North by Northwest

I spent a lot of time on trains and busses today. My afternoon began with me leaving work at noon, taking the blue line to Cumberland, transferring to a bus, and getting to my destination 90 minutes later. My business at destination #1 took only 40 minutes. Then I waited half an hour for another bus to take me to a point to transfer to another bus. With the wait, destination #2 took an hour to reach. Then I took busses back home..that took another 40 minutes. My point is, while I got a chance to tour a very boring part of the Northside, having a car would have cut my afternoon in more than half.

Destination #2 can be summarized with the following verse from Primus:

I've been to hell. I spell it...I spell it DMV
Anyone that's been there knows precisely what I mean
Stood there and I've waited and choked back the urge to scream
And if I had my druthers I'd screw a chimpanzee-call it pointless

So I turned in my Wisco card and became everything I made fun of while growing up: a card-carrying Illinois resident. I've been here for almost a year and a half, so law dictates that I should declare myself as an Illinois motorist. Now I can be 'one of them'. Anyway, this adventure was unnecessarily an hour too long. I sat in line with the rest of the chumps for a while and paid my dues. Unfortunately, the smart folks at the counters switched my names around. The database originally read my second first name first and first name as a last name. I told a guy at the desk about it and he 'fixed it'. When I got my license however, my last name was nowhere to be found. I asked the 'supervisor' about it, and instead of changing it and firing off another ID, they made me go through most of the process all over again. Thank-you bureaucracy...where would I be without you? So after making everybody I talked to verify my first and last name, I gave the photographer a very dirty look after he told me to face the camera and not tilt my head. I now appear to be an angry Illinois driver....yep, I am officially, 'one of them'.

. . [~] . 0 (Grumble) Grumbles .