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Friday, January 15, 2010

Part II The plot thickens

Part of the small forest's worth of forms to fill out was the OF (official form?)----. Where to send it, however, was not included in the other small forests' worth of instructions. I called Brandon's travel tech, S-, to ask for direction.

I reached her voicemail. "This is S-, and I'll be out of the office from December 15 (the day Edwin was born) until December 31 (several days from then). Undaunted, I went down the list for the next person to appeal to, the Med/Foreign Programs office.

me: Hi, I'm calling about form OF----. The instructions don't include a mailing address.
Med: Oh you don't want to mail that; it would take forever. You need to fax it.
me: But what about the birth certificate? Do I fax that too, even though the instructions say that it needs to be the one with the raised seal?
Med: Oh, don't worry about the birth certificate. You can send in the hospital copy, if you want.
me: So then after is send in OF----, do I get a form from the travel tech so I can apply for Edwin's diplomatic passport?
Med: You don't have to wait for any forms. You can apply for a passport as soon as you get a birth certificate.
me: Oh (If I had known that, we wouldn't have had to go through the notary debacle; we could have just applied when Brandon was in town).

So, OF---- was faxed off, and the form got notarized. How? Well, we won't go into that right here.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Haha! Oh this sounds so familiar. Why isn't there a handbook for "Getting Pregnant on Government Time". lol

UnkaDave said...

I am having a hard time believing that you could get more than one answer out of the Official Government of These United States. There is One Way to do it, and that's it. Clearly stated on OF #12-17B, Rev. 5/54. Get with it, honey.