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And then I made a little puddle on the floor

FedEx

I was going to publish the tracking numbers so everyone could follow the twist of the screw with me, but something in the back of my head said that was a bad idea. I can’t put my finger on why, but I don’t need to make unnecessary withdrawals from my stupid account. I’m going to need those credits.

Yep, they’re away. One is cat papers going to the USDA, the other is weasel papers going to the embassy. Pray god I didn’t get them the wrong way around. I don’t want to be wormed before I get on the plane.

The fingerprint place is a general immigration office of some kind. The people who worked in it were teh suck. The surly cow who took my prints refused to join me in a laugh about my full and legal name, a sure sign she was working at being a bitch. She thought I was insanely stupid because she had to tell me what to do. It particularly exasperated her when she pointed to a chair and I sat in it (I was supposed to put my stuff on it). This seems doubly unfair since she ordered me to sit in the chair later by pointing to it.

And just before she took my prints, somebody leaned over and said something that really pissed her off. She’d start to roll one of my fingers and then fling up her hands and shout “He’s lucky I wasn’t there — I’d’ve said something!” and then she’d start to roll a finger again and shout, “I wouldn’t have let that pass!” and gesture in the air. With my finger.

I had to fill out a customer response card on the way out. I gave her good marks for everything. You don’t fuck with civil servants if you want your papers to get there.

That machine is cool, anyhow. It’s a little plate of glass and a big monitor, and you get to see your fingerprints up huge in realtime. Then it grades the quality of the print. I guess I got passing grades.

Hartford wasn’t bad, but I couldn’t find the FedEx place. My GPS got the stupids and kept sending me in circles or directing me down roads that didn’t exist or weren’t named that. It particularly enjoyed sending me up and down Asylum Street (and Asylum Place and Asylum Ave). Ha ha. Yes. I gets it. Wants to go home now?

I hit a FedEx Kinko’s in Providence and got everything packaged up. Then my Visa card bounced. “!” I said. This was a pain because I’d used that card number for the return FedEx slips and had to throw those away and make new ones using a different card number and repackage everything.

Got home, called the credit card company, gave the robot my number…and immediately got to a human being. “!” I thought.

“Your account was frozen because of suspicious activity from overseas.”
“Hm?”
“November 4. Great Britain.”
“Oh. I do have somebody in Britain. I might have bought him something locally. How much was it?”
“$942.”
“Oh, dear. That is rather a lot of…OH HOLY FLAMING BATSHIT!!! YOU BOUNCED MY VISA APPLICATION FEE?!?!
“Well, I can’t really tell if it bounced or if we froze the account after that, but I’ll unfreeze you now! And thanks for calling Huge Stupid Credit Card Company! click

Jesus. They didn’t call me or anything. They waited until I tried to use the card and called them. So either they let a big suspicious charge float for eight days without saying anything or they’ve crushed my little weaselly dreams. Crushed them, I say!

November 12, 2008 — 6:54 pm
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