A Tedious Day Of Admin

Today was not as productive as I had hoped. In the morning I made myself a quick snack of cornflakes and milk. My parents are away and I am in their house. My mom decants the milk into a pretty little jug. A jug with no handy expiry date printed on the side. So I took a huge mouthful of cornflakes and sour milk. Yuck. Doggies will be having a treat later. They are not as picky as I am. I had to rethink breakfast. I hate bread and I couldn’t stomach another helping of toast. I ended up having a protein drink. Not too filling.

 

Telling myself that I was practising for the months of starvation to come, I took myself off to my storage garage all prepared to make a serious inroad into my possessions. Sadly, that went about as well as breakfast. I wandered aimlessly from side to side of the garage, unable to do anything productive. Some of the stuff is in boxes. Some if it is furniture too large to move singlehandedly. I can’t take things home to my parents’ house because I don’t know yet if I can keep it there. I ended up feeling somewhat desperate and more than a little anxious about what is going to happen to everything when I leave. I do not feel like paying close on 10k to store my things for another year. On a positive note, I did manage to free myself of my old washing machine. It used to belong to my granny and when she died I used it for a few years. It always performed admirably. Unfortunately, sometime during the past year of storage, a spring in the door catch did something and now the door does not stay closed. I tried to fix it but ran out of time and patience. I ended up donating it to Raymond the security guard at the storage garage. I am sure he will find someone with more time and patience than me. Raymond took three of the garden/cleaning guys with him and they manhandled the behemoth out of my garage. It’s a heavy one. As they were struggling to wrestle the beast down the pathway I pointed out to them that the stand did have wheels and they could actually wheel it instead of carrying it all the way. “Hehehe!” laughed Raymond cheerfully, “These are Men and they want to carry it!”

Miraculously quickly (less than fifteen metres, in fact) those Men evolved into Thinking Men. They put the beast down and wheeled it the rest of the way.

When I left the storage facility, thoroughly depressed at how little I had achieved, I signed out to a happy chorus of thanks. Raymond is going to ask his mother to bless me. Apparently, I am going to have lots of luck. This has cheered me up immensely. One oldish washing machine in exchange for lots and lots of good luck? I think I got a good deal.

Mega Drive

Yesterday I drove the bakkie from CT to Jhb so that it has a place to stand and wait patiently for my return. The drive started off beautifully, with gorgeous desert scenery and clouds and sky everywhere.

 

And I rescued a tortoise! He was big – well over a foot high. You’d think he was old enough to know better than to dither about in the middle of the highway. I drove past him and then had a bad feeling he would be squashed. So went back and watched him to see if he would make it across without me picking him up and upsetting him. The big truck on the other side of the road would have missed him but the white Mercedes behind the truck decided to overtake the truck on a corner (bit of an idiot driving) and would have driven straight into Grandpa tortoise. So I retrieved Grandpa from the middle of the road and certain death. The old fart that was overtaking on the corner then had the nerve to hoot at me and gesticulate as if to say “What the hell do you think you are doing messing around in the middle of the road?” Perhaps he thought I put the tortoise in the middle of the road and then snatched it away just for kicks? I’m not sure he even realized what I saved him from. Grandpa was big enough to put a sizeable dent in his car at the speed he was going. And if he’d swerved to miss the tortobstacle he would have gone straight over the edge and down an embankment and likely totaled his car and maybe his wife. Oh well, I don't need his gratitude. I was trying to save the tortoise, not him.

 

Not particularly excited about his salvation:

After I rescued Grandpa and put him safely on the side of the road to which he was headed, I took out my laptop and booked myself an air ticket back to CT for Sunday 10 May. (So that I can fetch the other car.) I love technology! How amazing is it that I can book myself an air ticket from the middle of nowhere???

I also stopped and took a couple of photos of the landscape and you, lucky readers, have been treated to two of them!

 

And who knew that guinea fowl were so stupid? Theymade a habit out of sitting in the middle of the road. Then they watch cars bearing down upon them and they make no effort to get out of the way. They just look slightly uncertain. I’m not going to hit them, I will make sure of it. But they don’t know that. So much for survival of the fittest – they must be prolific breeders or something.

I mean good grief! If I was a bird sitting on the floor and a HUGE white monster with blazing eyes was roaring down upon me as fast as any cheetah can run, making impossibly loud hooting noises, I’d do more than look mildly concerned. I’d fly the heck away!

Ironic – guinea fowl being the latest contenders in the age old game of chicken.

 

My tortoise rescue and beautiful scenery induced good mood lasted all the way to Kimberley, where it was dark and raining. The problem with rain and darkness in Kimberley is that Kimberley has decided that the best way to direct people through their town to Jhb, is to paint “JHB” and an arrow on the road surface. When it rains, the road gleams madly, and the car headlights reflect off the surface, rendering the “JHB” unreadable. I spent a good 20 minutes trawling up and down the Kimberley main drags, such as they are. The other annoying thing about Kimberley is that there are many informative signs. Many, many, many signs. Sign direct you to the Big Hole, the museums, the legislature, the tourist information centre, the technicon, the university etc. There are so many signs on every corner that you have to drive extremely slowly in order to read them all and ensure that a little sign to Jhb is not hiding in their midst. Not to worry, though - usually there is no little sign to Jhb. Being lost in Kimberley in the rain and the dark when you are hungry, tired and desperate for the loo is rather an unpleasant experience. After finding my way out of the maze of over sign-posted yet somehow under sign-posted streets, my relief was great. The intensity of my relief, however, was tempered by its incredibly short duration. Just after Kimberley I hit the first road works and the “stop and goes.” It seemed like there was more stopping than going. The rain also grew quite fierce. Everyone proceeded to dither along at between 40 and 60 km/h, in the middle of the road nogal, so as to increase overtaking difficulty. Clearly nobody else had to cover 1400km in one day. After the road works I hit a major hail storm, which slowed me down even further. The storm was vicious. It flung the hail straight at me as I drove. Hail was bouncing up from the road and smashing all over my windscreen. It was everywhere. When it caught my headlights as it hurtled towards me it made silver streaks – I felt like I was driving into tracer fire. It was quite exciting though, and bizarrely enough I enjoyed driving through the storm.

After the hail, I hit yet more road works.

With all the delays, the stretch from Kimberley to Jhb was most unpleasant. By the time I pulled into my parents’ driveway it was after 12 and I had been driving for over 17 hours. It was a duzi of a drive. I slept until 9 this morning, which was lovely, but I’m still a little ragged about the edges. And now the Jhb admin must commence!

 

Gainfully Unemployed

Today was my first official day of unemployment. Friday was a public holiday and the weekend didn’t count either. But today was a Monday. And I was not at work! And it was great!

I went to the civic centre to get the electricity account from my old flat taken out of my name – a task I would normally have hated. But today was different. I got to walk there at my leisure. I walked down Government Avenue, which is really pretty. I stopped and sat on the grass. I took photos of squirrels. I puttered about the city centre. I wondered past the Castle. I saw a beautiful fountain with seagulls all over it and a rainbow in the spray. As I sat on the grass being stalked by a few manic looking squirrels, who all thought I was going to give them peanuts, I was overwhelmed by peace and happiness and I thought to myself “That’s it – the year off starts now. Despite the mountain of admin I still have to do, I am going start having enjoying it NOW!”

And since then, the day has been great. The electricity chore took all of 10 minutes. I walked home back up Gov Ave and detoured through the Company Gardens, which is full of amazing trees from all over the world. I packed. I saw friends. Even the Croatian visa glitch has not dampened my mood.

Yes. A glitch.

As per my last post, the Croatians refuse to allow you to apply for a visa more than 3 months ahead of entering their country. They take between 20 and 30 working days to process said visa. It’s a nightmare logistically if you’re travelling elsewhere first. So we decided to do the expensive version, whereby you pay R900 and get a visa quickly in three working days. Only, when I called the visa section to confirm, I managed to ferret out the one vital piece of information that they had hidden from us before. No matter when you apply, they will not print a visa more than two months in advance of you entering Croatia. So it appears that we cannot do the quick visa thing that we had planned. Oh great. Out only option is to apply for our visas once we’re in Italy. The problem with that is that we are going to Spain and Mallorca in the middle of the Italy trip. And we need our passports for that. So we cannot just hand them over to the Croatians for their 20 to 30 working days. And it is going to be a delight and a half to try and find our way around Rome/Naples/Milan to find the consulate of Croatia. And even more fun to try and negotiate between Italians and Croatians and explain our problem.

So there is a very real chance we might not go to Croatia. We might get to Italy and find that it’s too much of a performance to get a Croatian visa. In which case we will likely come home and take a month to go to Spitzkoppe and climb before heading off to Asia a month early. But it’s early days yet. First we’ll try our luck in Italy.

Anyway, this news has not upset me. Sure, it’s annoying to have our plans changed like this at the last minute and it will cost us a fair amount of money to cancel flights and accommodation etc. But things happen how they are meant to and I am sure that whatever we end up doing it will be an adventure and a whole lot of fun. I also reckon that this will not be the last “disaster” we have to contend with. You’ve got to be flexible if you’re flying a year by the seat of your pants.

I’m driving the bakkie to Jhb tomorrow, where it will live for the year, so that’s it for the blog tonight. Need to get a good night’s sleep.

UK Visa Achieved

Finally! I have the UK visa clutched in my grubby paws! After submitting my application, I visited the online application tracking website every day and watched my passport progressing through the various stages. Eventually (5 and a bit working day later) I received an sms telling me to come and fetch it. To prevent parking issues, I got dropped off in town with the intention of walking home. I then stood in a queue for 20 minutes to receive my big grey envelope. It contained all of the documents I submitted for the application barring (unfortunately) the bank cheque. On the way out of the VFS offices, I took out my passport and flipped through it to see what a UK visa looked like. No visa. My heart stopped. I snatched all of the pages out of the envelope. No letter. Nothing. Nothing to explain why they hadn’t granted me a visa. WHAT AM I GOING TO DO??????? I do not have time for this! I can’t change my flights! Oh shit! 

After minor heart failure and some frenzied hunting, I discovered the visa right at the back of the passport. What on earth possessed them to put it two pages from the end of a virtually empty passport? But anyway, it is now mine. We are still on course. To celebrate, I got myself a coke and Kentucky. (Lapsed. Shocking.) I walked up Long Street gobbling down my take aways like a bergie and watching potential bag snatchers with a jaundiced eye. No one was getting near my passport.

Next on the list is the Croatian visa. As yes, the Croatian embassy is also full of rubbish. You can’t apply for a Croatian visa more than 3 months before you enter the country. Sorry for you if you’re going somewhere else first. AND, they inform you sweetly on the phone, it usually takes between 20 and 30 working days to process the visa. So you have to cut things pretty fine if you’re planning on going to a few countries in a row. It’s a delicate juggling trick. Only not as much fun as juggling. Or sticking needles in your eyes. But wait! Should you be in the situation where you need a visa in a hurry, they will whizz one through for you in 3 working days. Of course the price increases by about four or five hundred rands. So that’s what we will be doing. Beggars can’t be choosers.

Apart from waiting for my UK Visitor In Transit Visa, I have been wrapping up at work and moving out of my flat. Neither of these are particularly pleasant and they are both quite time consuming. Hence my lack of recent blogging. I feel like the intermittent blogging is becoming the norm rather than the exception. I can’t wait until this mad whirl of preparations is over and I am happily on my journey, relaxing on beaches, gazing up at majestic mountains and composing endless blog posts. Hopefully the year to come will prove to be relaxing and the time will not come where I look back on my previous sentence and laugh bitterly at my naivety….

UK Visa

We got the Schengen visas! I went to work on Thursday morning and N went to the Italian Consulate. He collected both of our passports and they each sport a shiny silver Schengen sticker. They are so pretty! So that’s Italy, Spain and Mallorca sorted. I must say again how impressed I am with the Italian Consulate. What a pleasure it was to experience such a quick, slick and polished visa application.

The Easter long weekend then threw a slight spanner in to the visa acquisition works, since all embassies joyfully seize the opportunity not to process visas on public holidays. (How unreasonable…) My contractor’s brain works differently, however, and I went in to work on Good Friday in an attempt to minimize the public holiday induced disruption to my salary cheque. Sat and Sunday were spent attempting to pack. I am now extremely antsy about how much I still have to do. On Monday, though, I quashed the antsy feeling with astonishing ease and took myself off to climb for the afternoon. I’m sure I will regret it later, but at the time I had a lot of fun. N and I also spent some of the weekend internetting and trying to find cheap accommodation in Italy. We booked a car for our time in Mallorca and Spain. (Two different cars, obviously. It’s rather a challenge to drive to Mallorca.) We have justified this gross extravagance by rationalizing that it is possible to sleep in a car. 

On the Tuesday following the long weekend, I began to sort through the UK visa forms and requirements. What a performance. What a contrast to the Italian experience. The UK visa related websites are not quick, slick or polished. There are three possible websites on which to confuse yourselves. And confuse yourselves indeed you will. There is the website for the British Consulate. There is the UK Border Agency website. There is the Visa Facilitation Services website. Each website attempts to tell you about the UK visa requirements in the most convoluted fashion possible. Each of the three websites refers the increasingly annoyed reader to one of the other websites. In the IT world we have a phrase for unnecessarily convoluted code. “Spaghetti code.” The information on these websites is spaghetti information. After a couple of determines goes at it, I managed to figure out that I must not apply for a DATV and that I will not qualify for a TWOV. (The authors of the atrocious UK visa application process are inordinately fond of four letter acronyms. I had some witty retorts all lined up, filled with my own four letter combinations, but I bit my tongue because it is likely to get me bounced from the UK quicker than a nine year old from a nightclub.) A lengthy trawl through the spaghetti info left me desperate enough to apply for a ‘general visitor’ visa and simply cough up the R995. Ouch. I rejected the plan when I envisioned paying this small fortune, only to be told that I do not qualify as a general visitor and need to fill in a transit visa application. I think at that stage I might have launched myself at the visa official and landed myself a ten year UK ban. 

At last, convinced that applying for a ‘visitor in transit’ visa was the correct thing to do, I reached for the application form. It was such a relief to finally have some certainty. It was at that point that my real woes began. 

The application forms for a UK visa are tedious. On average, they are ten pages long. They demand to know (apart from the usual visa gumph) who your mummy and daddy are and when and where they are born. They would like a list of every country that you have visited for the last ten years and the applicable dates. (Sorry for you if you holiday a lot.) They would like your last passport to prove it. Apart from your normal proof of employment and salary, they would like proof of your supplemental income. This means that you should submit a copy of your contract of lease if you derive income from property (etc etc.) At this point, let me remind you that a visitor in transit is allowed to be in the UK for less than 48 hours. What do they think I am going to do in those 48 hours? Swan into Harrods and offer to purchase the business? They would like to know that you are a fit and proper person to enter the UK. To this end they ask you whether you have any criminal convictions. No. Ever sidelined as a terrorist? No. Committed war crimes? No. Genocide? Oh well, there was the small incident concerning the last of the Pygmies, but apart from that…

They stop just short of asking when you had your last bowel movement.

What I find particularly cute is their faith in terrorists, war criminals and genocidists. Um, genoceticists. Um, geneticists. Whatever – those inclined to wipe out an entire population group. Anyway, they are possessed of a touching faith that someone might rape, murder, torture, maim or kill innocent people, but won’t lie on their visa application form. “Uh oh. I signed that! I could get into trouble if I lie!!!” 

No really – what is the point of these questions? Quite clearly, anyone who has committed any of these acts is going to lie through his pointed teeth on his visa application form. (In the unlikely event that he is stupid enough to be filling one in in the first place.) 

At least I had a chuckle or two while I filled out the application form.

Then there is the payment issue. The price of 6 hours in the UK is R656. I think this is expensive, but that's not the worst part. The worst part of paying is the lack of choice as to how you can pay. Despite the fact that our banking system is one of the most advanced and secure in the world, no EFT’s are allowed. No personal cheques - fair enough, given the levels of cheque fraud. No credit card facilities - understandable, given the surcharge inflicted on all cc transactions. No cash – sure – a robbery risk. Manual deposit? For sure! Except that the only place you can pay at is a designated Nedbank branch. I mean “the” designated Nedbank branch. There is one designated Nedbank branch in Cape Town. One. In the middle of town. It opens at 9. By the time you have gone there and made your payment, it will be late in the morning and the VFS queue will be ferocious. I am normally at work by 7. It ends up being a bit expensive to take all this time off work. So I was left with the only remaining option. A bank guaranteed cheque. Not the kind of thing you can acquire on the internet. So I had to take time off work anyway. Off to good old Std Bank. A bank cheque is expensive. R55, to be exact. Luckily, on my banking package I get one “free” per month. However it still cost me an hour’s worth of salary to go and fetch it. Unimpressed. 

My next trial by fire involved the VFS call centre. You see the British High Commission does not handle visa applications in person. They contract the service out to Visa Facilitation Services. VFS is a third party company and they are responsible for one of the convoluted websites. Having scoured the websites and earned a lot of information the hard way, I still had a question or two that I could not find an answer to. I needed to speak to a consultant. Ha. Consultant. Ha! The Clueless Call Centre, I dubbed them. I called. I was subjected to the second worst phone menu I have ever encountered (Vodacom, if you must know.) I ran up my cell phone bill while a recording wittered on about the endless options, all of which information could be found (if you looked hard enough) on one of the websites. Eventually I was given the option to speak to a consultant. Gleefully, I pressed 8. I was number four in the queue. I hung on for almost ten minutes before I was “next” in the queue. Then they cut me off. I called back. They cut me off. And a third time.

In a frightful temper, I phoned the British High Commission visa phone line. Don’t bother. It connects you to yet another recording which tells you that South Africans need a visa to travel to the UK and then it recommends that you contact VFS. My spirit almost broken, I phoned the VFS call centre for the fourth time. I was fourth in the queue. Again.

Imagine my delight when they decided that they had toyed with me enough and I was finally connected to a VFS consultant. Woo hoo! My prayers answered! Hang on a minute. He sounded Spanish. Or Italian. Or something. But not South African. Certainly not British. He didn’t know anything about SA. Or the UK. Or about visas.

Me: Hi. I have a question about a ten year UK visa. My boyfriend has one. He wants to double check exactly how long he can be in the UK for. 

“Consultant”: Yeeeees…..

Me: Well, the validity of the visa is ten years. The length of stay is 180 days. 

“Consultant”: Length of stay? What do you mean, length of stay?

Me: Um, the length of stay is how long he can be in the country for.

“Consultant”: (sounding incredibly uncertain) Ohhhhh….. Um. Ok. 180 days?

Me: Yes. How does this 180 days work? Is it 180 days per visit? Per year? Once every ten years?

“Consultant”: Oh! Yes! Its 180 days per six months! So he can be in the country for 180 days out of every six months!

Me: Um. Possibly not. 180 days is six months.

“Consultant”: Oh. Um. Hold on.

After a somewhat protracted absence, he told me it was 180 days out of every year.

I am not sure how much I trust anything the call centre tells me.  They seem to be casual staff who don’t know much at all about the visa process. This would also explain the answer to my email about where I could pay. The VFS call centre replied that I could pay at any Nedbank branch, which is patently incorrect. Be careful when you deal with the call centre. They are not as clued up as they should be. It is possible that you will receive incorrect information, and this might result in a big waste of your time.

Unlike the Italian Consulate, you can’t make an appointment for the UK visa application. You just arrive and queue. The VFS building is no 47 Strand Street in Cape Town, which is close to the Long Street Kentucky. They open at 07:00. I would recommend going early. I got there at 06:45. The nice thing about getting there early is that parking is plentiful when it is still dark. I got a space right outside the front door. I was feeling incredibly smug, until I discovered 19 people in front of me at the VFS office door. Fortunately the process was relatively quick once we were inside. An efficient security man gave us each a number as we walked in. Some of the 19 earlier birds were there to collect and not to apply so I ended up number 11 in line. We had to fill in our names on a list and then we were called up by number to hand in our documents. Some peoples’ documents were checked before they got to the counter. Mine weren’t. I still don’t know why. After handing over my forms, photos and cheque, I sat in a queue to have my finger prints and another photo taken and then I was done. From the moment the doors opened until I left, the whole thing took 40 minutes. I scurried in to work at 08:00. Not too bad! I did feel sorry for the old couple who had driven all the way from George to apply. All that way for a 4 day transit through the UK. 

The VFS people gave me a receipt and informed me that I can track my application’s progress online and it will be between 5 and 10 working days before it is ready.

I will be watching it every day with beady eyes. I am hoping for a pleasant surprise - here’s hoping it comes through quicker than anticipated.

Schengen Shennanigans

Wow, I was impressed by the Italian Consulate! They are so organized!

Their website is well put together, with all of the information easily accessible, and it’s fairly comprehensive. You can download the application form and print it out. There is also a nifty and relatively simple list of guidelines/requirements for the visa process. Do not underestimate the virtue of “simple” in the visa process. My nightmarish experiences with the UK website have brought it home to me that simple is key. Once you’ve got all your documentation together (the biggest mission of the whole process) you can go online and make an appointment to appear at the consulate to apply in person. I’m sure you must be able to phone as well, but I prefer to do everything online. Hassle free. The calendar is quick to display and it is accurate, containing a list of the days and times available for you to make an appointment. Once you’ve made an appointment (you will need your passport number as a reference) an email is sent to you confirming the date and time. You need to print this email out and take it with you to the consulate. 

Having collated our myriad documents, we trotted anxiously down to the consulate on Wednesday morning. We were 5 minutes early, full of smiles, and prepared to grovel and be ingratiating towards the Little People who have too much power and are prepared to Wield it. It was totally unnecessary. The anxiety, I mean. The groveling and ingratiating were not called into play even once. We got there and handed over our printed confirmation email. We were sent to sit in a vaguely cell like, rather horrible little room, which was hot as hell and boded ill for the rest of the appointment. However, that was the worst of it. We were only confined to our cell for 5 minutes and then we were sent through to speak to a very Italian (go figure!) looking gentleman, who whisked briskly through our application reams; stapled our photos; took our cash and told us to come back tomorrow to fetch the passports. “What????” I asked. “Tomorrow? Are you sure?”

He smiled gallantly at me (I said he was very Italian, didn’t I?) and said “Yes. Tomorrow. This is not Africa, you know!”

Now, I’m not sure where I’ve been living for the past 33 years. I really did think it was Africa. But I was fully prepared to smile and giggle and depart without correcting him. We left Little Italy feeling almost silly for having been so het up about the whole affair. It was quick, smooth and efficient. A thorough pleasure after the mayhem I experienced at Home Affairs when I renewed my passport….

I must say, though, that we had all of the necessary documentation, neatly sorted and ordered. We had the correct photos. We had enough cash. Check before you go, to see that the amount has not changed, as it is linked to the Euro and might fluctuate. You WILL be sent to the autobank if you do not have the right amount, no matter what you read on the website the week before. The autobank is a short but annoying few hundred meteres away at the Engen garage. A colleague of mine saw this happen to other people when they applied last year.

Ok, I am at work waaay too late now. I keep getting Google Talk messages from N about how alone and how cold he is. And I have the visa receipt that he needs to fetch the passports tomorrow. Clearly this is my cue to go home. 20:15 is admittedly not a respectable time to be at the office. I need to leave. Hold thumbs for a shiny Schengen sticker!!! And then it will be on to the nightmarish UK visa procedure. Oy vey.

Visas and Visas and Visas Oh My!

This was written on Monday but I didn’t have time to log onto Blogspot and post it. This is the first time I’ve had time to do it. My life is in mad disarray right now….

I'VE BEEN A BAD BLOGGER!!!!!!

For so long I have not written! I do apologise and I shall take any comments of "Oh, it’s ok - we didn't even notice" to be in the spirit of "Look, we're just being polite to make you feel better" instead of "No really. Honestly. We didn't notice." My first excuse is that the boyfriend (N) came back after his protracted three week (well it felt like a long time to me…) trip to the UK. So I've been spending some time with him and neglecting my evening blogging. My second is excuse is OmigodIhaveSoMuchToDoForMyTripAndIAmNotGettingToItAndIAmFullOfPanic.

One of my friends asked me what I will be doing for Easter this year.

Easter?

Ha. 

To the accompaniment of a bitter snort, I informed her that I will be doing nothing much. Well, unless you count a weekend of sorting, filing, packing, throwing out, organising, boxing, selling, advertising and general panicking. There will be no Easter Bunny this year.

It will instead be the long weekend of organising my life so as to enable me to go away for a year. You see, I am not very far along in the quest of Packing Up My Life. Somehow, every time I start, Life seems to get in the way. Pesky Life...

The visa stuff is all consuming. I got up today at 5:30 and was at work by 6:30, because I needed to leave early to go to the Southern Suburbs and pick up my letter of employment. Even so, I only managed to clock up 7 hours at work. Now I need to put in some extra hours to make up for it, especially since on Wednesday there will be more time off. This time it’s because we have an appointment at the Italian consulate to apply for the Schengen visas. I have spoken on the phone to a very nice sounding man and asked him a bunch of questions about what we need to bring with us. He has been extremely helpful and kind thus far, and as a result I am quite taken with the Italians. I will let you know if I still feel this way after Wed....

Visa hunting is the number one priority right now. Everything else is taking a backseat. How I wish we had started this process earlier. If I work up the energy and muster up a shred of time in the next day or so I will update you on the tribulations of obtaining the dreaded Schengen visa.

So please, everyone, forgive me if I am neglecting you a bit at the moment. My time is not my own. I think that when N asked if I wanted to go away for Easter he was a little startled at the level of panic in my bleated NO!!!!

On a happier note, there was chocolate. To make up for the lack of Easter Bunny (yup it was an excuse) I bought N a big chocolate bunny last night. He threatened to do terribly dodgy things to the bunny ("But it's a BUNNY! That's what bunnies do!") until I threatened in turn to take it away and eat it all by myself. At that point decorum was restored and the bunny was saved from a fate worse than.... Well, worse than being eaten.