Travel Preparation is going post-apocalyptically

The Mayans called it: the 13th ɓakʼtun ended as expected.  And while it was definitely a pretty good ɓakʼtun, I'm confident this one could even better.

Here's the state of the end of our world, by which I mean our present stay in New Jersey:

1. Bags packed? - nope (seriously?  Not even started...)
2. Place to stay? - nope (but there's a lovely B&B I should email...)
3. Rental car for when we get there? - nope
4. Moved out of our current place? - nope
5. Dissertation filed? - nope (January 4, though, that's like it being done, almost kind of)
6. Plane tickets? - check!  We leave on January 14th.  Or, as they say in SA for reasons that perplex me, "14 January".  Hey, it's also 14 ɓakʼtun now, maybe that's an auspicious date for travel and starting new things.  Or maybe it's just a Monday.
7. Visa? - nope.  This is the big one.  Current status: waiting for our requests for criminal history reports to be fulfilled, because the South African consulate in NYC will not consider our application without such a thing.  (Incidentally, they will do so in other places - it's just New Yorkers they don't trust.  Which I am in no real position to disagree with...)
   
   So we requested our criminal histories, and the website says it may take 5-6 weeks, and it's been about 5 already.  The FBI is either being slow, or reluctant to admit that we are not criminal masterminds with a rich and intriguing past.  I guess I don't care which - the consulate says they need a report, but specify nothing about what it must say.  Maybe I should scrawl "acquitted of minor racketeering charges" in crayon on a piece of paper and send it in as my criminal history.  I guess that's probably fraud or something, but there's no way it would make it onto the FBI report at this stage, right?

 ...enh, I'm sure it'll all work out somehow.

Fun Fact: Did you know that the FBI wants to be your friend on facebook?  Or that they want you to follow them on twitter, youtube and itunes?  Check out the footer they have on the site.





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Ons heb n blog! / Sineblog!

Hello!  This is our new blog! 
If you don't know me, then I don't understand how you got here.  But I'm Will, and my co-author on here is my wife Alyson.  Nice to meet you!... or whatever 

I am new to this whole web-blogging thing, but we're moving to South Africa in like 2 weeks or something and I guess that's a big deal.  I mean, it's a lot of things to plan.  So far, few of them have been ge-plaanned (Alyson asks what that means.  I tell her it's me making up an Afrikaans word that means 'planned'.  The 'ge-' part makes it a past participle). 

Anyway, presumably at some point there will be cool stuff to look at on here.  Pictures of elephants, or us drinking mead in the Indian ocean, or somesuch.  Stay tuned.