BermyCat

My husband and I divorced before it was time to file for removal of conditions on my green card. I have quite a lot of evidence showing that our marriage was in good faith but would like to include some affidavits including one from the priest that did our marriage counseling. Are there any example affidavits around for this situation?

Thanks,

Catherine

The roads here in Dallas are covered in ice and snow.... enough said.

~ Catherine

The other time you need the fingerprint version of the criminal record check is if you live outside of Canada. I'm Canadian and lived in Canada for a long time but was living in Bermuda when I immigrated so the name check was not sufficient for me.

~ Catherine

I want to make Bermuda fish cakes for Good Friday so I need to buy salt cod. Does anyone around here know where I can find it? Also, do you know where I might be able to buy hot cross buns?

I live in McKinney so any suggestions a little north of Dallas proper would be awesome.

Thanks,

Catherine

My uncle lived in Dallas. But he's dead now. You could still visit him, though!

I think I'll pass on that on Krikit.

Hi kballtex!

~ Catherine

I added myself to the map.

Sadly no one else has a marker in the DFW area. I hold out hope that there are more of us here though.

~ Catherine

Do you have access to USAA insurance? They took my Alien number until my SSN arrived and their rates are really reasonable.

~ Catherine

Hi guys,

I've been in Dallas for a whole six weeks now and am dying to meet more people here. Any other VJ Canadians in the area?

~ Catherine

I'm sorry Rob. It's so hard to have sick pets.

~ Catherine

It's been a while so I'm just wanted to drop in to say hi. I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Years. We spent Christmas day with three couples, all of which had one USC spouse and one immigrant. Now I know where all the good Chinese restaurants in town are.

Phil and I moved to Dallas a few weeks ago so things have been hectic. He's sorting stuff out with his job/thesis research but the Army Corps of Engineers bureaucracy is making life difficult at the moment. I'm still looking for work.

~ Catherine

Phil and I wanted to do the same thing as you guys. We wanted to live together for a few months to decide whether or not get married. If we got married, we figured I'd just stay. Fortunately, went to the US consulate in Bermuda to ask about immigration first. We were told quite explicitly that this scenario is considered entering the US with the intent to immigrate and that if we told the CBP officer the truth I would have been denied entry. So warlord is right, you are here illegally at the moment. The visa adviser in Bermuda said that loads of people get away with this but there is still a slim chance that the Adjustment of Status application could be denied. If that happens, there is no option to appeal.

Phil and I tend to be risk averse so we applied for a fiancée visa instead. You guys will need to decide whether avoiding time away from each other is worth the admittedly small risk of getting banned.

~ Catherine

I have absolutely no idea what my life is going to look like in six months. I've no clue what state we're going to end up in and whether I'll be able to find work there.

Phil's talking about goin back to school to finish his Master's. He's found the perfect project ... in Dallas. He'd get to do something he's really passionate about. If he didn't have to worry about me, he'd go back to the student lifestyle in a second. He does have to worry about me though. Now I feel like his happiness depends on whether I can find a job in Dallas in a hurry. Who on Earth is going to hire an immigrant who has been out of work for a year and lives in another state?

~ Catherine

If she's only 21... there's a shelter called Stop 86 located in the Annex. Tell her to call them.

(416) 922-3271

Stop 86 is the only emergency shelter in Toronto exclusively for homeless teenage girls and young women between the ages of 16 and 25. Stop 86 provides a safe and supportive community where women can assess their situation and plan for their future. The shelter assists 27 young women to re-establish themselves in the community.

It's a wonderful shelter, one of the best in Toronto and it's in a safe area.

Shelters often have free legal help if you need to get things like restraining orders...

~ Catherine

Babysitting my teenaged step-siblings is almost enough to put you of sex for life!

~ Catherine

I was missing sausage rolls and pork pies when I got here too. Luckily a VJer pointed out that this place was nearby: http://www.australianbakery.com/. Their stuff is pretty good.

~ Catherine

I'm getting so tired of inconsiderate people.

Yesterday, while I was in the line to clear customs, I let a young couple with their baby ( probably around ten months old ) into the line in front of me. I figured it was a blessing that the little one was being so quiet after the plane ride and it would be great to get him on his way home while he was being patient. The American tourists directly behind me were obviously upset. This particular line moves very quickly. You walk up to a guy that looks at your form and either points you towards the customs inspectors or sends you out the door. About 90% of people get sent out with no inspection so letting the baby go first might have added 30 seconds to these people's wait. I can't believe someone would get their knickers in a twist over thirty seconds. If the little man ran out of patience, we'd all have been suffering through his crying the whole time we were in line.

~ Catherine

Tis true and statistics do say that a child is more likely to be abused by someone they know rather than someone they don't know.

I do appreciate the extra precaution they take, I do, safety first but they go too far. It shouldn't have to take me 20 minutes just to drop his lunch off.

"NO!!! STAY AWAY! STRANGER DANGER!"

That is a bit much! Don't tell me they scan the lunch bag to make sure there's nothing dangerous in there.

Can't be too careful. Mommy could be the head of a family of terrorists.

~ Catherine

You can become a permanent resident through investment but it has very steep requirements. I believe it requires a $1,000,000 investment in a commercial enterprise and a plan to create 10 full-time jobs in the United States.

~ Catherine

... you're kitten actually waits until a reasonable hour to wake you up. Kazzak wakes me up with a hug. He puts one front paw on each side of my neck and rubs my chin with his face while purring as loudly as he can.

~ Catherine

So Phil and I have apparently attracted yet another cat. Well, most likely my three cats have attracted it. For the last three nights, a black and white cat has climbled onto out second story balcony to scratch at the windows and howl at my three cats... at around 3am.

I have no idea what to do about this cat. It howls loudly enough to wake us and the neighbors. I'm worried they'll think is our cats making the noise and complain to the property managers. I could go talk to the managers but they probably just call animal control. The cat is feral so it'll probably get put to sleep.

~ Catherine

Well today was a bit of a sad day for me too. Last weekend one of the feral cats who comes around to eat brought two well-grown kittens to the house. We certainly didn't need anymore kittens - especially ones that appear to be 3 or 4 months old. The little black and white one actually climbed up inside the car engines several times (we discovered him in time) and that has been a real worry. The other kitten looks like it had a Siamese father - siamese colouring and points but with white paws and chest and a white strip on the nose.

It has been raining a lot here and the kittens have been either on the front porch or under a piece of plexiglass next to the house on the back patio. Well, last night I heard some scuffling and bumping next to the back porch followed by loud meowing. I got up, turned on the light and couldn't see anything so went outside. Then I heard meowing in the yard so I walked to the side yard - and found the little Siamese kitten lying on the ground. He died just as I got there . Some sort of animal had grabbed him while he lay sleeping under the plexi glass and dragged him into the side yard. I must of interrupted it and before it ran off, it killed the kitten by a bite in the chest between the front leg and the heart. There were no other marks on the kitten - just that deep wide bite. I picked the kitten up and brought him into the house as I wasn't sure yet it was dead - which is where I discovered the injury. I wrapped the body in some tissues and put him in a bag and put him in the garage until morning.

In the morning the mother cat didn't show up as usual. I looked around to see if I could find any other evidence - including the black and white kitten who I hadn't seen either. The mother came out of the woods - very nervous and skittish. She followed me to the porch where she ate while I got the kitten from the garage and put it down beside her on the porch. She sniffed the kitten, started to lick its face then tried to pick it up by the scruff of the neck to carry away but it was too big for her to handle. I carried the kitten to the top of the hill by the woods where she and the kittens often came from and put the kitten there. She again tried to carry the body away. When I checked a little while later neither she nor the kitten were still there.

So, I have been sad all day. This is the same cat who had 3 kittens also killed by some wild animal last Spring. I don't know if the other kitten is alive or not. Regardless - out of the 11 feral kittens that have been born here this year, only one has positively survived - that is the one Bermycat adopted - and possibly the black and white one as well. The rest have all died or been killed by animals over the summer.

I am still puzzled by what type of animal it was - bigger than a cat from all appearances - so I am wondering if we have a bobcat or a fox in the area. I think the kitten that Bermycat has was probably protected by having 2 adult cats- the mother and the stray who is still here - always around. This little kitten who died last night seems to have been alone at the time. I am now even more grateful that Bermycat gave little Kazzak a home - she surely has saved his life.

You story made me grab Kazzak and hug him. Of course he looked at me as if to say, "I was busy Mom. That toy isn't going to hide itself."

I'm so sorry you had such a bad day. I'd have been crying myself.

~ Catherine

My 25 man raid just collapsed and I can't find another on the my server. It seems like they are all falling apart these days except for the ones that raid way too late for me.

Anybody have any good suggestions for a new server that has semi-casual (i.e. not more than three nights a week" raids on the Horde side? I'd prefer one in the eastern or central time zones.

~ Catherine

You can come over to Scilla with Bo and I We play with a group of RL friends, and some people we met years ago when we first started playing. We are just building up to 25 content again (player-wise), though we've both run 25 content often. our 1st 10 ToC group has it on farm and we're working on 10 heroic now. We were able to get 2/3 Northrend beasts down last night. Scilla itself is a fairly active server. There are successful pugs even lol.

That would be really cool except that I don't think that I can handle a PVP server again. For my first couple of years i played on Manoroth. I really didn't like never knowing if I was going to be able to finish what I was or get ganked for a half hour.

~ Catherine

EEK! Well, instead of coming home and finding my K-1 NOA1 (which I'm hoping will show up soon lol)... I came home to a box on my front porch! Inside said box lived Zerky -- my (self-named) talking murloc plushie that I ordered from Jinx!!!! So I've been driving my family bonkers by making him MRGLMRGL, haha.

I faction changed last week, and oh my gosh. I honestly thought I'd probably end up regretting it, but I am not. I am enjoying the new atmosphere and doing heroics and raiding. It's a nice change of pace from my old server!

What side did you change from and to?

Went from Horde to Alliance on my paladin. It was a nice fresh start, since I had just hit 80, and it's nice to actually be interested in my pally again. She was my first real "main", and I just kind of abandoned her close to the end of TBC when I got burnt out healing.

I love Retadins. I hit 80 with mine about a month ago, did about 5-6 Toc (5 man regular mode) farm runs and 4 lvl 200 epics. I have nothing of consequence and use a titansteel destroyer. I use trinkets that I got off quests in Howling Fjord:lol: and last weekend, I did a 10 man ulduar run. Ended up doing about 2.8k DPS with garbage gear. I tried healing and absolutely hated it. I hate that they get no AoE heals, and everything has a long cast time (without procs).

I like healing on my pally. Seeing 23k heals gives me the warm fuzzies.

~ Catherine

Ever had to pee but you were almost too lazy to do so?

Nope, but I do put off getting up to go when one of my cats is curled up in my lap purring.

~ Catherine

Phil has stumbled across and interesting job lead in Houston. We'll be moving if he gets a good offer. Frankly, I'm a little intimidated. From what I've read, Texas is pretty anti-immigrant. I'm not pleased about the idea of having a driver's license with "temporary visitor" written across it and I'm wondering what other obstacles being an immigrant in Houston might cause.

~ Catherine

Wow, I'm kind of scared of moving to Texas too. But on the bright side, at least you're there legally right ?

And why on earth do license's say "temp visitor'' anyway? Those aren't on the CDN ones.

From the Texas Driver License Division website, it looks like driver's licenses for all permanent residents have the "Temporary Visitor" notation unfortunately. I wish Canadian's were expempt, I'd just show them my Canadian passport.

On the bright side, I've looked up the cost of living in Houston and it's 14% lower than Atlanta. Companies pay a little more on average too.

~ Catherine