Official Resident

Today I did it! Mary and I had been throwing around the idea of becoming Washington residents since last year and since her husband did it before heading off to Afghanistan, she was even more motivated. Ever the steadfast sidekick, I accompanied her. Yesterday, we ventured off (during our lunch hour, of course) to Bremerton Department of Licensing. As we pulled our numbers from the electronic dispenser, we noticed that they were serving 174, 175, and 176 and Mary and I were 245 and 246, respectively. Knowing we only had an hour to spare, we resolved to do it later.

Today we went to the DOL in Poulsbo and there was not a soul in line. It was almost eerie. It seemed to be too good to be true and as it turned out, it was. We presented the agent what we believed to be acceptable documents of residence and were essentially laughed out of line. Washington is downright paranoid about residency fraud! Everything was, "No! Have they verified it? You could be lying! No photocopies! Read the top! No, read the bottom! That is the exception!" Then he said, "Unless you bought your house, I can't help you!" Well! Now we were in business! He found me on the property listing and voila! Suddenly he was being very sweet to me. Unfortunately for Mary, she walked out license-less but with heated, steaming motivation to find a supporting document to show Mr. Agent next time! He took my Hawaii license (McLovin, anyone?) and punched a "W" on it. I almost fainted! I guess it didn't occur to me that he'd have to invalidate the other license. I was a bit sad but skipped out of the door knowing that as a Washington resident, I won't have to pay income taxes. Yippee!

Tomorrow, I'm teaching Joseph's class how to make Fried Rice and Gyoza. Yes, I know. Chinese and Japanese food. I wanted to make won ton from scratch but they have all of these crazy regulations about how food is prepared for the kids and, long story short, it couldn't happen. I had many ideas but they were all shut down. Poor Joseph was crushed when I told him I wasn't going to be making Spam musubi for the class. He doesn't even really care for Fried Rice. He can eat the fortune cookies that I'm bringing, I suppose. I've been thinking about this for a while so I'm excited that it'll finally be happening. I'm going to talk about how Joseph's great grandpa had a Chinese Restaurant in New York City (Broadway to be exact) during the first half of the 20th century. Joseph's Grandpa was an amazing cook! If only I could make his Shoyu chicken! Sniff, sniff. I'm bringing in hashi for them to practice with, too. I was going to buy mochi ice cream but thankfully, Mary restrained me.

I watched Julie and Julia tonight. I enjoyed it but was quite disappointed in the ending. :( It just seemed to suddenly fall of a cliff. I'm not sure if I enjoyed it enough to read her second book, Cleave.