Its so important to keep safe, organized official personal documents. I'm learning this slowly. Its hard if you've been sort of a nomad. Like the DMV, the INS is also a good teacher. There is no grace period. I need to get organized with my health records too. I have lost track of immunizations.

I look at the bureaucratic line as a sort of outward bound ropes course. You know it will be a gauntlet going in, so work towards a resilient, stubborn, unfrustratable, and unrelenting mindset. It serves you to be as un-impassioned, direct as possible. And when the shit really goes down, begging seems to work better than shouting. :)

Because it is far easier to enforce the law against honest people, that's why. We show up for court dates, bring our credit cards, and say "yes sir" and "no ma'am" instead of whipping out an Uzi and trying to take out half the DMV.

What's really grim is when you've lost everything you've ever owned, including your all important paperwork. It is next to impossible to prove that you are who you are in such instances. Colorado will accept a notorized copy of your divorce or marriage degree, a notorized birth certificate, or a military ID. When I'd lost everything last year, I went down to get a copy of my divorce papers. The following coversation resulted:

Me: I need a notorized copy of my divorce degree

Clerk: That will be $22.75 and I'll need some ID.

Me: I lost all my paper-work. I DON'T have ID - that's what I need the divorce certificate for.

Clerk: Sorry, I cannot release that document without valid ID. Do you have a driver's license? That would work.

Me: They won't give me a license without valid ID. They said to come here.

Clerk: Sorry, can't help you. NEXT!

It was like being a character in a Kafka novel. Finally my ex got back to town (he'd been gone 3 weeks on a business trip) and had the decency to go down and get a notorized copy by showing them HIS ID, and he than handed the copy over to me and I took it down to the DMV and achieved official existance again. What an ordeal!

I highly recommend getting a safe deposit box. The small ones don't cost that much. We have all our birth certificates, marriage license, and various financial documents in there.

An insulated safe is cheaper in the long run. Pays for itself in about 2-3 years. Your stuff won't even burn in a fire, unless you live like half an hour away from the nearest fire department.

Of course, I should talk. All my stuff is in a plain old file cabinet.

We considered this when we first got a safe deposit box. But when I went to research the one to buy, Consumer Reports did not have a lot of nice things to say. Evidently having a house burn down can generate some really intense heat. The boxes that actually kept things intact at those levels were really expensive.

That was a long while ago. They might be better now.

Nah, they are still pretty much the same.

That's where the fire department's response time comes in. If you live close to the fire department, you just need to keep those documents safe until the fire is put out.

If you live out in the countryside, the bank is the obvious choice.

There's a Snake on my Desk!
 

This morning when my sister came over to take my kids to school, since I am temporarily unable to drive (see "I almost went to jail today!"), a neighborhood kid came up and showed us a Diet Pepsi bottle with a tiny snake in it. A Copperhead, to be exact. I talked him out of it, explaining that Mr. Jane worked at a reptile store for many years and is licensed to own and breed venomous reptiles. Besides, he'd be in sixteen kinds of trouble for taking it to school. He reluctantly gave it up and told me that the Neighborhood Crazy Guy caught it crawling along a sidewalk late last night and gave it to him this morning.
It's really tiny, about eight to ten inches long, and slightly bigger around than a pencil. I haven't taken it out of the bottle yet, but I poked a few air holes in it. I don't mind snakes at all, but I'm not messing with a venomous beastie without supervision. My kids made a practice trip to the babysitter's today after school, so when the old man gets here we'll go pick them up and toss the little guy out somewhere in the country. He's really cute, and I wish I could keep him, but I guess I won't. :(

Doesn't mom have all that stuff??? :worried:

Do you have any community nature centers? I bet the ones around here would be interested in having a snake like that to add to their collection. Then you could visit it and watch it grow.

Well, the old man just got home and informed me that my snake is not a Copperhead, it is a baby black racer, which he says looks remarkably similar (no, of course I'm not defending myself after misidentifying the damn thing) to a baby Copperhead. It's entirely possible he's humoring me on that one though. I'd like to take it to a nature preserve, but as I mentioned before, the town is pretty much in gridlock due to the stupid race. He says it won't make a good pet, so I guess I'll either wait till next week and drop it off there, or take him to his new country home in a few minutes.

The snake is gone; we took him to the country and let him free near a creek. And I screwed up again. It wasn't what I thought he said it was, it was a ring-sumpin-er-other watersnake. I remembered afterward, when he pointed out he said it [i]wasn't[/] a black racer. I'm dumb.

Uh...er...duh. So that's what I did wrong. :blush:

Harleys confiscated by DMV
 

Satanic DMV


Healey and Bailey have had proper titles and registrations for years, but both motorcycles were confiscated immediately. The roadside inspectors determined that the bikes didn't have original Vehicle Identification Numbers.

Standing in the grass, Healey and Bailey were dumbfounded as a DMV enforcer handed each a slip of paper stating "Auto Impound Notice." They watched helplessly as officials wearing green windbreakers marked "Investigator" loaded Healey's 1971 Sportster and Bailey's 1977 FLH onto a flatbed truck.

If you have friends who built their bikes from baskets of parts, tell them NYS is not where they want to ride. :mad2:

Broken link, Griff. :bawling:

Works now. :D