NPM

5 months yesterday! 4 months more and that will have been enough time for a baby to go from a little bean to a real person. It takes longer to get a K1 visa approved than it takes to generate and give birth to another human being.

Today is one of those days where the waiting takes a toll on us.
My fiancé and I both helped each other a lot - even with the distance - with our college workload. He graduated in May and it was painful to not be able to go to his graduation after everything I've done to support him make it there. I was so happy and proud of him and it was so hard missing his big moment. Only a few days later he got a great job. I was beyond myself with pride. All I wanted was to hug him, kiss him and say how much he deserved all this. The job is in a new city, so I was the one who went online looking for our new house and doing other related researches. After we decided on a place, I sent him the money for half the amount needed to move in and am slowly looking online for furniture, etc.
I wasn't there for the moving, and call me silly, but I wanted to have had that experience with him. I wanted to have helped out more and now I want nothing more than make that new place a home with him.
He had good news at work today and called me first thing to tell me all about it and I took the opportunity to tell him again how proud I am of him and that he deserves all that he's getting because of all his hard work. That's when he told me that all of these happy moments have been deeply bittersweet because I'm a part of all of them, but I'm not there to share the happiness with him, that he's always sad in these good moments because we're never together to celebrate them.
The way I feel is my life has started and I'm not there to live it.
Two weeks ago, I bought a ticket to go visit him on August 7th. I'm kind of freaked out about it, because last time I spent two months (December - February) and even though I didn't go to the secondary questioning room, the immigration officer in Miami asked me a whole lot of questions before letting me in and seemed suspicious. The subject of me knowing somebody in the U.S. never came up, by the way. Now I'm afraid I'm on some kind of list and I'm worried as to how it's gonna go this next time.
I'm sorry for venting, but I felt like other February filers in TSC would understand how frustrating it is to have to wait until September (possibly) to find out if they got an RFE that would delay their case even more or if they've finally been allowed to go on to another phase of waiting. I do understand that my fiancé and I are very lucky to have seen each other for a month or two every semester and that most people don't have that opportunity. I also realize I'm upset for not being with him to share GOOD news and that there are so many people in a much worst situation.
I don't know.. let's just keep in mind that we're over halfway through the Texas blackhole (supposedly) and that if fate is kind, we might be with our loved ones this year still. I say that supposing everything will go smoothly and the approvals come in September and the Consulate interviews come at the most 3 months later, in December (I know that in my case, it takes about two months for the interview in Rio after NOA2, but who knows).
Once again, I'm sorry for letting it all out here, but I had no other group of people that would understand how it feels as well as people here would. I don't wanna be this melancholic around my fiancé because he's suffering too and I need to be strong enough around him today to say that everything is gonna be ok and that we will be together in no time.
To everybody here, I just wish you all a lot of love and patience. Don't forget to tell your fiancés you love them today, and that they're more than worth all the hassle and wait. This is just a phase. People go their entire lives without finding their soulmates and we are lucky enough the be one of the people that did.

They will take a while to initiate all the transfers. Try not to be disheartened because you didn't hear what you hoped for today. There may be more to be announced in the coming week or two.

That's what I've been thinking also. Yesterday a part of me kept expecting to get a text or e-mail saying our case got transferred - one dares to dream sometimes -, but I feel like yesterday was more of an internal organization kind of day. Maybe they were setting aside the cases to be transferred and are still going to notify the filers. Maybe their policy will be just routing cases straight to California as it's been happening, but what if they're gonna do both things? Transfer old cases to deal with the backlog and re-route new ones (their standards being unknown, since it's not been happening to all recent filers) to avoid yet a bigger accumulation of work.
I don't know, I'm still hopeful and I'm probably being very naive.
Let's just be positive and wait. After all, waiting is something we're beginning to be pros in.

Thank you for the compliment and you're welcome. Creating something is a funny thing, ya know? When we as humans look at our own body of work, we tend to only see the "mistakes" that we think we've made and - in this case - sections that I'd like to rewrite. That said, Kristin put her awesome proofing skills to work and the rest of the skunkworks team reviewed it and gave it their seal of approval, so I went ahead with it. I felt as though time was of the essence, and so I didn't allow my perfectionist self to continually "improve" it over a period of weeks, like I would normally be inclined to. LOL
I will let you know what happens. Hopefully we'll hear something back from our capitol hill contact this week. The USCIS director seemed shocked by my report, as others have noted who were listening in, because I was careful to explicitly state the processing time discrepancy in days; ergo approximately 22 for the CSC versus 205 for the TSC. He thanked me for the input and said that they are monitoring processing times on a daily basis. So in the end, kind of a generic political answer, but hey, we got our voice heard at the very tippy-top level of the USCIS, right? Can't ask for much more than that, though we won't stop until something changes.
Anyway time will tell. All of us realize that these efforts may not generate much yield, but if you don't stand up and try, then nothing will happen, and for sure. So we must continue trying, at least in my view. FWIW.