Saturday, April 08, 2006

Fingerprinting

Today we all piled in to the car and drove to San Jose to be fingerprinted for the I-600A application. Amazingly, it wasn't much of a hassle at all. We were quickly received into the office, filled out a simple form, received a number for the fingerprinting queue, and then after a wait of about 10-15 minutes, each had our fingerprints processed and were able to go. The kids were amazingly patient and well-behaved through the whole process. Even my grandmother didn't cause any trouble. =)

After fingerprinting we all went to the Old Spaghetti Factory in San Jose and had a tasty lunch. I haven't been there in ages! The brown butter and mizithra cheese spaghetti still tastes great. Then we walked to the Tech Museum and spent a few hours there. The kids made virtual bikes on a computer, sat in a space-walk jet-pack simulation, designed a rollercoaster, and drove underwater robots and a MARS rover.

What was most amazing to me was that the museum was not crowded! For a Saturday afternoon it was quite vacant. I don't understand it, but perhaps because it wasn't raining people were out and about elsewhere. But, on the whole, downtown San Jose is still incredibly quiet on weekend days. And I would venture to guess that it is because there is NO SHOPPING. There are more restaurants than I remember, most closed. Why no shopping?

Yesterday, after dropping the kids off at school, I drove down to the County Assessor's office and showed them what I needed for the 'Verification of Property Ownership" letter. They said they could do it and would mail it to me. $2! That's the cheapest form yet, and no notarizing needed either because it's on county letterhead. As I was pulling out of the parking lot I remembered that the example I left them said "[homeowners names] personally appeared before me...". Sigh. They didn't even ask me for my ID. I hope that they get it right.

Monday I'll fax our fingerprinting receipts to BCIS, and mail our assets info to our tax preparer.

4 comments:

ipodmomma said...

like your sidebar... :)))

so nice that the fingerprinting went so smoothly... and that you all had a fab lunch. :))) and that the other letter was just 2 bucks...

as Tescos here likes to say, every little bit helps... :)))

have a really beautiful day, and give all our love!!!

Elle said...

Congrats on moving forward! One piece of paper at a time and you will be finished soon.

Gaye and Andrew said...

Congrats on the smooth-sailing through the fingerprints. That is one more thing to be checked off the list :) ~ gaye

Maggie said...

The fingerprinting is a great milestone. Now the wait for the I-171H. I counted off five weeks on my calendar and told myself I wouldn't even think about it until then. But it arrived in less than five weeks so it was a fun surprise!