

So, I still have to do this with all the other docs, once they're notarized, and I still have to take everything to the Chinese consulate to have them seal it.  So I'm anxious about all that but not nearly so much as before.  Practice is good.

With luck we can pick up the doctor forms tomorrow.  If so, the "mobile notary" will come to my house on Tuesday night and notarize the whole dossier, and then I can walk it through the next steps.

 

 

Posted by alchemist at 05:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Oh, the fun of paperchasing.  So, we got our new police letters.  Now we're just waiting on the doctor letters - we had blood drawn on Saturday, so results will be in on Wednesday.  I need to make appointments for us to see the doc so we can get the paperwork filled out as soon as the blood results come back. 

For getting everything sealed, I've found a mobile notary who's heard of an adoption dossier (all of my notary friends say "huh?" when I talk about the whole "true copy" thing) and will do the whole dossier for $100.  So once I have everything I'll have her notarize it and I can have it sealed.  One thing that will make all this easier is that I'm in Chicago, so I'll be able to walk things through the secretary of state and Chinese consulate myself.

In the meantime, my options are:

1. take the items that are already notarized to get sealed, so I can discover in advance if there are any glitches in the process, thereby hopefully avoiding another delay next week when I have everything

2. wait and get everything sealed together, so I can avoid having seals expire if there's a significant delay with the doctor or some other surprise

I'm leaning toward taking the police letters, which are relatively easy to get more of (as long as we don't, y'know, embark upon a life of crime), through the seal process.  It would kill me to lose another two weeks at this point.  But I'm so wigged about it all I'm kind of paralyzed. I guess I'll decide tomorrow.

 

Posted by alchemist at 05:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Playing Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is the only thing that's kept me sane for the past month. Between the adoption paperwork snafu, a family medical crisis, and a promotion at work (yay, but yikes too!), I've just got way, way, way too much stress in my life. So throwing myself into a realm filled with clear objectives and solvable problems is very appealing.  (Particularly a realm with an available "add gold" cheat!)

Oblivion is a totally bitchin' RPG that isn't massively multiplayer and isn't played online, so it's good for antisocial gamers like me. (I'm perfectly sociable about everything else, but game time is me time). You can customize your character a lot, the leveling and skills system makes sense, the world is HUGE, and there are a bazillion small quests in addition to the main one. The main quest involves saving the kingdom, like basically any RPG worth its salt.

The quests are pretty good, and combat is fun. The different cities are actually pretty different from each other, and you can buy houses in them once you save or steal enough money (or, um, cheat). The pacing is mostly slow and meandery at first, so you have to stick with it long enough to discover the main places in the realm and collect some quests, but once you do, it gets to be pretty cool. The quests and story aren't quite up to the level of Neverwinter Nights (best RPG ever!) but they're not bad, and the character development is better than NN. For instance, you can buy potions at a shop, or you can wander around collecting odd ingredients in the wilderness and mix your own potions, developing alchemy as a skill over time....whatever you feel like. You can join several different guilds including one for murderers.  When I'm done playing my current character, who's mainly a blade fighting hero, I'm going to play the whole thing again with an evil magician character. But unlike most RPG's, you're not restricted to narrow character classes - if you want to specialize in alchemy AND blunt weapons, you can.  Same goes for good/evil - there's no alignment.  You collect fame and/or infamy points as you go, which determines how people react to you and affects some elements of your game experience.

Anyway, it's good. I've logged 63 hours of play time so far, with no end in sight.  I love a good timesink!

Posted by alchemist at 04:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

WITH RAGE AND FRUSTRATION, not with joy.  We finally got our I-171H on Friday.  So now we can pull everything together into a dossier and get it notarized and sealed and send it to CCAI (our agency).  Joy!  EXCEPT!  I see in our handy CCAI Dossier Guide that the dates on the doctor's form must be LESS than 6 months old in order to get the seal from the Chinese consulate.  We've been at this paperchase thing since February*, so we are FUCKED and have to go back to the doctor for another physical and more bloodwork.  So I get to blow more of my precious vacation time, money, and blood just to get the SAME DAMN THING over again.  And since the I-171H is only good for 18 months, even a short delay is A BIG FUCKING PROBLEM.

 

FUCK! FUCK FUCK FUCK!  I am so unbelievably discouraged. 

 

*"3 to 6 months," MY ASS 

Posted by alchemist at 09:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I just signed up for NaNoWriMo!  This is the thing where you write 55,000 words of a new novel between November 1 and November 30.  Since I have a novel plotted out in detail in my head, this seems like a good way to get my first draft on paper without my internal editor gumming up the works.  I'll have to write very, very fast in order to "win" (reach the 55k word goal) so I won't be able to stop and pretty anything up or, you know, question my basic theme & structure halfway through every scene.  55k words of tiresome, ham-handed pedantery will do the job nicely, and I'm pretty sure I can produce that.  And I'm competitive enough that I want to make it into the winners' circle...really really want to.  This is my first time NaNo-ing and I'm super excited about it!  And I need a new project to look forward to right now.

So, who's with me?  My handle on the nano boards is alchemist.  See you in November! 

Posted by alchemist at 07:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Well, after all the drama with the stinkiness we got a surprisingly decent payout from the insurance company.  Surprising because of the age and mileage of the car, not because we expected to get screwed.  We're with State Farm and we LOVE those guys, seriously.  Anyway, after looking at this and that we decided to get a Honda CR-V.  I can haul stuff in it, I can eventually haul a kid in it, but I can still maneuver and park it.  And while the mileage isn't quite as good as the old Corrolla (22 city mpg vs. 25-ish) I won't have to raise and slaughter my own dinosaurs to keep up with its fuel needs.  Hub is still happily driving a Civic, so we're a Honda family now.

I love the new car but after all my years of Toyota driving I feel like an apostate. 

Posted by alchemist at 05:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)