It's not easy, being green
Dec. 6th, 2014 11:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceFinally, finally, I get to be on an equal legal footing with my cats.
They've been legitimate permanent residents for the last two and a half years. Me? My status has been more ... equivocal. Subject to question and peremptory challenge and such. For the last several months, indeed, I've been walking around with an expired green card in my purse, just hoping that no one would ask to see it.
Thursday, our lovely lawyer's office phoned, to ask if we'd heard anything from the immigration people. Not a peep, quoth I. We'll get right on that, quoth they.
Friday, the letter came from the immigration people, beginning "Congratulations!"
This morning, my new - permanent, legitimate, incontestable - green card arrived.
No, I do not think that lawyerly pressure caused this sudden rush; I'm sure it was all in train and indeed in the mail already. Nevertheless. There it is, here it is. Safe at last.
So I decided to celebrate by upgrading my Linux installation. You would think I would've learned by now, this never goes well. Guess what? I have not learned, and it did not go well. I have the traditional problem, of booting to a black screen. The traditional remedy does not work, and I really have no idea what to do now. The internet is not offering me any help, curse its solitary and rectangular eye.
Happily, I have a separate installation to fall back on - this machine is not so much dual-boot as quintuple-boot - and I do not believe I have lost any data. It's just going to be a dreary day or two, copying everything over. I keep telling myself to think of it as Starting Anew, clean and fresh and sorted. Yeah, right...
Still. A little reorganisation I might manage. Putting things that belong together all in the one place, f'rexample, rather than having to search for, oh, four book covers across three separate installs and a back-up drive...
Tomorrow we're going up to the city to play all day long with our friends. After that, if you want me, I'll be right here. Whimpering. But legitimate. They can cast me out of cyberspace, but not America.
They've been legitimate permanent residents for the last two and a half years. Me? My status has been more ... equivocal. Subject to question and peremptory challenge and such. For the last several months, indeed, I've been walking around with an expired green card in my purse, just hoping that no one would ask to see it.
Thursday, our lovely lawyer's office phoned, to ask if we'd heard anything from the immigration people. Not a peep, quoth I. We'll get right on that, quoth they.
Friday, the letter came from the immigration people, beginning "Congratulations!"
This morning, my new - permanent, legitimate, incontestable - green card arrived.
No, I do not think that lawyerly pressure caused this sudden rush; I'm sure it was all in train and indeed in the mail already. Nevertheless. There it is, here it is. Safe at last.
So I decided to celebrate by upgrading my Linux installation. You would think I would've learned by now, this never goes well. Guess what? I have not learned, and it did not go well. I have the traditional problem, of booting to a black screen. The traditional remedy does not work, and I really have no idea what to do now. The internet is not offering me any help, curse its solitary and rectangular eye.
Happily, I have a separate installation to fall back on - this machine is not so much dual-boot as quintuple-boot - and I do not believe I have lost any data. It's just going to be a dreary day or two, copying everything over. I keep telling myself to think of it as Starting Anew, clean and fresh and sorted. Yeah, right...
Still. A little reorganisation I might manage. Putting things that belong together all in the one place, f'rexample, rather than having to search for, oh, four book covers across three separate installs and a back-up drive...
Tomorrow we're going up to the city to play all day long with our friends. After that, if you want me, I'll be right here. Whimpering. But legitimate. They can cast me out of cyberspace, but not America.