Today I signed in to the favourite social networking site, mybloglog. It brought me to Yahoo, letting me sign in using my yahoo username! Obviously something is going on. It says “by merging MyBlogLog account with your Yahoo! account, … ” So maybe they just have some changes or upgrades, but until now I couldn’t log in. it seems, there is a bizarre error when they pushed the Yahoo! IDs live today. So better for their members if they restrict access to the site until they figure that one out. You notice it too?

So I guess my amended married name in my passport didn’t suffice, they have to have our married license to see my married name. It was just not in their list of requirements. Darn! This Netherlands Visa application is hassling us. I wish I could point it word by word in my papers that hubby’s company is responsible for me financially. Can’t they understand? Hubby’s company is flying all the rig managers and higher positions and their wives all for free! But it is okay, though we have been exchanging communications back and forth to make them understand; at least, it is already being processed.

Do you want to have show/hide links for your posts, where you can expand and collapse it? This is a trick for those using blogger or blogspot, that’s particularly useful on blogs with very long posts. What happens is that a reader will only see the titles and teaser of your posts at first, so they can skim through and see what they want to read. Then, when they want to read a post, they can click a link to see the full text through the link “read more”. The text can then be hidden again when they’re done reading by clicking “summary only”. Peekaboo view! This all happens on one page, so there is no extra navigating to or loading of other pages. You can give it a try here:

Expandable posts with Peekaboo view.
Follow Hackosphere’s directions there. He made it easy and clear.

When life is boring and gray, there is a place where we can focus and see the beauty and fun around it. This is how I see this picture. It is so divine for me. What can you say about this?

Frontier info the day:

CIA estimated the total population of India at mid-July 2008 to be 1,147.966 million. That is billions!

Since the time I started blogging, my blogs In a class by itself and Sweet and spicy life have evolved from one design to another, some of the screenshots I saved. Now I can say I know my way around basic html, but of course I had the guide from great blogging hackers who unselfishly share their knowledge and whose hacks I actually have been using in the past and this time. I am now into something new to me this time, learn some. I just think it is right for me to acknowledge them now.

Hackosphere
Hoctro’s Place
Beautiful Beta
Blogger-hacked

This time it is totally useless, as well as the $305 we paid for the Advance parole which would have let me enter into the USA if I leave without my Green Card yet. It was just that we don’t have any news about my green card for so many months that applying for travel document I-131 was comforting, knowing we have something to wait upon. But since my green card came, before being given travel document, it is now part of the experience dealing with my papers here as wife of a US Citizen.

Today I got a response from USCIS that they have received my application a month ago and still take them some 60-90 days to process it. I’m just thankful my green card came, mid-October we would have to use it, and for sure travel document would not be up yet, by estimating their time frame, before they can make a decision, it will be too late.

Which way in New Orleans? Most of the New Orleans land is below the sea level so you can see a lot of bodies of water there and they get flooded easily. They kept saying us that everything in New Orleans is unique even their way of calling directions. They described directions with respect to the waters, which weave around the city: lakeside means toward Lake Pontchartrain; riverside means toward the Mississippi River; upriver refers to Uptown; and downriver refers to Downtown.

Finally, Miami office of the Netherlands Consulate said my papers were okay. We had had several email exchanges with the New Orleans sub-office because of the health insurance thing. Hubby’s company is international with employees from all over the world, so I am also covered when I travel outside of the USA. Somehow they had hard time understanding out-of network plans of the company that the benefits department was involved already in making the New Orleans office understand. Miami said its OK, so now we are ready to receive my passport back which we Fedex’d early this week, with Netherlands visa already. Hubby was taking care of it, making sure everything would be dealt and settled with so we can have my visa to the mid-October trip. So excited!