Still in Berlin...

...and still very very happy, but extremely, excruciatingly impatient. 49 days and counting. Average approval right now for people who applied with us is 40 days. Bad bad bad. That's us in St. Oberholz, my personal favorite cafe, perhaps anywhere, now that Paradiso is gone.

Status Update

EEJ in Berlin! Still no touches or anything from USCIS since 5 March.

44 Days and counting.

Leaving on a jet plane

Getting ready to hop on a plane to go see my love is just about the happiest think I can imagine.

Birthday 2008: Where is my mind? Glory Bound.

I don’t believe in perfect moments, but the occasional imperfect convergences are as close as life gets.

Birthdays have—with little exception—been rather non-eventful, but that has been fine by me. The tendency to build up events in one’s head for them to not meet expectations is potentially dangerous.

Today I turned 24, and—as nonsensical as it is—maybe that added to the way everything fitted together. As though, even in my internal world where the only absolute is that there are no absolutes, I was somehow certain that any doubts I might have about what I was doing, what I had done, and what I will be doing in the future vanished in the synthesis of several things.

Making it home, I walked down Norweger Straße, which here runs the course of the old Wall, for the first time since daylight savings began it was still light as I reached the house.

Leaving the S-Bahn my ears were accompanied by Marty singing Glory Bound which, as I got onto Norweger Straße, changed into The Pixies’ Where Is My Mind? At once it combined both the beginning of our relationship, as well as the present.

And the songs made me smile in spite of work being mundane, and that I felt more certain about things than before made me smile in spite of all the things I have left to do here, and that it was still light reminded me that you will soon be here, and that we may even have half of our process done by the time that you leave.

I can settle for imperfect convergences.

Status Update

I-129f was received by Vermont Service Center (USCIS/Homeland Security) on 8 February 2008.

We were last "touched" on 3 March 2008.

39 Days and counting.

Fungus on the Mill River

The flash makes for a rather horror-movie-like blue value, but the orange and yellow of this fungus - I think it's a Laetiporus sulphureus caught my eye. The blue haze caused by the flash plays up the bright color of the fungus, but it's also not unlike the dusky hue the woods took on that afternoon of one of my happiest days ever. We had been walking and talking and taking pictures all along the way and I knew that we would make it. I could wax poetic about brightness in the dark, but then I'd be likening our burgeoning happiness to a chunk of fungus
growing on a dead tree. It doesn't seem quite fitting.

The Laetiporus sulphureus is also called the "chicken of the woods," as it is apparently edible and very common. It grows on dead and decaying wood, in the summer and fall, usually. It also apparently has a strong, fungusy smell and a pleasant sourish taste. It doesn't quite work as an analogy, you see.

Also, for the record, this site is very useful for identifying fungi. This one, too.