Chaos Love: love, life, design and more.

So I rang the USCIS again today to enquire about my I-485 (application for permanent residency) as it's been over 30 days since I mailed it off and I still haven't received even a receipt for it. The woman at the call center was very courteous, but told me that due to high demand for USCIS services in July, it is taking them up to 90 days to send out receipts. That's just an acknowledgement that they have received my forms, nothing more! It also means that I have an uncleared cheque for $395 looming over my bank account until they finally get around to my application, which I find more than a little annoying. Still, that's just the way it is, and there's not a lot I can do about it. I really am starting to think that one man and his monkey are processing applications at the Nebraska USCIS office, though...

Posted in: chaosboy, immigration, united states on August 31, 2007 at at 5:14:00 PM 0 comments    

Christine and I have just taken up rock climbing. It's something she got into while in Sydney and she really wanted me to try it out to see if I liked it. So we signed up for the introductory course down at Portland Rock Gym, although it was really just a refresher course for Christine (Something the instructors quickly worked out when she tied up and scaled a 40' wall in about 10 seconds flat!).

I really learned a lot during the introductory lesson and quickly appreciated the cerebral side to rock climbing: it's not just mindless exercise or a boring workout, every ascent up the wall is a puzzle or a challenge that needs to be solved with a combination of co-ordination, brain power and (occasionally) brute strength!

I initially had problems with trusting that the belay rope was going to catch me if I fell (something that is hard to come to terms with when you're clinging to a wall 30' above the ground), but I've overcome that in the couple of times that we've been back and am really beginning to enjoy it now. And it is one heck of a workout, as you use muscles all over your body, including some I never knew existed!

Posted in: chaosboy, portland, sport on at at 5:02:00 PM 0 comments    

Have a look at this ad that I found in the latest issue of Portland's Willamette Week newspaper and boggle along with me:

Leaving aside the terrible clip art design, here's an ad that tries to do the impossible - make chewing tobacco sexy. Something I thought was the preserve of aging Major League baseballers and old Western movie stars is still alive and well, and what's more, is being marketed as the "cool" and "in" thing for the young and hip. Yes boys, find a girl you like and give her a kiss while your mouth is full of stinky black 'baccy. Sure to impress even the most choosy lass! I wonder if she'll be as impressed when your gums are diseased and your teeth have fallen out, as the big "Warning arrow" disclaimer so helpfully points out.

Big, big thumbs down here, both to the whole concept of chewing tobacco and this bizarre marketing of it. Yuk!

Posted in: chaosboy, united states, weirdness on at at 4:48:00 PM 1 comments    

I just passed 90 days since I sent in my I-765 (Employment Authorization Document form) the other day, and since I hadn't heard anything from the USCIS since early June, I thought I'd give them a call. Especially as it says this on their website:

If you filed a Form I-765, Application for Employment Authorization, and it has been longer than 90 days since you filed and you haven't gotten an update from us within the last 60 days, and have not seen any public notice that addresses your case type, please don't wait the extra 30 days. Call customer service immediately.

Well, that sounds like 60 days without hearing something is cause for some sort of alarm, doesn't it? Out of the ordinary, maybe? Surely I should have that piece of paper in my hands by now, right? So I give them a call on their National Service Center line. After going through a billion automated options and recorded announcements, I finally get to speak to a human and explain my situation.

To my horror, he proceeded to tell me that I am still within normal processing time and my EAD may still take up to 90 more days to be approved. 90 more days!?!!! Another three whole months! How can anyone be expected to emigrate to a new country and have to remain unemployed for up to six months? The guy could sympathise with my frustration, but there wasn't anything he could do about it... he can only report on what his computer is telling him. He did let me know that I'm meant to have a biometrics scan done as part of this application and has set that in motion, so at least something is being done.

What's really worrying me is that it's almost a month since I sent in my I-485 (Application for Residency) and I haven't even got a receipt notice for that yet... I am dreading that phone call...

Posted in: chaosboy, immigration, united states on August 28, 2007 at at 4:11:00 PM 0 comments    

This last Sunday, Kim (Christine's sister) and I took part in the annual Portland Bridge Pedal. Unfortunately, Christine was working, otherwise she surely would have joined us.

Portland is situated on the Willamette River, which is crossed by 10 road bridges within the metropolitan area. From north to south, these are: St Johns, Fremont, Broadway, Steel, Burnside, Morrison, Hawthorne, Marquam, Ross Island and Sellwood. Of these, the Fremont and Marquam are normally closed to pedestrians and bicycle riders as they carry freeway traffic, so this ride is the only chance each year to ride across these bridges. The Sellwood and Ross Island are also very narrow, so riding over them while competing with traffic can be somewhat perilous.

We started just before eight in the morning and set out on the full 10 bridge ride. You could also do 8 and 6 bridge rides for those with children or less desire to cross all the bridges. It was an awesome morning, although the traffic jams when the three rides came together at a bridge were incredible... it resembled a bridge walk, rather than ride at times, as seen here:

In all, we covered over 30 miles (or around 48km) and were incredibly pooped at the end. In fact, we skipped the last bridge (the Broadway) and ended up at the Widmer Gasthaus for a cleansing ale (muscle relaxant, as the Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy tells you!) and a good feed. We'd already crossed a "tenth" bridge in the morning to get to the start, and we really didn't want to have to cross an eleventh to get back home again!

Posted in: chaosboy, portland, sport on August 15, 2007 at at 6:00:00 PM 1 comments    

There's a lot of them thar States in this crazy US of A, and I got a chance to tick three more off my list on our recent sojourn to the Eastern side. (Rule: a place doesn't count as visited if you don't leave the airport, so even though I've been through Denver twice, I haven't "been" to Colorado yet.) I have a little widget on my Flickr profile where you can enter countries and states you've been to and it makes a little map showing visited countries in red (see above). So whenever we go somewhere new, I tell Christine that we can colour that place red now. My favourite time was when I got to make all of Canada red just by visiting Victoria, BC for four hours.

So, where did we go? Our first port of call was Michigan, where Christine's dad was getting married to the wonderful Linda, who (as you may know) had made the amazing costumes for our wedding. The ceremony was delightful, held on a sunny day in a beautiful gazebo at a historic park in South Lyon, a semi-rural town not far from Ann Arbor. We had a fantastic time and I loved meeting all the people on that side of the family. Here's a photo I took of the ceremony:

Next, we flew to Massachusetts (which I have now learned to spell correctly!) and caught the ferry from Boston to Cape Cod. Here we spent a few idyllic days with Christine's mother's side of the family... lazing on the beach by day and having good food with good company at night. Here's a view of an old life saving station, the last surviving of many that were set up along this dangerous coast in the 19th century.

Our flight home took us through Chicago, Illinois. We had a four and a half hour layover, and decided to head into town to see Christine's old stomping ground. Unfortunately, Chicago's rickety and antiquated train service just wasn't up to scratch (see Christine's earlier post) and we ended up with only 10 or 15 minutes downtown to look around. Sydneysiders, you should never complain about CityRail again... it's the absolute epitome of timeliness and reliability compared to Chicago!

So we headed straight to the landmark Millennium Park and the incredible Cloud Gate sculpture, which I managed to hurriedly shoot off a few decent shots of before our mad scramble back to the airport began.

Posted in: cape cod, chaosboy, chicago, michigan, travel on at at 5:16:00 PM 1 comments    

So the Transformers movie is out, and I'm probably one of the biggest Transformers fans that most of the readers of this blog know, so I bet you're all wondering what I thought of it.

In a word, awful.

The Transformers themselves look awesome and some of the sequences involving them are spectacular, but the movie itself is so poorly paced and some of the so-called humour so monumentally inappropriate and unfunny that these sequences just can't redeem the movie. I'm sorry, but the sight of Bumblebee "lubricating" a human from his groinal socket isn't amusing, it's just in poor taste and not appropriate for the franchise. Nor was all the talk about masturbation.

After a promising and intriguing start to the film, the whole thing just drags on and on as Bumblebee spends most of the first half of the film helping the main human protaganist - a dorky teenager - score with the hottest girl in school. It's like one of those 80s screwball high school romance movies with Molly Ringwald or something.

Finally, the Autobots show up and proceed to look like idiots as they stumble all over the place attempting to hide from the kid's parents. Far from being proud intergalactic warriors, they look more like the Keystone Cops with all the slapstick going on.

The rest of the movie suffers from too much exposition and explanation before a very confusingly directed conclusion ends the whole sorry farce. Finally, while Peter Cullen is Optimus Prime to almost every fan, his voice just didn't convey enough emotion for me. He's good at "heroic speeches" but his lament over Jazz's death at the end of the film was entirely unconvincing.

This film could have been so much better if the script had been pruned of unessential parts and if Michael Bay got rid of all his slow-mo scene changes and action shots, but as it stands, it's a monumental disappointment on all but the most superficial level. Which makes me so very, very glad I didn't have to pay to watch it.

Posted in: chaosboy, transformers on at at 1:25:00 PM 2 comments    

Yesterday was a hectic but fun traveling day!

Cam I traveled from Provincetown on the Cape to the opposite side of the country, Portland, Oregon. Not only did we use every kind of transportation known to man but we had to stop and see everything on the way. Taking a ferry from Ptown to Boston was clear and perfect. Cam took many pics of the city skyline but we were unable to linger long. From there we jumped on a water taxi to the airport in order to catch our flight to Chicago. Once there, we had a few hours to kill before our next leg to Portland so we jumped on the Blue line so we could see a bit of downtown. I was so excited to show Cam Chicago after hyping it up for so long. But it didn't make a perfect first impression. The train was under construction at a stop far before the one we wanted to get off at. So instead we had to jump on an express bus which doubled our traveling time to a total of an hour. We eventually made it to Clark and Lake and jumped out knowing we had only a few minutes to make the best of this before we had to jump on the bus again.

We ran a few blocks over to Millennium park while Cam fervently tried to take photos of the massive skyscrapers above us. We crossed over Michigan Ave. where you could see a clear view of the Wrigley building and had a gander at the Frank Gehry creation that served as a massive stage. And then of course we had to get a shot of the giant silver Bean in the middle of the pavilion. And then we were off like a shot running over to Dearborn to catch the express bus back to the airport. Once again, we had to jump on the train once the bus reached it's last stop and we rolled back to the airport at a snail's pace.

The trains have designated slow zones, particularly the Blue Line and I can not really say why. The wooden tracks are very old and the train had to abide to the speed limits over certain areas which would be a smooth 55mph to a crawling 15mph.

Having not expected theses delays we found ourselves in a panic. Once the train pulled into the station we began to run down the long corridors to our terminal. Our flight was leaving in 15 minutes. Luckily our bags were checked and we had our tickets but when we reached security, we found we were in for a new challenge. People were wrapped through the cattle yards and down the hall. It would take more than an hour to get through. Never hesitating to take control of this situation, I drag Cam up the line and cut in front of hundreds of people in order to find someone of authority to let us through. Cam, my sweetie, who has always played by the book rules, seemed apprehensive. We skip under the rope with the acknowledging nod from a woman who looked like she worked there and with us followed a dozen others seeing our brave attempt to break the system. Once we put our goods through the machine the gate wasn't too far and made it just in time. They may have closed the doors on us if a woman hadn't been there complaining that the plane had to wait for her because her husband was still at Quiznos getting a sandwich. Cam and I leisurely walked onto the plane past the woman arguing with the ticketman, secretly hoping she wouldn't make it because it wasn't fair to get a sandwich and hold everyone up.

The 4 hour flight went by fast and we decided we had to take a taxi home after the long day of adventures we had had. It is good being back in Portland after having a good dose of travel and family to last for the rest of the year. More to come soon of weddings and reunions... and of course fun filled pictures.. but in the meantime, it's time to get back to the grind!

Posted in: boston, chaosgurl, chicago, portland, travel on August 12, 2007 at at 7:11:00 AM 0 comments    

As a wacky wedded couple.

You could say things are back to normal, but normal for us has never been settling down in the least. I keep wanting to get to the blogs but there is just too much to do than write a paragraph on the internet sometimes. Between concerts, streetfests, or just going to IKEA, sleep is just about all we do whenever we are home. But sometimes you just got to post a picture and put some words around it.

Like right now, Cam is re-building his Transformers army. It is a task that he will not relinquish until they are all standing at attention awaiting admiration. Of course, all I can do is admire him and his dedication to a passion in his life: transforming toys. With all the new shelving, there will be enough room for everyone. He has the largest collection of anything that I have ever seen a person have. And I will have to learn to work all these guys eventually. It's somewhere in the contract.

Other than that, we are off tomorrow for another venture to the East coast. Cam is excited to visit more states, while I'm stoked to lay on a beach again. Seeing family is always super fun and there will be plenty to go around. Until then, the blogs may be more postponed than usual!

Posted in: chaosgurl, general musings, transformers on August 1, 2007 at at 10:53:00 PM 0 comments