In any case, I'm in a pretty good mood right now, because I was in Denver trying to get paperwork sorted out in various administrative buildings all day long. Normally that's a sure-fire recipe for a terrible mood, but things went pretty well. Basically, I'm trying to get established as a permanent resident of Costa Rica, and that takes a ton of paperwork from the US, all of which needs to be notarized. Then the notarized papers need to be authenticated by the Secretary of State of Colorado. Then that authentication needs to be verified by the Costa Rican consulate. In any case, gathering these documents is a process that by most logical calculations should take around two months, and possibly one month if you're really lucky and really dilligent. I started yesterday around noon. I really hesitate to say this, but it actually seems that around 30 hours later, I may have gethered all the papers I needed and am ready to take them to the consulate. Wow, God must like me. God must REALLY like me. In fact, due to the nature and volume of my good fortune today, one must forgive me for wondering if God in fact has an actual crush on me.
Let me tell you, though, it took some major ass kissing across the board. I even told the lady answering the phones at the Costa Rican consulate that I'd make her a batch of cookies, and I called in to register an actual compliment for a guy working the window at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (and talking to his boss sped up the document processing time from about 5 days to around 5 hours). Those are just two examples, but all day, I was on my best behavior, and people were rewarding me for it. At a place I went to get an investment record, the receptionist even gave me an office, a phone, a mug of coffee, and a parking space to use for as long as I needed it today. Wow. Denver, you stole my heart, you ol' charmer you.
To top it off, since I was downtown, I called my friend Julien again, and he invited me to a free lunch at his office. It was a lunch meeting, and the group was a branch of the Toastmasters, which from what I gather is a sort of public-speaking club. I got a free catered lunch, plus I even gave some short remarks to the group about the viability of the Smart car in light of its introduction to the American market. Seriously...you can't make this shit up.
So it was a pretty great day. It wasn't cheap, though. Each document cost a pantsload, and each document will eventually cost an additional 20 bucks at the consulate. Still, I feel like I'm in one of those credit card commercials:
-Parking Downtown: $2/hour
-Releasing a certificate of good standing with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation: $13.
-Authenticating a notary seal at the Secretary of State: $15/document
-Even possibly beating the odds and coming out ahead in a struggle to conform with the rules of multiple bureaucracies: priceless.
365: Picture a Day Project 365 Leftovers All My Pictures Sitzbook
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