To All DC area people. Run, Hide the Midget is Invading!!!!! Consider that your warning.
Chaos has broken free, the odds have flipped and the impossible has happened. I at the last second it turns out beat French Bureaucracy but not completely into the pulp I would have preferred. No Martha Stewart holiday form molded French Bureaucracy for me... I still have to take my ass back to the States to get this Visa crap resolved. However I no longer have to do so with the flippant bureaucrat in Atlanta, but in DC instead. And the bureaucrat there sounded infinitely nicer (and it is infinitely less expensive), when I was throwing panicked French and English at him to get a guarantee if I came he would give it.
On the upside I had a return leg of my flight here I could use to get me there. This made it a possiblity and kept me within the law. As long as I can get my student status verified the return ticket has been taken care of. My mother is letting me use her frequent something points (I think...) and at last I left her she was muttering about me staying in the Arlington Sheraton. Hope I can get around easily from there.
Here is the partial itinerary:
Today I leave for Brussels to visit a friend before someone in the family takes me to the airport tomorrow morning to fly out to DC. I land at IAD in the afternoon. I might try to just head straight to the Nordstroms (gift certificate!!) and get me my moisturizer. My skin NEEDS it. And my concealer. I have no plans for that evening at all. Except for a grocery store run and making calls to 1-800 numbers that don't charge me.
Monday morning at 8:30 I am at the French Consulate on Reservoir Rd! From what I have been told it is out there but hopefully I can figure out the transport system. I will wander on Monday evening, or if something in Visa land goes wrong (seriously Murphy I will be working on the F- You cable sweater the flight over. Just go ahead and F-off already), I will be chaining the Vice Consul to his desk so I can start sniper practice using his ass as a target.
On Tuesday I go to visit the Spanish Consulate. And hopefully get me a birth certificate ordered. Yes that would be good. After that I brave figuring out the DC Metro as I know it should take me from Foggy Bottom over to Alexandria somehow. All so that I can drool on yarn at Knit Happens for an afternoon of knitting. After which I am supposed to try and meet my Mother's friend who has just moved into a one bedroom condo so can't put me up but might take me out to dinner. Alternatively I will sit in a book shop and gorge myself on cranberry juice and cranberry orange muffins.
For Wednesday all given that I dont have to put out any consular fires... PLEASE I will head to a Smithsonian or something and then get to the airport many many many hours early, check any shit and read a book or knit any items before flying back to Paris.
As for the rest of insanity. I have a new motto "that that doesn't kill me, makes me want to kill others." The hyperventilating is subsiding but I am still working my way up to master fire brigadeer. Things have mostly fallen into place just a hang up here or there to fix. I HOPE. All pretty wrappy top parts should be finished here by the time I get back in my dazed and confused status. And I will hopefully churn out some more and read a bit.
And with that I have to run as my train leaves in 2 hours and still have to get back to the flat, finish packing and to the train station.
Bon Voyage!!
Posted by Stinkerbell at November 20, 2004 09:29 AM | TrackBack