alexist

1) Letter was not from embassy;

2) Embassy was phoned. DS-230 was received and processed without incident (but they didn't until 11 June!) and Neil should be getting his interview date soon. Phew.

3) Our Internet connection was down all day. The Bangalore Muppets refused to believe it wasn't our router until Neil found another one (for some reason we have a 2nd) and had the same problem. They finally admitted it was a line call after a total of about 90 minutes on the phone. It just came back half an hour ago. BT suck royally.

I am 31 today! I feel old. It's actually worse than turning 30.

It was this paragraph that did it:

( don't say I didn't warn you )

Full article (interesting in parts)
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/30/080630fa_fact_gawande

Rather silly article in today's Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/main.jhtml?xml=/portal/2008/07/02/ftmother102.xml

(woman quitting work to SAH with her teenagers)

She's not arguing that teenagers still need time--she's actually arguing in favor of quitting work and staying home to, as far as I can tell, be a taxi service and help with homework. Ugh.

Yes, teenagers need time and you can't be entirely wrapped up in your job because they're older; but what do you do all day when they're in school?

The comments are awful (judgmental crap from women who think you HAVE to stay home and daycare is "paying other people to raise your children".) Oh, and if you have to work you shouldn't have kids. Where's the eyeroll smiley?