Archives for June 2005

today it’s official… my last day of work (for the time being) and guess what, my boss is out of the office *lol* First I thought we could have a group lunch today or something, but nobody behaves like I am really going anywhere (I decided to work in July anyways -though without pay, but they’re going to pay me back when I start with my work visa), so it’s not like this is the last day that I am around. It’s still kind of weird.My boss wanted me to finish up some things this week, so I was quite busy the last three days and didn’t get home before 6 p.m. last night.
The visa stuff still causes some trouble (don’t ask me what’s going on… I don’t even want to go into it), but I’ll have a meeting with my new sponsor next week to go over the application for the H-1B visa. I hope everything works out with my J-1 status – the two-year home requirement that is.
Also, I might have to get my university diploma translated – does anyone know a place to do that by any chance?
I still haven’t booked my flight yet [yes, I know… :(], but I’ll definitely do that before the weekend. I am shooting for the 25th of July.

OMG, and then Cathy told me that she read that Joe is doing a small show in LA in two weeks… I really, really want to go, but it’s on a Thursday and I don’t know if I will be able to go that day… also, we probably drive down to Southern California the week after that (as I might catch a flight from LAX on July, 25th) and it would be a lot of driving in two weeks.
Honestly, I am hoping he’ll do another show like that in September (when Cathy is here :)), so we can go together.
On that note: Joe didn’t make to the final last night in “Dancing with the Stars” :( the judges just didn’t seem to like him and Ashly all along the way and yesterday after the scores they were in last place again.
The thing is that even with the highest public vote (3 points), it would have been hard for them to make it into the grand finale… because then John and Charlotte (in first place) would have had to have the lowest public vote to be even with them.
Bummer! I thought they were so marvelous together! I am still going to watch it next week, as all couples will be there again and perform a last dance :)

Btw, Jon’s Mom is coming up to Sacramento for a visit today. She hasn’t seen our place yet and is really excited. We’re going to spend a few days with her. The weather is supposed to be really nice (ahm… hot) the next few days, so we’ll see how that goes.

Love you all so much… and have a great weekend!

Oh boy, I’ve had quite some crushes lately :) I really had a really marvelous weekend!Friday evening we made Turkey Burgers for dinner with yummy potatoes and salad. Then I hung out with Maria, while Aaron and Jon were playing music. We watched two episodes of “Summerland” (have I mentioned that I just love (!) that I can record TV with my notebook??? ;)) and then talked for a little bit.

Saturday was awesome! Jon and I left for San Francisco around 5:30 p.m. and we made it to the venue in under 2 hours.We parked the car [right down the street] and then walked over to Slim’s. It was shortly before 7:30 p.m. and there was quite a line in front of the club already, but the doors didn’t open before 8:00 p.m. and the concert wasn’t going to start before 9, so we decided to walk around and grab a bite to eat.
We walked further down and then peaked around the corner to see if there were any restaurants. There was a Café around the corner, so we walked over to look at the menu. They only had burgers and sandwiches and we decided to walk back to another Café that was right across the street from the club.
Well, just when we turned around, a car had parked at the curb and some guys got out… LIFEHOUSE! I couldn’t believe my eyes! I gave Jon a push into his side and said: There he is! :) He first didn’t realize that it was the band, but I was so excited.
Jason looked at us when we walked by and of course I chickened out and didn’t say anything to him… god, what was I supposed to say anyways?
“Hi Jason, nice to meet you… we are looking forward to seeing your show” :)
I wish I would have said something or asked for a photo… but then again, right in that moment it felt wrong. You know what I mean?
But I felt quite privileged, as all the people were standing in front of the club waiting to get in, while Lifehouse was just around the corner ;)
BTW, later during the concert Jason mentioned that they had dinner at this burger place around the corner… *aaarrgh* why didn’t Jon and I eat there??? Oh well, that’s life!

We entered the club at around 8:45 p.m. and were standing at the bar for a while. The supporting band Rocco deLuca was kind of lame. I didn’t like them much… but I took the opportunity to see how well I could take pictures from this spot. It was quite a bit away from the stage and I realized that the flash would only lighten up the space in front of me and I couldn’t see much of the stage, let alone the people on it.

I told Jon that we had to move, so when there was the break between the supporting band and Lifehouse and everybody was moving, we pushed our way through closer to the stage. The venue was pretty small and there was a lot of room [I mean the people didn’t squeeze together much], so it wasn’t a problem to get a spot in the approximately 8th row.
We had been standing there for quite a while, when a woman started to talk to us from behind… we first didn’t know she was talking to us. Then we noticed that she was asking how we got into that spot… [ahm, we pushed our way through the crowd?!], because “this poor girl was standing there for 1.5 hours and she said we weren’t in front of her before”.
Well, that’s how concerts work, lady! Since there was only General admission and no reserved seating, you stand where you want to stand.
I asked myself how SHE got into that spot next to her daughter (I suppose), because she wasn’t there before, so she must have pushed her way through as well! ;)
There was still a lot of space around us, so I suggested that she moved two feet to the right or to the left to have a better view [I mean, that’s what you do at concerts… there was a tall guy right in front of me as well, so I tried to move around a little to look around him]. The “Mom” was kind of pissed and said that it’s all about what is fair, but if we felt good about ourselves it would be fine (trying to make us feel bad)
What’s fair??? Hello? I mean, first of all, we have all paid $20 for the tickets and there are people with a much worse view than her daughter… and then it is totally normal for people to move around during a concert.
It was pretty obvious that she had never been to a concert before!
First I had felt kind of bad, but then I thought “what the hell? I paid money, too, to see the band” and a) the girl could have said something herself [believe me, she was old enough – at least 16!] and b) if her Mom had asked politely if we could move a little, so she could see better, we would happily have tried to make room for her, but just the way she talked to us was plain rude!

So we stayed where we were and then the concert started. OMG… it was amazing!

What a hunk! I think the photos turned out pretty well, given the fact that the lighting wasn’t really great… unfortunately I couldn’t use all the zoom on my camera (the digital zoom only seems to work during daylight), but I am still happy about the photos I took. I also recorded some short movies, but unfortunately the sound is a little cracking. Still a nice memory! :)
They played for about 1.5 hours and songs from all their three albums… it was so awesome! I am so happy I got to go!!!!

After the show we took a quick drive to the beach (just for fun!) and there were some bonfires going on… pretty cool :)
Then we drove back to Sacramento and went to bed around 3:30 a.m.

Sunday was pretty much a lazy day. I went shopping first and then spent the afternoon with Maria writing letters. For dinner we had Chickenbreast with Ricotta filling *yummy* so good!

yes! and I am looking forward to it… :) technically this is my last weekend before my work here is over (well, for the time being!). My visa expires June, 30, which is next Thursday. It”s kind of weird to think that it might be my last week of working at the USGS, although I pretty confident now that I’ll come back after the summer.I sent in my waiver application on Wednesday (and I tracked the FedEx envelope online – it was delivered at the State Department this morning!), so know I am pretty much waiting to get the advisory opinion saying that I am not subject to the two-year home requirement OR get a letter saying that the waiver application has been approved :)
My sponsor is working on my visa stuff, so I can then go to the embassy in Frankfurt and get my H-1B visa. At least I’ve covered all my bases and I think it’s a snowball’s chance in hell that it won’t work out. Nevertheless, I probably won’t stop worrying until I walk out of the embassy with my visa approval ;)

I am planning to book a flight for the end of July. Yeah, I know I should seriously look into that right now (!), but I am still unsure which return date to pick – some time in early September, I hope. So it looks like that I’ll be around for the whole month of August and possibly a little more. I am actually very much looking forward to seeing my family and friends, esp. Sanni, Ilka, Kim and Susi :) we’re going to have such a blast together!

The last two nights we have been cooking and hanging out with Aaron and Maria. Jon is very excited to have his friend around. I can tell :) tonight we’re going to have a BBQ :) oh yeah, and the other good news for the weekend:
I bought tickets today for LIFEHOUSE in San Francisco Saturday night!
Aaron casually mentioned that he had been looking for gigs in SF this weekend and slipped in that Lifehouse is playing. I totally flipped out, because I didn’t know about it – so I checked online for tickets this morning and ordered two for Jon and me :) so we”re going to SF tomorrow! I am so excited!

On this note: Thanks to everyone who voted for Joe on https://www.dancingwiththestars.abc.com (and don’t forget to vote again this week! Very important!)… he made it to the next round on Wednesday!
The judges were really hard on him and Ashley and they got the lowest points, although I thought their performance was amazing!

But obviously all our advertising paid off and enough people voted over the phone and online… they made it! I am so excited!

Just in case you haven’t… please go here: https://www.dancingwiththestars.abc.com and vote for Joe and his partnerAshly. The show is on TV?again tonight and I hope they’ll make it to the next round again!What’s new here? Not much… except that I’ve been dealing with more paperwork the last two days. Applying for the waiver (even though I don’t even know if I need it or not) is a mess. Gerald was really helpful yesterday and pretty much worked on the application with me all day! He wrote?a long statement why he wants me to keep working for the USGS and I had to fill out a bunch of paperwork as well.
The funny thing is… when I called the International Program Office last week, they told me that they can’t apply for a waiver for me, when Gerald called there Monday they were very helpful and provided him with information :( just great that you have to be “higher up in the food chain” to get what you want…

Anyways, I had to come up with a curriculum vitae (that looks a little different from a resumé) and try to puff it up a little and write about all my experience here (since this is my first real job after finishing college). I worked on it at work and for another two hours last night.

The most frustrating thing about the paperwork is … you follow the instructions on the Department of State website and it tells you which documents you have to submit and then you fill out the online form and everything and at the end you print it out and it gives you a checklist (to make sure you have all documents gathered) and then there are documents on the checklist that hadn’t been listed on the instruction page.
So I call the State Department [being on the phone for 10 minutes to listen through all the automated messages before you finally get to talk to a real person] and they don’t even know what I am talking about… and these people call themselves “visa specialists” *pah*

Sorry for making you listen to all this crap and you probably understand only half of what I am talking about, but it just feels good to write it down. Jon doesn’t want to listen to this bullshit anymore, so I need to vent to someone else.. YOU! *lol*

How can you NOT like this guy?
I watched “The 100 greatest kids’ stars” on VH1 this weekend and Joe was one of them… so cool! After I missed to tape it the first time, I found out that they ran the show again today and I managed to be online on time… so I taped it!
They showed some old NKTOB footage and a short new interview with him. Seems like he has a lot of air time on TV right now :) not that I mind :)

I had a nice and relaxing Sunday… didn’t really do much. Talked to two friends and my Dad on the phone this morning and then made some breakfast, watched TV, worked on my homepage… these kind of things.
I think I am going to watch one more episode of SATC and then go to bed. It’s Monday again tomorrow… :( weekends always go by so fast… but Jon will be coming back tomorrow :) so I am happy.

I can’t sleep. It’s 2 a.m. and I am still up. I took a three hour nap today. That might be the reason ;)
I took Jon’s bike to work yesterday. It’s one of these tiny BMX bikes *lol* and Jon would kill me if he knew that I took his bike, because he doesn’t want me to ride a bike to work (esp. not the BMX bike), but there was only one bus at 7:30 a.m. in the morning and I just didn’t make it… so I took the bike and it was alright. I didn’t ride it on the main street, so I was safe.
I had a pretty relaxed day at work (no wonder, I was the only one in the office) and actually started into the weekend a little early.

I made myself some pasta for dinner and then I had the bookclub people coming over at 8 p.m. – it was only Scott, Claudia and Stoyan (the others didn’t show up), but we had a great time together. We actually talked about the book… among other stuff :) They left at 12:30 a.m. and I watched another episode of SATC before I went to bed.

Today I got up at 10:00 a.m., had some breakfast and then took the lightrail to Downtown. It was the first time *lol* but I thought it would be a good time to get out of the house for a few hours.
I bought a pitcher and made some fresh iced tea when I came home.
Then I watched TV for a while and then fell asleep for three hours! God, I must have been tired ;)
When I woke up, it was almost 8 p.m. and I made a nice salad for dinner and watched “50 first dates” with Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler. It’s a really cute movie.

I do enjoy the time by myself, but I have to say that it is kind of strange to not have Jon around. He called me 5x since he has been down in Ventura :) and it somehow always reminds me of the time when we were separated when I am on the phone with him, so I am happy when he’ll be back on Monday :)

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, too.

honestly, I am not sure if this is just bad luck or if everything that’s happening to me regarding paperwork in the US is standard. If this is the case, they have some serious improvement to do. It seems like I am attracting every single problem possible… I mean, if you think about it… it started off last year when I found out that my International Program officer hadn’t put my data into SEVIS (the new online system of the Department of Homeland Security) and I had to wait 4,5 months to get this fixed (in which I wasn’t able to get paid). Then I was transferred to the Temp Agency which after working for them for 7 (!) months, found out that they didn’t “know” that I am a foreigner [hello? I have a J-1 visa which I had to show them on the day I started my assignment] and therefore had to terminate my contract immediately in May. Nevertheless, I got a deposit in my bank account for the holiday pay (May, 31) which I shouldn’t have received, because my assignemnt ended before that day.Now there was this problem with the two-year home requirement rule (2YHRR) where obviously someone screwed up, because my Program Officer says I am subject to this rule and my visa states the opposite. Is it asking too much that these people do their job and do it right??? I should start laughing about this… seriously. I mean, that’s a joke, isn’t it? :) Michelle from my office said she’s amazed how calm and patient I am about all this (I told her “Believe me, I am NOT *lol*).

Well, I sent of a request for an Advisory opinion to the Department of State about the 2YHRR, at the same time my boss will help to apply for the waiver just in case I fall under this rule… and then my new sponsor will also go ahead and get my application for the H-1B visa ready.
At least, we’re doing something! Fortunately, we can have these three processes run at the same time!
So, I am planning to go home by the end of July and hopefully return sometime in early September. That would be ideal… ;) I would still be not working for about 6 weeks, I guess, but that would be ok.

Thanks for all your mental support and for crossing your fingers! I’ll start with a lazy evening tonight. Btw, because Jon left for Ventura and I am going to have the whole weekend all to myself :) We haven’t been separated for more than 1 night in the last 1.5 years, so this is our first little test before I go to Germany :)

Love ya all.

Edited: Forgot to mention that you ALL have to vote for Joe on https://www.dancingwiththestars.abc.com/ so he and his partner will make it to the next round. Thanks :)

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/recenteqsUS/Quakes/usziae.htm

it just has to!
After a really terrible night of not being able to sleep, because of the heat (it was 83°F = 28°C in our apartment), my worries and some unpleasant menstrual side effects, the world looks a little better today.
I was thinking the whole visa crap through again and -even if it means a lot more bureaucracy I’ll have to deal with- I am pretty sure I’ll get the visa.
My sponsor is pretty much rock solid – it all depends on when they can apply for my new visa.
I now have to figure out with my boss, if we want to get an advisory opinion from the State Department about this two-year home requirement rule (2YHRR) or if we should just go with what my visa says. In the case that I would be subject to the 2YHRR, my boss would have to apply for a waiver. Of course, that would all take some time (more paperwork *yay* :() but it would probably go through.
I just hope we would have known all this bullshit beforehand and could have dealt with it earlier. It’s not like we didn’t start talking about all the visa stuff weeks ago, but as always bureaucracy slows everything down.

On a positive note, the third season of “Summerland” started yesterday (and it’s only 5 new episodes  :( how short have seasons become lately??) and I was able to tape it on my notebook :) now I have to figure out how to burn it on DVD! This is just way cool! :)

Oh and we made my yummy, yummy potato dish for dinner – sooo good :) People, eat more potatoes!
And then I heard on the News last night that Katie Holmes is converting to Scientology – that’s kind of spooky, don’t you think? (Wow, I just realized it’s pathetic what makes Headline News on American television).

P.S. Happy Birthday, Sanna. Love ya.

I was absolutely exhausted Friday night. The whole last week pretty much drained all my energy and when I got an email on Friday from my new sponsor that only people with a Masters Degree from a U.S. Institution are exempt from the limit of issued H-1B visas, everything started to get more complicated again. Jon took me out for a really nice dinner at “Olive Garden” and I took a two hour nap afterward. I was exhausted.

Jon asked me to not worry about the weekend, because I couldn’t do anything anyways, but to be honest: How can I not worry? It’s almost the middle of June for God’s sake! :(
Apart from that, I somehow caught a cold or something – my throat started to hurt on Saturday morning and it’s hasn’t gone away since.

Saturday I slept in and we went bowling in the early afternoon. We hadn’t bowled for a long time, but it was fun :) I was surprised how well I did, but Jon was just great. He had bowled for the first time in over a year and had a 160 average. Pretty impressive.
When we came home we watched “Mystic River”. We had planned to watch it for quite a while and we both enjoyed it a lot – but to be honest, I somehow expected something different from it. I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t know enough about what this movie was about.

Sunday I got up at 10:00 am and had a nice long talk with Sanni on the phone :) thanks for calling, hun! It was fun!
Then I made some breakfast for myself and started writing some letters – it almost took me the whole Sunday (with some breaks in between) and by the end of the day I had two letters finished (one is going out to you, Cath, today :)).
Jon was quite shocked that I spent the whole day on my letters, but then he realized that it is a whole day worth of work, because I write these really long letters and that just takes a while ;)

Well, today didn’t start too well :( Nancy from the International Program Office called me and told me that I would be subject to the two-year home requirement (which is bullshit because I didn’t receive any funds from the U.S. government). She said that the USGS was my sponsor and that they had provided resources for me. First off, back in 2003 she told me that the USGS could not officially sponsor me and from what I read on the Internet, they would have had to pay me personally, but they didn’t. She got kind of offended and said if I believe the Internet more than her (well, it’s the website of the Department of State, I might want to add for liability reasons), I could call a number in Washington and talk to them. Well, and that is what I am going to do – as soon as I have talked to Gerald (who’s -of course- out of the office again today *hmpf*).
Even if I was subject to the two-year home requirement, I could get a waiver if a U.S. government agency is interested in having me stay in the country. Well, that’s the case, so that shouldn’t be a problem either. It’s just all bureaucracy again and people who don’t know a damn thing *argh*

I’ll keep you posted. I hope everyone had a great weekend.