Oksana and I thought it would have been cool to walk straight downstairs to the post office after the oath ceremony and submit the paperwork for her passport.  Earlier in the week we even went so far as to take new passport photos at home and get them printed at Fred Meyers.  We didn’t know for sure if she’d actually receive her certificate of naturalization at the ceremony or if it would take weeks to receive it by mail.  The latter seemed likely, so we didn’t plan on standing in the post office line.  Besides, my parents were with us and it wouldn’t be fair to have them wait around.

Oksana had to take care of one or two financial crisises at work, so she dropped us off at the hotel.  I ran over to McDonald’s for drinks and passed the time talking with my mom.  Oksana was back with us barely a half hour later and we were off to go shopping.

Home Depot was first, but we didn’t do much more than browse.  Don opted to stay in the car; he’d brought a book.  We left Home Depot for Auke Bay, to drop off Don before more shopping.  Oksana opened up our apartment and turned on the PlayStation for him, just in case he wanted to fell like a Guitar Hero.  When she got back to the car, my mom asked if we could stop real quick at a convenience store to buy my step-dad something to drink.  Took us maybe 5 minutes.  Just before she went back into our apartment, she grinned and said, “If he’s playing the game, I’m going to buy it for him.”

She walked in, he was playing Guitar Hero.  “Do you really like that game, Don?”

He didn’t miss a beat.  “Buy one!  Go buy it!  Just make sure you get two guitars!”  We added Fred Meyer on our list of stores to visit that afternoon.

(more…)

I’ve been working at UAS (in my present role as Digital Media Specialist) for almost four years now. For the last three, I’ve managed to schedule my annual leave in mid-August… just in time to miss Convocation. I wasn’t actively trying to skip out on the returning faculty members and the ensuing ITS meetings that surround them. It was just a coincidence. Swear.

So here it is, my fourth year, and it looks like I’m finally going to be in town for Convocation. I figure my boss is going to be happy – he’s been ribbing me all this time because I (and my position) still haven’t been formally introduced to the faculty at large.

Oh, but of course there was a snag! Two years ago, the big reason to take some vacation time was for my wedding and subsequent honeymoon. It never occurred to me that getting married in August would be a problem down the road. I now realize that if I want to take a day off to celebrate with my wife, I would more than likely have to find a way out of three days of meetings.

Fortunately, that didn’t turn out to be much of a problem. I approached my boss last week and asked him if he had a Convocation schedule. He did, and the whole department was allotted just 45 minutes to talk about the new technologies and procedures that we’d be bringing to campus this fall. Obviously he didn’t need me to hop up there on the podium with him, so I quickly followed up with, “Great! Can I have half of Tuesday off?”

Oksana was going to be pretty busy at work, too, since a coworker was going to be on vacation. She didn’t think she could justify taking a whole day off, so we talked about a half-day instead. Besides, who were we kidding? If we took the whole day off, we’d just end up sleeping ‘til noon, anyway!

With our bosses’ approval gained, we were ready to make the best of our second anniversary on August 17th.
(more…)