on lemon cakes and more important things

the interview is at 10:15, downtown, so getting up at 6:30 leaves plenty of time, or does it?

it depends on a few things, is all the paper work in order? did we remember everything?

the answer is mostly yes. but with us immigration application, mostly  not good enough, we are terrified (since they warn so much) that lack of certain paper work may deny a hard worked at and expensive application, so mostly is definitely not good enough.

 

its around 7 am when we go one last time on the things we need to bring.

copy of our request, check; proof of life together, check; birth certificates, check; passports, check; personal identification; check (only after i found mine in the car that very morning, and was without it (my driver's license) for the last week, but check; photos of us, check, last 2 pay stubs, eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee; lets begin investigating why we (I stress we) failed on this point, who was in charge of this only item?, and who was in charge of the rest?....

you have one guess (hint, it's not Alla).

so its around 8 something and we rush to aurora which is 30 minutes east of Cleveland and could not have been more far away that down town. lucky there is no traffic heading that way.

till a month ago, the pay stub came as a stub. we swapped systems to get it on line. the registration slip is on my desk. I find the slip and start logging in to the new system. today is 2/18 and during the process i find to my horror that the temp password expiration, end on 2/17....of course, it could not have been any other way. lucky that i am more lucky than smart, and there is a stub just below the slip (which i didn't see before); so I am covered. i quickly find the slip of the previous month (which was in my bag).

another (and last) item that was missing is a print of the blogs. since I wrote about our meetings and what's happening, I was certain the blogs were the best proof of our life together. how ever when trying to track items, i found that i am mentioning what we are doing, but now how I feel and things like that (its not a mooshi blog, or not real moosh, to be exact), but i still gathered a bunch of events and wanted to print them (it wasn't the last minute, i promise you i still had 4 minutes to spare). and print i hit, and the office printer, which is usually in great working order, decides to deprint me, prints one page and goes into processing mode. i suspect it maybe my lap top, and try it from another place with same result. so no blog. but no time and we head west again , and no traffic and we make it to down town with 30 minutes to spare. our usual parking lot is full, so we find another, and still have time for a breakfast bagel before we cross the street in a freezing wind to the immigration building a.k.a the halls of destiny.

the security gourd asks if Greenberg is a German name, i say Romanian , since my mom, also a born Greenberg is from Romania, how ever this was a Russian Greenberg. the security gourd is from Romania, and tells me how expensive Bucharest turned out to be, we agreed its a beautiful country (though I have not been there ,,,,yet), and quickly we make our way to the 5th floor.

I spot a no drinks, food or cell phone in the WAITing room, so i step out of the room to finish my hot chocolate.

we place our invitation in the place where it says place invitation here, a dude comes and picks up the invitation that was already there and we wait some more.

we are watching commercials on TV with short breaks for some program, and quickly the commercials are back on.

then the dude comes again. Alla asks how do they know that there is a pending invitation and i respond that they hire a guy with a short bladder, so he goes #1 every 30 minutes and gets the invitations on the way.

you need to understand , that this green card process is mostly simple, but the 10 percent which isn't simple is exhausting. you are simply not sure what exactly to fill out. if you call the CIS they tell you one thing, if you call again and speak to another agent, they tell you another. with so many warnings on rejection if ANYTHing is out of order, we were worried. we considered hiring an immigration lawyer, but a fee of 2500$ (not including the application fee of 1350$) was hard to swallow, we passed on the immigrationMan (this is our not hired web site address). with triple and quadruple checks with out immigration consultant Inna, we finished the request, but never certain.

so when the #1 guy returns and passes by our application, we both hold our breath in unison and then hew pauses, we don't even flinch, and YES, he picks it up....

 

a few minutes later a woman steps out and summons us in, she tells us where to go and we think she is a secretary, cause she doesn't lead us, but she enters the office and announces her self as the interviewer. she had us swear in an oath , of the truth , the whole truth and nothing but the truth and the interview begins.

 

you've all seen the movie green card, and other movies of this sort, i have seen those as well and i was surprised not to find a big mirror and angry cop type person doing the inquiry. but instead a relaxed woman. does this mean movies are all false?

 

she begins with background questions, to validate information such as names, addresses and such. than asks me a series of questions about my past. have I delivered drugs, am I a terrorist, spy, participated in a genocide, have criminal record, that sort of questions. i am listening to the question seriously and answer no on all of them (Alla, i found later almost burst in laughter from the way I responded, saying no and nodding all the time).

 

then she asks Alla on how we met and how the relationship progressed (no need to repeat what she said, its all in previous blogs....:)), after wards comes the living together information. we show here out joint bank accounts, joint insurance and lease and then the photos.

in a mega effort we pick out the best 100 photos of us as a couple (we have about 134 to chose from) and some photos of Alla with my family, mine with hers and all together. our inquisitor flips through them all, occasionally asking, where was this taken. she appears honestly curious. i hope but don't know if she really is) and the interview becomes a conversation on snow mobiling, michagan and Alaska (since we have many joint photos from both places).

in the end she practically announces that the process is done (all there is left is a security check) so unless i have a criminal past, which i don't, than i passed (we passed), which means i am a month away from a green card and all our hard work on the documents was successful.

lemon cakes are really yummy, i would have not imagined that lemon can be sweet, i really like them.

 

lets return a few days ago to Wyoming, after another day when i am woken up before 6 am. this time the day ends early (lucky for us the pharmacist wants to go home early) so at 2:30, we head up and have a few our to see Wyoming.

we pass salt river, which is a pure water river, not sure where the name comes from, then pass the largest and longest reptilian in the world. the snake river looks nice and we drive along it in a narrow canyon and pass some nice small towns (all towns are small in Wyoming). we make it to Jackson hole, which is a known ski town that does not look like a ski town. true, it has small houses, lots of wooden buildings and all the parts that do make a ski town, but something is not write, its like its too wide spread, to much fast food to be considered a ski town.

we pass by a few more elk horn arches (smaller than the one we  saw before) and continue till we reach the Grand Teton national park. the Tetons are a range of mountains, which look nice in the cold but kind of clear day. this is a great place for hiking in the summer, not now though, so we drive by the Tetons and keep going till we reach yellow stone national park, which is close from the south entrance (which we are in right now). you can only go in with snow mobiles and we don't have those.

oh, Jackson hole news paper had a special on snow mobiles. 1-2 10%, 3-4 15%,5- 20%- who buys 5 snow mobiles? are they disposable snowmobiles?.

since i had a blast of an after noon in Wyoming, and actually had the travel bug again ( if it was up to me we would be keeping driving till Montana) i can officially make Wyoming state #32.

 

I would like very much to visit yellow stone and see old faithful, i will have to come back for that. the questions is. if old faithful (the gazer) erupts and there are no tourists to see it, does it make a sound?

we passed by interesting forest views, a herd of buffalo, a caged herd of elk, lots of ranches, a fenced herd of horses. a unique tundra looking red bush, which glimmered in the after noon sun (the camera cannot capture that). we continued and took more photos of the Tetons and passed by the Jackson hole ski resort and made our way back to star valley. I dropped Mr real-estate at the hotel where he would remain for the next way and headed back to salt lake (had to make it on time for the interview...see few pages above). another 3 hours of night driving through lovely (but unseen) Forrest and i stopped in Logan , Utah for a night sleep at a cheap motel.

 

a Pakistani man greets me at the door, i check in and crash right away, the next morning the same Pakistani, greets me, i ask him if he ever goes home; he says management is making him do 24 hours shifts(but he is no doc), times are hard he explains. i see why, this hotel is out side of a ski town (where everyone sleeps in the city) plus it smells like cows (from a ranch across the street), so naturally times are hard. not to mention that in general, economic times are hard. i check out after a very plain breakfast and after seeing the sing saying- start your day with a comfort sun shine breakfast. the breakfast here is as warm and comfort as the weather (I stole this line from a very known movie, but its ok, you are allowed to steal from a thief, can any one guess the name, does any one read this much?). i drove the rest of the way to the airport that has no gas stations any where near it, so i had to double back and find one. and flew to Chicago.

on the flight i fell asleep on take off, like I usually do (and probably woke the whole plain (snoring)), and woke up during flight where the flight attendant ask if i "sleeping beauty" would like a drink. she was not sarcastic, i indeed was sleeping, although snoring like the wolf. so i took my diet coke. later in the flight i asked if i can have another diet coke, and she said no. I was shocked and said ok, they never say no. she was kidding and gave me my needed narcoketics. i wrote it a few times before, they hire flight attendant with a sense of humor on this airline, better than all the rest.

in Chicago (layover) the stewardess while doing the security announcements, had a big hiccup, to the amusement of everyone on board, you just had to be there, she was embarrassed and laughed on that issue all along the long flight (47 minutes or so).

 

in Chicago i saw a guy with a smudged for head, didn't think much of it, he might have touched something dirty and wiped his brow, it can happen to anyone (and did happen to me on more than 1 occasion), and then i saw it again and again. it was odd, finally curiosity won and i asked the hiccup lady who told me about lent.

its a Christian thing, you paint a cross with ash on your forehead for ash Wednesday (an annual event) then begin a fest of a week for which you pass on something important to you as away of sacrifice (favorite food , favorite something...) click here http://www.americancatholic.org/newsletters/cu/ac0204.asp for details.

 

we landed, and i made it home, less than 12 hours before the interview.

 

good night and don't get hiccups

 

 

wy why wy wyoming

finally got my travel authorization and my work authorization and 2 days before the big green card interview, which I must NOT not miss. being right now in Wyoming does not help, its a bit risky, if the weather turns bad.

 

i arrived at salt lake city late night on Sunday and headed north. i know there are mountains around me, but there is no moon tonight and i cannot see a thing. in some lit ski town i see amazing patches of mountains but only for a few seconds. at some point i cross the Idaho border. i am in the cache national forest now, with a long winding road through the thick forest. other than the 1st line of trees i saw nothing. my only companions were 4 little woman.

 

its strange to read a book with slaves, war, pickled limes and hand slapping- but the book is interesting- I have never tried pickled limes, how can pickling a sour things makes ti sweet, i have no idea.

 

while Amy march were losing here limes, i entered Bridger forest and passed an elk in the dead of night, followed by a skunk who walked on the road, instead of crossing it, i managed not to hit it, but later discovered a dead relative of his.

the Wyoming border came later and i passed through the huge cities on Paris, Geneva and finally stopped after 1 am at Montpelier at a cheap motel for a short night sleep.

 

today drove through Wyoming, with fog the covers everything. this is suppose to be one of the most beautiful states and i am missing it!, but the time i left the hospital today it was a dark night again.

the only interesting thing here is a sight unlike any other- the world largest elk horn arch. i am debating with my self if this is enough to declared Wyoming as a visited state; after all the known areas here include Yellowstone and grand Teton national park, and glacier national park, but i saw one arch made from elk horns and one big smiley (wait for the photo)- so probably not. if tomorrow i manage to get to the Tetons than i will say yes, but so far , Wyoming is not the 32nd state, neither is Idaho.

 

brigadier national forest is interesting, to start, there is no forest here, just patches of woods, but mostly its small pyramid like mountains. the mountains are unique. they are not that high (from the road at 6000 ft) but they look like pyramid with one mountain shoulder full of snow and the other is completely empty. the wind is making it all look strange.

 

i watched the winter Olympics for the first time this year and found some things interesting. the ice sprinting, unlike the road sprinting has room for technique. people pass each other left and right, and you don't know who will win. the media here focused on one of them, a former champ and almost showed nothing on the others, of course this dude is American, and appeared on dancing with the stars. he was good in the finals, but he was 4th with half a lap to go, lucky for him, the 3rd place Korean hit the 2nd place Korean and they both hit the side and lost. so the dancer dude finished 2nd by sheer luck. the winner was also Korean by the way. this did not prevent the media to focus just on this guy not even to mention the winner by name or show his face. this is completely different than the Israeli method of being disappointed by 2nd place, for them this guy is a hero. this is the same in other sports, a part of the culture, but too much at times, they are over proud on everything.

 

the Luge is a weird sport. a guy sits down, rides fast and finishes at some time, another guy looks exactly the same, and finishes 5 milliseconds behind the first and he is a total unknown- i don't get the techniques here so its not interesting for me, but i would love to try it.

the woman's down hill mobiles was nice but the one who had the best tricks didn't win. again i am missing why some one else is better, but the acrobatics of the one who finished 5th was amazing, the rest (winner included) were boring.

 

another ground hog day came and went and i missed the ceremony,,,,, maybe next year (like i said last year)

 

soon i will leave this cold behind and enjoy some sun, march 5th looks like a promising day to cross the ocean.

 

p.s- did you see my driver's license?

 

 

 

 

did you ever here about pool hiking?

we are now on our way back from crystal mountain , which is the #1 resort in the whole mid west, but only the 2nd best in Michigan.

no bones were broken, no ligaments are torn but muscles did work extra hard and kind of cramping.

 

the resort looks like a tiny European ski town, cute houses, lodges. and the weather couldn't have been more perfect. cold, but not too cold in a sunny cloudless day.

I was eager to try my slowly improving skills on good lanes. and felt the improvement right away. after 2 hours of skiing, doing various green level lanes. then took a ski lesson with Pam, who got me focused on my toes, use only the toes to turn. logically thinking, it shouldn't work and I was puzzled, but it does!. then lift the hand and look to where i turn, breath before the turn, shuffle my feet after the turn.  you don't actually need to do all that, but these are simple techniques to help me develop better habits and not try to think on what to do, but just do the right thing.

thinking I guess is overrated.

after the lesson, I waited for my ski expert in front of the lodge. lots of skis were resting against a fence. a guy came with a snow board and knocked one of them over. the ski, just like domino, knocked it's neighbor over and so forth. it was very funny to see. the guy tried to pick up the fallen skis, and right then my expert approached the fence to lean her skis. the guy knocked over another ski, to the other side and had another domino affect, but the last ski, hit Alla straight in the goggles. lucky she had them and did not get hurt. few people told the guy to stop trying to help...

we spoke to this semi drunk guy in front of the lodge who told us about another resort in the area, Boyne mountain , which is better (and more expensive) by his standards. Racist (eeehhe racer) asked if they have more blacks there?

the guy gave her a face, and Alla quickly understood what she said and tried to explain. just for you information, there are not many non white people in Michigan north of Detroit. Alla was referring to black level lanes (which I am not even thinking of doing at this time, but she does them all the time). it was just a funny moment.

Alla had chilly and I had a cheeseburger and we went back out there. right as I was putting my skis on, i felt my first cramp. i hate cramps!. it was a mild one but we went on. and i was doing better, actually skiing in decent speed, controlling my movements and my speed, but the cramp made me lean on the wrong muscles and after an hour i was tired. there was one green level land called the last chance, which was steeper than the other greens, and I didn't attempt it earlier , but now i felt like trying. fell twice on the steep part, but managed to make my way down, then knew it was time to stop, i was losing control and pain was increasing. we headed back to our cute little room and changed for the out door hot tub.

the hot tub was warm, not too warm with no bubbles and the steam rose think in the night air, we stayed there for close to an hour, then went to the thistle, for late dinner.

the place has the most awesome butter. I am a fan of butter, but this was beyond yummy. they whipped the butter and added honey and orange zest; that butter on fresh bread was divine. I had also blackened white fish and we shared an oblivion chocolate cake that had a layer of raspberry. i am not particularly fond of raspberry, but our server told us that you don't really feel it, so i asked my typical question "so, why is it there?". she was right, I didn't feel it. our server tried to explain that the raspberry compliments the taste of the chocolate in some way...bla bla, I don't care, but it was good.

 

we woke late and I went to my 2nd ski lesson. pain hit me right away. my thighs, and calves were killing me and i barely made it through the lesson, but managed to improve my turns- by focusing on standing erect (instead of my usual leaning) after that I stopped , and Alla did many runs on the blacks and dominated the mountain.

 

but i achieved my goal for this winter, and that was to feel comfortable on the greens and now moving on to blue level.

we had lunch at the same yummy butter place and reordered the raspberry cake with the chocolate around it.

 

yesterday morning we had breakfast at big boy which is chain of burgers\breakfast type food. this chain is common in this area(if you've seen the movie Austin powers, Dr evil escaped in the end in a huge big boy statue which was actually a space ship). breakfast was ok. just before I met Pam the ski guide, another guide told me that she was expecting a big boy, and when she arrived he introduced me as the big boy. well I am a big boy, before we booked the 2nd lesson, the girl at reception also heard of this little incident. this place is like a small town, every body hears everything.

 

did i mention i lost my shoes (left them at the rental place) , but they were eventually found by my finder. it's has been a while since I lost something, i think i might be getting better at remembering where I leave things, on the other hand, i may not even know of items which I've lost.

 

on the way we stopped by a lake and learned how to walk on water!

the trick is to wait till the lake is frozen, than walk on it, not very hard. this lake had 50cm of Ice covered by an inch of snow. we took a little walk on the lake, and met an ice fisherman and checked the ice hole and now we are driving south still towards Ann Arbor for a little Zingerman break.

 

we watched an episode of the bachelor last week and i am amazed by their ability to make a show from 4 minutes of footage.

in the beginning you have a whole minute of what's coming in this episode, than 20 seconds of show, followed by commercials and after each break, they show what's is about to happen till the next break. the actual footage is miniscule. each show is filmed for a whole week, let us see what is happening!!!!. I don't trust the guy either. he seems so phony, I didn't get this vibe in previous seasons. hope i am wrong.

 

that's it for now

its time for a commercial break

on the next episode we will talk about other things (I don't know what, since I have no idea what might happen)

cheers from Michigan

 

thinking out of the box

why write your car module 'five hundred'  does it mean the car will break after 500 miles, it will cost you 500 a month to fix it... I don't get it. talking about the ford five hundred i just passed on the high way. dont worry i don't blog and drive. racer is driving as we are headed north towards crystal mountain, which is a ski resort.

we are in my Toyota , which is not on the huge Toyota recall. i saw a report on tv about it, they claim Toyota had lots of calls on this problem with the accelerator, 600 claims over a period of 2 years and they didn't do anything about it, so deserve criticism, but after 10 minutes of report on it and bashing them, the news had a bit about GM about to recall a module based on a lot more calls, that bit was under 30 seconds, with no bashing. so we have a company ignoring or slow fixing a problem and a media which is focused on anti Toyota as means to boost the local car makers. i guess i see the logic here, news is not news for a long time, but an extension of politics by other means.

a similar occurrence i notice on the Haiti reports. while checking ynet, it shows how the Israeli effort is huge, and all the talkbacks trying focus on how Israel efforts re displayed worldwide. while watching news here, you see nothing but American efforts. they may mention 'other' countries- not by name, they will say 'other' countries are doing minor things. each country is focused on its efforts, while if they were focused on others, it may boost world onement , but no. shame.

 

we were supposed to go to Baltimore and DC this weekend, and i noticed that an uncharted state was near by (Virginia) and planned the trip to Shenandoah national park, but weather was in the way with a huge snow storm, so we had to adjust our plans and quickly headed the other way, plans are not final , but likely skiing and perhaps snowmobiling , we'll see.

 

i was in northern Texas the previous week and a snow was about to hit, so i checked out just before the storm hit and left the area, my colleague did not and was stuck there over the weekend. i don't mind being stuck in an interesting area, but northern Texas is not interesting. Michigan is not an interesting state, but offers lots of nature and adrenalin options, my kind of things.

 

A magical box of mysteries came all the way from India caused grown man to be hypnotized. my brother returned from working in India for a short period. i wouldn't mind working in India either and brought a little wooden box which is a riddle, the riddle is how to open the box. moti spent several hours with no success. i got hold of the box after escaping the storm in, not a 6 hours drive, tried for a half hour an no luck. the thing is that someone who knows how to open it, does it quickly in a sec and you don't actually see how. i noticed the ridges where part of the box slides out, but couldn't figure out the mechanism.

we kept trying in the morning, suspecting that you need to stick a a needle in some hole, like opening from the inside , or there is some tool you need but my brother , quickly demonstrated again and we saw no tool. i kept my focus on the area around the ridges and after an hour of so of pushing in various places, it suddenly opened.

imagine this picture.

we were in office depot. my mom standing, moti in front of her looking at her, and i am on the other side, so moty cannot see me but my mom can. i open the box without even looking at it (lucky break) and spread my lucky hands in victory(but side ways), one part of the box in each hand. my mom sees that and becomes silent and stares in disbelief (moti was trying also in the morning with no luck for a long while). the silent was movie like. moty noticed something happening, but couldn't see since i was right behind him. he was staring at my mom, who was staring at the box parts. moty finally looked behind and was awestruck by the parts. i quickly combined them whole again and learned the trick so i could do it again (you have to push it in a specific place). then moti (Who was pleased I didn't manage to open it right away) took it and refocused his efforts. his fear was that the box would be given to my niece roni (Age 5) and she (very smart girl) will open immediately. so he got cracking. the thing is that this box is very well crafted and even after opening, you don't see scratches leading the way, its  moti a very tricky box.

 

after wards moti spent a few more hours till eureka finally kicked in.

so remember, if you go to India, don't forget to bring a box. (there was nothing in the box but the joy of opening it).

 

 while back in Dallas we made another trip to Uncle Julio, love the place. and we went to a Vietnamese place, don't believe i ever been to a Vietnamese place. this place is known for its soups. so we each get the small soup, each with different types of noodle and meat. i got steak meat with some spices. the soup was very good and came in a huge bowl, not sure what is the size of the big bowl is.

my previous road trip was for 10 days and for this reason, I didn't leave my car at the airport parking lot, too expensive. racer dropped me over but couldn't pick it up, and i was debating, taking the train, which leads to another train which leads to 6 minutes walking in a freezing weather, so i took a cab instead. i think its a waste taking a taxi, too expensive (cheaper then leaving the car for 10 days). the driver gave me his card asking to call when ever i needed, he doesn't know i would lose the card in a matter of seconds and don't usually take taxi's but he does not need to know that.

 

in the new offices they had dispensable cups with a sticker on it saying 'my solo cup' and 'pill and scratch'. so I pill the label and scratch, hoping to win something that I don't really need. quickly i see that there is nothing there, I keep scratching and there is nothing, not even a 'you didn't win, fool, try again' message. later that day I complain to my tax auditor who burst into a fit of laughter. that cup is a party cup, so you need to scratch your name , so no one else will use your cup. Stacie's laughter went on for hours.

 

we finally watched avatar in 3D, truly amazing animation. the story itself is not that original, reminds me of Dune meets dances with wolves, but the story is still interesting and flows well. but the animation is a must see. 

in other movie reviews, we watched the tooth fairy (with the kids) which was amusing (7+ on the family movie scale) and the 'spy next door' with a 9 on the family movie scale.

when in Rome, is a movie that mostly occurs in another place which is not Rome, kind of like what happens in Vegas which has just 1 Vegas scene (Well, maybe 2)

but the movie is good and gets an 8+ on the romantic ,couples movies night scale.

 

we are driving west now and passing many small towns, this area is a national forest, so obviously full of trees, the ground is full of snow, but today is a sunny day so we will have a great skiing day and hopefully snow movile tomorrow. there are lots of snow mobile trails around this area, so it should be fun. we passed by a small lake which was fully frozen and had many small huts on it, ice fishing huts. i don't see the fun in that but never tried it, got a picture though.

 

yesterday we drove in the heavy snow, 3 hour drive turned to 5. we attempted to drive all the way to the resort but couldn't make it, so we stopped in our favorite town of ann arbor.

we were headed for our deli, zingermans, we were getting close, but the place was few minutes from closing, and that we spotted a road house with the same name. our deli grew and had side branches, so we pulled over. and enjoyed good food which comes from local stores (more natural healthy foods).

this area is kind of flat, and racer was complaining that there are now mountains here, so how can there be a ski resort, a good one anyway. Cleveland has ski, but tiny places, since we have no mountains. we now see parts of it, the last few minutes became hillier and the resort is before us, its suppose to be a huge area, there will be a report about it later on.