This is not what the beginning of a vacation should look like.
So, here's the scenario: It's Monday morning. I'm on vacation for the first time in years. I wake up to discover that the scratchy throat I've been feeling with a sense of dread for the last 4 days has blossomed into a beautiful, chest-wrenching cough. Already pretty awesome, right? Today it's sort of morphed into a coughing-nose-dripping-aching-shoulders mess, complete with a pile of kleenex to back it up.
Well one of the things I promised myself I would do this week was take care of some administrative tasks I've been putting off, and I reserved yesterday to do this. I needed to get a new driver's license, as my New Mexico license had expired. In order to do this, I needed my social security card. Problem is, my social security card went missing somewhere between here and NM or possibly NY. So I knew I was going to have to make a stop at two governmental agencies, and was bracing myself for it.
One of the things I didn't really count on was the weather. There was this "big storm" coming through the region Sunday night. Now, I don't get all up in arms about the weather, because the fact is, I live in a region that is known to get a lot of snow, and I just feel like we should be used to the snow; we work around it, assuming we're not getting like 2 feet of snow with icy particles intermixed. Yesterday we got, like, maybe 2 or 3 inches. That's nothing, that's just a small inconvenience, in my book. You know the storm is coming, set your alarm a half hour earlier, get up and scrape your car and get to work on time. If I wasn't on vacation this week that's what I'd have been doing. Well, I'd have been trudging to an early bus, at any rate.
But apparently I'm the only one who thinks this. The social security office is right around the block from me, and is scheduled to open at 9am on weekdays. So at about twenty past nine, I put on my boots and coat and hat and mittens and trudged down there. There was a line of about 15 people outside the building. I poked my head into the building and asked the security guard if this was the building to get a new social security card, and he said "Yep, but they're opening an hour late today because of the weather; ten o'clock." Now, just for the record, I checked all the closures and delays listings on the local news sites and there was no mention of any governmental offices being closed, so it's not like I didn't do my homework.
Those jerks made us all stand out in the weather that was so bad that it apparently warranted a delayed opening, waiting for them to show up to work. Sooo. Laaaame. Here I was hacking and coughing, meanwhile there's a bunch of people who had to drag their kids with them because the schools were all closed (!), so the kids are all freezing, there's a bunch of old people out there in the line, shivering and huddling together ... it was madness. At one point a security guard came out and asked if everyone was in line for the Social Security office (there are other offices in the building that were apparently open), and upon hearing that we were, he started to close the door, we were like "wait wait wait, aren't you going to let us in, it's nearly ten now!" He actually laughed and said "uh, no." I yelled out "you need to get these people in here; it's freezing and we've got kids and elderly out here!" "Yeah!" some other people shouted. I'm such an instigator. Well it didn't matter because we still stood out there until ten past ten, when the office was "ready."
Surprisingly, though, the rest of the day went surprisingly smoothly. I was in the actual Social Security office for all of 15 minutes. Then, V. and I headed down to the DMV for our drivers' licenses, by bus. The trip to and from the DMV, including the time it took us to get two licenses, took us, no joke, 1 hour, flat. And I should mention that the bus ride was about 20 minutes. My fragile little mind was completely blown.
Anyway. So I did some productive stuff and now I'm laying in bed, feeling crap. I really hope this thing clears up so I can enjoy some semblance of my recreational time. If not - oh well, at least I'm getting to rest.
