Nekkid, Clueless and Feelin' Good: January 6, 2001

Saturday,
January 6, 2001

I'm leaving on a jet plane. . .

And it is fucking hard to type on one of these things.

I'm actually sitting on board Flight 81 to Chicago, on my way to the Dallas contract. This might be more of a momentous occasion if I didn't know I was flying back to Stockholm this Wednesday.

You read that right. It turns out that the easiest, fastest and all around more efficient way for Lyndon to get a green card is for us to go into the US Embassy together and start the paperwork. Unfortunately, I only found out about this Friday evening, a wee bit too late to do anything useful about it that day. Considering that the first week of a contract is usually given over to running around and getting various things set up anyway (and I'd been booked on that cross-cultural dealie for Wednesday and Thursday so technically I wouldn't have been able to come in until Friday anyway), the best time to go back will be Wednesday night, spend Thursday and Friday getting the paperwork sorted, then flying back to Dallas on Sunday.

But Mel, I hear you ask, why don't you just postpone your flight until later next week and do all the paperwork on Monday? That would have been the cheapest option, yes, except that there were already so many things scheduled for the beginning of the week (the plane tickets, the Chicago hotel room, the car in Dallas, the NEO seminar, Joslyn taking me to the DPS for my license) that trying to reschedule them would be a nightmare and a half, and in Joslyn's case would mean that she couldn't take me to the DPS at all. Better to bite the bullet, fly back on my own nickel and get the paperwork done.

Besides, it gives me another chance to bring stuff back to the States and more time with Lyndon. While the green card is processing he's going to look into getting a job offer from Dallas (which would give him an L visa and permission to stay and work in the country for five years). If that doesn't work, he'll stay in Stockholm and take every site installation in the States, and come over as soon as he has what's called a Work Card (an interim card that he can get as the spouse of an American citizen). If everything works out the way we hope, he'll be over by the end of February. And if it doesn't, we're going to have a true transatlantic marriage for a couple of months.

You'll excuse me if I'm not bouncing with joy.

I suppose this shouldn't have surprised me, though. There's always an incredible amount of hassle and paperwork when you move country. I just thought, as my spouse of 8 years, it would be a heck of a lot easier for him to get the green card.

Silly me.

LATER: my best friend Patrick picked me up from the airport and drove me to the hotel (a surprisingly small and somewhat shabby Best Western), where I took a blessed nap and shower while he went out to get theater tickets (apparently they're making THE PRODUCERS into a musical, starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, and it's doing the preview run in Chicago. And there was much rejoicing among the musical theater set. . .).

As soon as I felt somewhat human again, we went out and hit Filene's Basement. Oh, my God, but I love FB -- I wound up getting $300 worth of work clothes (as I'm not sure how happy they'd be if I showed up in jeans every day. It's times like this that I envy the engineers) and wound up with five pairs of slacks, four tops and this beautiful fitted green tweed jacket that will go perfectly with the green wool slacks.

Mellie is a happy camper. But her bags are seriously full now.

After that, we went over to the Sheraton and grabbed Stacy (who was staying downtown on business), then headed down to Greektown and The Greek Islands for dinner. Now I see why Patrick loves this restaurant with such a passion -- the food is SOOOOO good! We started off with a trio of dips and saganaki, then I had gyros and lamb loin that was to die for. Man, even thinking about it is making me hungry again.

And I swear that I'm putting these two on tour, if only to get them off MY case. When they weren't abusing me mercilessly, they were trading quips at roughly the speed of light and pushing me to the point where I almost needed Depends, I was laughing so hard (which was probably the point, knowing them. Bastards).

We dropped Stacy back at her hotel after dinner, and now Patrick is sprawled on the other side of the hotel room, swilling Carolans and critiquing something on the Comedy Channel. Yeah, I'm definitely home.

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