Sticking Around

So, over the last few weeks, Steve's been hearing rumors of a passport taskforce at State Department. You might be asking What's a Passport Taskforce? and What's Steve got to do with that? Well, the answer is simple. Congress decided that effective January 20-something of 2007, ALL US citizens needed a passport in order to get back into the US, even if they were just hopping across to Tijuana for a donkey show and coming back that night. Unfortunately, Congress didn't think to give State Dept more money to hire people to process all of these passports, nor did anybody in Congress (or maybe even at State) think about how big a percentage of the 300+ US citizens didn't have a passport and might want one (Those donkey shows are tight, or so I, uhh, hear!)
So, in January and February, as Americans started hearing from their friends that they needed a passport to travel ("What?! You mean they ain't gonna accept my driver's license no more? Damn Government. I'm gonna go join me one of them militias; this way, if they track me down, at least I'll be more heavily armed!"), they started submitting applications. Can you imagine what happens to a system that's used to processing 20,000 applications when it gets flooded with 20,000,000? The wait time rocketed up past the "normal" 6 weeks to something approximating 2 years... State, however, had a solution. They decided to recruit State's highly trained and overworked Foreign Service Officers, especially the ones in training in DC, and pay them overtime to come in and either adjudicate passports or answer phones from Americans who want to know where their passport is in the process.
Unfortunately, they didn't get enough volunteers. Something about important missions abroad and being understaffed and overworked in the embassies or something. I'm not really sure. So, State decided to pull from those people who were most available - the Junior Officers who were already in DC, in training, getting ready to go to Post. While these JO's aren't the only ones being picked (not by a long shot), they are the group that most affects Steve. So, after hearing rumors of people getting told (as little as a week before they're supposed to head out to Post) that they have been assigned to the "Taskforce" and, instead of Iceland, would be going to New Orleans or Portsmouth, Steve decided to find out for himself.
On that fateful day when he spoke to his Career Development Officer about the Taskforce, he was told, "We're going through the list of everybody who's at FSI (The Foreign Service Institute, where diplomats are trained) and selecting those who have some time and we can assign to the taskforce. Post is being told to 'Suck it up' and will just have to deal with being shortstaffed."
So, now at the top of the list (owing to his curiosity), Steve has been assigned to the Passport Taskforce from August until Mid-October. The plus side is that this gives us time to get Katie "in the system," and get her medical clearance so we can travel together. The other plus side is that we'll be staying right here in DC.
Ya'll come visit now, ya hear? You don't need a passport to get here, just to Bahrain!

Wedding Day - June 16, 2007

Hello All!



So, this is my first post. I thought I would start with the event that precipitated my receiving the blog as a gift in the first place - our wedding!



Steve and I had an unbelievable time! It was so much fun. On the Friday before the wedding we had our rehearsal and then a fabulous time at the "Pre-Ring Fling". It was a great party and a wonderful time to catch up with friends and family before the big day. There was dancing, singing and lots of fun.



I left at a reasonable hour that evening, but Steve and our friends and family did not disappoint me by staying up and enjoying some tasty beverage....scotch to be exact. So I was not surprised on Saturday morning at the salon when I heard "Do you know how drunk your fiance got my son/ husband/ brother/ etc. It would appear the ladies knew how to hold their liquor a little bit better.



We were lucky and had an absolutely BEAUTIFUL day on Saturday. The actual ceremony was a little bit late, but otherwise it went off without a hitch. We had a great time seeing everyone, dancing and enjoying the evening. Everything turned out great!



So - the ways you know it was a Jacob/Lynahan wedding?



Well, the first is that we started late (although this was actually not mine or Steve's fault - shocker!) and the 2nd was our programs - I not only did not spell check the programs very well, I also did not verify exactly when I was getting married. Mis-spelling Pachebel's Cannon seems like a not so big deal when your 200 programs say "July 16th" rather then "June 16th" Whoops - the best part is that I didn't even notice, even when we were folding all of them!



We did check the engraving on our rings after we realized the programs were wrong. We got those right at least!