Tuesday 26 June 2007

Carry on Screening!

We spent last weekend in Strawberry celebrating our friend, Aly's birthday. Mary Ellen has a holiday house up there which Mac has done up nice and proper. It's got a barbecue, two fridges, a swamp cooler and a TV with composite video input at the front for easy games console installation. Nice.

This week, I've been concentrating on finding work including phone screenings. I'm pretty used to these. They're quickie interviews to weed out the people who sound like Mr Bean. The only difference here is that people actually like Mr Bean so I've been practising all week. I can't do the voice yet but I can change my underpants without taking off my trousers which is almost worth adding to my CV.

Luckily, it's all paid off because my first batch of interviews is lined up! More on this later. First, there's an action-packed week to be had in Prescott. Not only is it the birthday of my new brother-in-law, Daniel, but Prescott has the state's biggest Independence Day celebration on July 4th. For those of you whose attention span is extra specially short, this is another classic example of an American, triumphalist rewrite of history. In this case the aliens loose.

But wait, I've saved the best news for last... my residency application is in! As long as there aren't too many glaring errors in all the forms, I should be allowed to stay after my tourist stamp runs out - at least while the application is processed.

Here's a picture of me going into the post office with more tree in my hands than grows in this valley in a typical year:

Nestled in there second from the right is an application to work here while the other stuff goes through. This is pretty handy. It can take years for the green card to be issued but I'm allowed to work while it's in the pipeline. All the same, even that permit will probably take a matter of months. (And would you believe about half the paper in the photo is evidence that I can survive here without a job!)

Before I steal all the credit, I ought to point out that Heather McFarlane, Esq. did most of the work. She made sense of all the different forms to be filled out and plenty of them were completed by her, mostly to confirm that I'm not a scrounger. Ha! Other tasks involve writing the processing fee cheques, marrying me and taking the photo (above).

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