By any other name...

The week started out really well. Painting progressed on Monday. On Tuesday, my friend Dave was in town and we spent the day cruising around. We were really fortunate to have a sunny day (not warm enough) and spent some time walking the beach in Trinidad. We had a great dinner at Hurricane Kate's in old town Eureka and then headed to the movies. I finally got to see Pan's Labyrinth- it was visually stimulating, but far too violent for me. I think CD will agree that there were a lot of gruesome scenes.

I'm not quite sure what happened on Wednesday, but I had hoped to go and get my driver's license. The next available appointment they had was Thursday afternoon, so I spent the morning brushing up on "the rules of the road." In addition to getting a California DL I wanted to legally change my name. Apparently I didn't read the instructions well enough. First, I needed either a passport or my birth certificate to make sure that I was whom I claimed to be. That wasted a half hour since I had to return home to pick up these items. Then, they told me that if I hadn't changed my name with Social Security, they couldn't help me at all (even though earlier another employee told me it didn't matter as long as I did it the same day). The DMV really lives up to its reputation- I got the royal run around. By the time I got out of there, the Social Security office had closed for the day.

I went down there today and waited for 45 minutes (even though I had "selected an express item") before they could help me. I just felt terrible for all the other people that seemed planted there for the rest of the day. Also, I was told that I should wait 3 business days for things to go through and not waste my time going down to the DMV since I would be turned away. By CA law, I'm supposed to get a new license within the first 10 days that I reside here... who knew things would be so complicated... In short, no driver's license this week...

Check out my new kitchen cabinets: I'm going to cook some lunch...