Garazon’s Den

The day Alison and I have dreamed and planned for so long is now nearly here, and today marks one of the happiest days of my life. Alison booked her flight today to come to the US permanently! (Pause here for celebration and cheering! YEA!! ) Its really hard to believe its finally come. Though we never have doubted for a minute it would happen, this distance separating us has caused more than it’s fair share of aches. But soon they will all be forgotten in a single kiss when we are at last together forever.

As I have often done for many other events, a countdown script for this very special event has been added to the site, you may already have seen it there in the top of the sidebar. Well actually its in three parts which should be self explanatory, but seeing as I often don’t make things clear I should probably elaborate. The first one is a countdown until the day she leaves to go to the UK to visit family and friends for a couple of weeks before beginning her new life as an Americano! :) She leaves Cyprus on the 22nd of November. The next countdown is to the time her plane leaves London to come to the US, and of course it wouldn’t be complete without the last one; the most important one of them all to me, the time her plane lands at Norfolk where I will be waiting like I have won the lottery! :) She lands in Norfolk on December 9th at 9:28 pm. I wont be late, even if the plane is! ;) I still have some counters up on various other pages and sites of mine from past events that were very special to us, our trips to see each other and I also set a countup scriot on another site that counts the days since she and I met, as I write this now it was 939 days ago that this beautiful Brit sent me a smile and a short note asking “Would you like to write sometimes?” since we both were widows and at a point very similar in our lives. Well that’s a story already told so I will let that be and just say from almost that very day, we both knew things were going to be very different for us! ;)  Well anyway here we are 939 days later waiting only for another 39 more to pass. I can’t begin to tell you how long these days are going to seem now. I cant even begin to describe how happy I am either, Its beyond words, it truly is. I feel the hand of God in all our story and a love destined from the beginning of time.

I’ll just continue to update this post with any related news instead of making new ones. and I have to apolgize for not doing much to update the sites lately too, along with us being busy getting things sorted for our reunion, there has been a lot going on with my mom as well. Another long story that, and maybe I will get around soon to expounding on all that happened, but for now she is scheduled the middle part of November to have a rather in depth surgery to reconnect her stomach to whats left of her esophagus up in her throat. No none of this was brought on by sickness but by a simple procedure done at a local hospital in August that ended up tearing her esophagus and having to be transported out to a larger hospital. She’s coming along and doing ok, well the best she can under the citrcumstances if you consider being on a feeding tube 14 hours a day, every day since the 23rd of August! Well as I say thats another story…

For now heres the itinerary as it stands now

Outbound:  Tue 09 December 08

Duration: 12:28

Departing:  Terminal 3 London Heathrow Apt (LHR), London, United Kingdom
14:00 Tue
Arriving: Terminal 4, New York J F Kennedy International Apt (JFK), New York, United States
17:05 Tue

Continental Airlines (CO 8245)
Aircraft type - 346

Connection:

17:05, Tue - 19:45, Tue -
Change plane

Stop-over duration: 2h40
Departing:  Terminal 3 New York J F Kennedy International Apt (JFK), New York, United States
19:45 Tue
Arriving: Norfolk International Apt (ORF), Norfolk, United States
21:28 Tue

DELTA (DL 6231)
Aircraft type - ER4

Stay tuned for more updates and thanks for dropping by!

I used to think patience was one of my virtues and that anything good was worth waiting for, I still do believe that. but I have to confess my patience is being stretched with waiting for our I-129F (K1 visa) petition to be approved. Yes I know there’s a huge backlog and we have to wait our turn, but it just puzzles me sometimes how the government can be so quick to want and demand things on a certain time from its citizens or else face the wrath of fines or threats of punishments for failing to comply and yet at the same time can bide its time in providing the the services that those same citizens view as equally important issues to them.  For example, let your tax payment be posted one day late and see what happens! Or fforget to check the little box on your tax return stating you are filing jointly with your spouse, even though you have the spouses name and social security # and W2 listed on the return, and the govt will recalculate the return as yours alone and send you a quite official sounding mail stating you have 30 days from the notice to pay the reconfigured tax amount or face penalties up to x amount of dollars, possible jail time, and confiscation of property among other things. (yes this happened to me and I of course sent them a reply straight away begging their almighty forgiveness for not checking that freaking box and for assuming they had the common sense to realise it was a joint return when both of our names were on it and both signed the damn thing. Sheesh… ) sorry its still a sore spot with me almost 15 years later…

Well is it too much to ask for at least the same consideration when we as tax paying citizens want at least an approximate date to get an answer to our petition, or at least to get some other response than “the case is ‘pending’ ” ? Now honestly I realise there is a backlog and insufficient staff on hand to handle the amount of visa requests that have been submitted in record numbers this past year. On the other hand if i owe them back taxes(which I don’t by the way) do they give a shit if i have the money or not.. NO! … sorry again, just venting… and be prepared, it likely wont be the last vent either in this post ;)

Anyway I just think we are entitled to some semblance of human compassion if they realise that for two people who are truly in love to be separated any longer than we have to be is just morally wrong, plain and simple. Its not like we can afford to fly back and forth for visits every so often, and even if we could its not what either of us want. Do any of these people have the slightest clue what its like to say goodbye to te love of your life at the airport, not knowing when the next kiss will be, or the next time you can wrpa your arms around your other half? they are clueless in that area, or uncaring. maybe you think I’m being harsh as I do realise there are plenty of fraudulent applications made and for probably nefarious reasons too, but there still ought to be some kind of method to take the obviously genuine cases and take the as priorities. No I don’t profess to say how that would be ascertained, but I’m sure with enough thought about it something could be worked up. After all the US govt already has more information on me than I probably know myself! it started accumulating the day I was born didn’t it, with the birth certificate~ then when I was old enough to work, a social security number.. they know where I live, what car I drive, my email address, any criminal record or lack there of, you name it they know it, whether they say they do or not. Oh I’m just frustrated and venting tonight, missing Alison and wanting our days together to start now. Just hate this waiting or wasting one more day apart, even though we are always in touch one way or another, its not the same is it. All i would really like to know is about when we can expect a decision so that we can make some sort of preparations and get things moving. she has her house there to rent, her job to consider, her children and family, and then the actual move. And if we had some idea of a general date it would be of some help as we could at least maybe manage another holiday together if its going to be more than a few months, Yes she could come here on a travel visa for 6 months, but still when the petition is approved she has to be in Cyprus to get the visa! And its not like she could fly back and pick it up, she has to go for interviews and medical checkups etc, so that’s a few more weeks i imagine. Just doesn’t seem right to me to make us go through all this, and they say this is the easiest way to get your foreign fiancee here to the US legally so you can get married. for what its worth to them i am married to her already, in my heart and before God. Bureaucracy … baaaaa

Like I said just venting tonight out of frustration of not having my angel in my arms yet again one more night. it does make it easy to see why there are so many illegals here in this country though, a whole lot easier to do it that way it appears than the route we took :(

so just in the event anyone from immigration should ever read this , I really don’t fault the govt (too much) , I just want my wife by my side, I miss her. please help us and HURRY!

Well i try to keep positive and keep patient , we both do. Sometimes it gets us down a bit, but never enough that we aren’t still amazed and loving each other more with what we have. We try to keep humour in our relationship too, its a large part of it. we always still find things to laugh at and lift each other up. So in that vein I thought I would post this email I got from somewhere, not sure now where it came from or who sent it, but it made me laugh and although its written from a British perspective I think you could change the particulars in it and it would sound just like it was written here in the States..

Dear Minister,
I’m in the process of renewing my passport but I am a total loss to understand or believe the hoops I am being asked to jump through.

How is it that Bert Smith of T.V. Rentals Basingstoke has my address and telephone number and knows that I bought a satellite dish from them back in 1994, and yet, the Government is still asking me where I was born and on what date?

How come that nice West African immigrant chappy who comes round every Thursday night with his DVD rentals van can tell me every film or video I have had out since he started his business up eleven years ago, yet you still want me to remind you of my last three jobs, two of which were with contractors working for the government?

How come the T.V. detector van can tell if my T.V. is on, what channel I am watching and whether I have paid my licence or not, and yet if I win the government run lottery they have no idea I have won or where I am and will keep the bloody money to themselves if I fail to claim in good time.
Do you people do this by hand?

You have my birth date on numerous files you hold on me, including the one with all the income tax forms I’ve filed for the past 30-odd years. It’s on my health insurance card, my driver’s licence, on the last four passports I’ve had, on all those stupid customs declaration forms I’ve had to fill out before being allowed off the planes and boats over the last 30 years, and all those insufferable census forms that are done every ten years and the electoral registration forms I have to complete, by law, every time our lords and masters are up for re-election.

Would somebody please take note, once and for all, I was born in Maidenhead on the 4th of March 1957, my mother’s name is Mary, her maiden name was Reynolds, my father’s name is Robert, and I’d be absolutely astounded if that ever changed between now and the day I die!

I apologise Minister. I’m obviously not myself this morning. But between you and me, I have simply had enough! You mail the application to my house, then you ask me for my address. What is going on? Do you have a gang of Neanderthals working there? Look at my damn picture. Do I look like Bin Laden? I don’t want to activate the Fifth Reich for God’s sake! I just want to go and park my weary backside on a sunny, sandy beach for a couple of week’s well-earned rest away from all this crap.

Well, I have to go now, because I have to go to back to Salisbury and get another copy of my birth certificate because you lost the last one. AND to the tune of 60 quid! What a racket THAT is!! Would it be so complicated to have all the services in the same spot to assist in the issuance of a new passport the same day? But nooooo, that’d be too damn easy and maybe make sense. You’d rather have us running all over the place like chickens with our heads cut off, then find some tosser to confirm that it’s really me on the goddamn picture - you know… the one where we’re not allowed to smile in in case we look as if we are enjoying the process!
Hey, you know why we can’t smile? ‘Cause we’re totally jacked off!

I served in the armed forces for more than 25 years including over ten years at the Ministry of Defence in London. I have had security clearances which allowed me to sit in the Cabinet Office, five seats away from the Prime Minister while he was being briefed on the first Gulf War and I have been doing volunteer work for the British Red Cross ever since I left the Services. However, I have to get someone ‘important’ to verify who I am — you know, someone like my doctor…
who, before he got his medical degree 6 months ago WAS LIVING IN PAKISTAN…

Yours sincerely,
An Irate British Citizen.