Tuesday, August 17, 2010

I Am Not Dead. Again.

Yeah, I know.  I don't want to talk about it.  To be fair, I'm trying to do too many things at once which ends up being nothing at all, and earn money from not doing them.  You know how it goes.

It's been an interesting summer.  I spent two weeks in Houston which were so nearly insufferable that I went again for another week; Jethro nearly murdered my sister and one of the pale, slender youths she's sleeping with, and I discovered that I am a 15 year fugitive from justice.  

I will just say because the red tape has had that long to entwine itself around my out-of-state warrant, you can imagine how supremely difficult it is to refrain from saying swear words to people who could extradite me.  I'm trying not to let it get me down, but the way I found out caused an almost out of body experience of humiliation.  Here goes:

I tried to renew my drivers license online, but discovered I could not.  All it said was that I wasn't eligible.  Fair enough.  I've changed my address plenty of times and renewed it once online before, so it seemed reasonable that I'd have to go to the DMV so they could make sure I hadn't lost an eye or something.

So knowing the state of most DMVs, I decided not to go to the one in the city but opted instead to make a slightly further drive to a small town DMV where hopefully the lines would be shorter and the establishment cleaner.  I knew I was taking a chance since the likelihood of a DMV being a DMV regardless of location is very high, but in this case my instinct was quite happily justified.  While it wasn't the most stellar model of efficiency, it was clean and there were places to sit.  I struck up a conversation with a friendly older gentleman sitting beside me, never letting on that I wasn't the most upstanding and wholesome example of wife/mother/small business owner.

Finally my name was called and I daintily trotted up with my unusually organized folder of personal information.  This must have deceived them because they never guessed for even a second that anything might be wrong.  They looked at my birth certificate and my old drivers license, administered the eye test and took my picture while I grinned like a vapid, aging debutante.  I had just handed over my cash for the fee when the DMV employee took a second look at a paper that had printed up.  She looked at it, blinked, moved it further from her eyes and squinted.  "Have you ever been to the state of New Hampshire?" she asked confusedly.

Now right there, the wee demon who is currently renovating his hip urban loft on my shoulder gave me a sharp poke with his little pitchfork and said "LIE.  IF YOU HAVE EVEN THE MOST PRIMITIVE BRAINSTEM AND AREN'T THE MOST USELESS CREATURE TO EVER WADDLE THE EARTH, YOU WILL LIE."

I figured he probably had good reason, but before I could get a good, firm bite on it, my morally over-trained tongue blurted out the truth.

"Yes.  I went to college there," I said while mentally grabbing the invisible pitchfork and aiming it at my eye.

"Hmmm.  It says here that you have some kind of restriction on your license in New Hampshire."

"But I never had a license in New Hampshire," I pleaded uselessly.

"Well, I'm not sure what the problem is, but it says here that you are ineligible to drive in the state of New Hampshire, and Texas has reciprocity with all 50 states."

"But I've renewed my license before and I've never had any problems.  I haven't been in New Hampshire in 15 years." I was whining a little, mostly because the devil was slapping me in the face with his dick.

"I'm sorry.  We'll give you your money back," she said appeasingly.

"Will you?  Oh will you?  Oh thank you for letting me keep my money.  No really, you are too kind," I said sarcastically in the vain hope of cobbling together a few shreds of dignity.  Not my finest hour.

Long story short, I'm still driving (carefully) with an expired license and have talked to the police prosecutor who said the warrant (which stemmed from a citation for possession of alcohol as a minor) expired in '96, but had somehow never been cleared off the books.  She seemed to think this explained things perfectly, but it doesn't help me at all.

Hopefully I won't be so long in posting again.  I'll whore for comments and see if I can't stimulate a blog recovery.