I fail at Pay Phone

Yesterday, for possibly the first time in seven or eight years, I had to use a payphone. I'd left home without my cellphone because I couldn't find it when I was leaving and didn't have time to search (turns out Chris had plugged it in). Then I was stuck at work late and rushed out without taking time to call home. On the one night we had made dinner reservations for seven o'clock: to celebrate the assiversary¹ of our meeting ona_tangent and scottak.

So I found a functional payphone at the Shell station, dug five dimes out of my door-handle change repository, and dialed the phone on auto-pilot. Only to hear "You have reached Andy Blank of $OLD_EMPLOYER.Chris." Hang up in a hurry, run back to the car and dig around for five more dimes, start over. Sigh.

¹ One year ago this week, Chris grabbed her ass in the string store.

Marriage fraud (old escapee from the drafts folder)

This has been sitting in my Drafts folder in Outlook for several weeks now, and is now longer timely to the news story that inspired it, but it might as well get posted.



Hey, bbwoof, here's a couple links on the "marriage fraud" story I was talking to you about. The first is the story itself; the second is a letter to the editor.

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/635C51E228B306F9862572EE00131C0A?OpenDocument

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/editorialcommentary/story/4D26615043D9AAB3862572F90082AF0A?OpenDocument

Not-very-long story even shorter, a local public defender (Althoffer) wanted to keep his Peruvian same-sex partner (Cerna-Rojas) in the United States. So he convinced (asked?) a willing coworker (Lewis) to marry the partner. Now Althoffer, Lewis, and Lewis's boyfriend (O'Leary) have all lost their jobs, Althoffer is free on $50,000 bail (having surrendered his passport), Cerna-Rojas is back in Peru and may be permanently barred from visiting the US. Lewis and O'Leary haven't been charged.

My favorite part is the quote from the US Attorney: Lewis and Cerna-Rojas "did not act like a married couple".

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I find this story very distressing. I can't think of any good reason why the government should be in the business of verifying people's marriages against some standard of behavior.

Even more so after I looked at a few websites on marriage fraud. There was one with a list of typical questions that might be asked in a fraud interview. Not unlike the questions that were on the annulment filings, lo these many years ago, really...but at least the church has some reason to be in that business for its own adherents.

Even if "thousands" of people are getting married in order to get residency in the US, I really can't believe that it's a real problem. So what? The new resident still has to pass all the US-entry background checks and so on.

( Can you answer these in your own relationship? )

(no subject)

Two months ago, to celebrate scottak's birthday, we went to the St Louis Science Center's Marvel Superheroes exhibit. I tried to take pictures, but my camera's batteries were dead. So I stopped at the gift shop, paid an exorbitant amount for four cheap batteries, and put them in the camera.

Then we went to dinner at Dewey's Pizza on North and South, and to Star Clipper in the Loop.

A few days later, I wanted to take a picture of something and could not
find my camera. Searched the house as much as possible, checked the car,
no camera. I called both Dewey's and Star Clipper, but neither of them
had a camera.

I've been back to both places several times since, and have repeatedly asked about lost cameras. The time-before-last that we were at Dewey's, they told me a digital camera had been turned in, but it was a different brand. I berated myself ever since for taking their word for it. So the last time we went to Dewey's, I asked them to show me the camera. Sure enough, it's nothing like mine.

We cleaned the house from top to bottom. No sign of my camera at home.

So finally, although I was sure I had had the camera at both Dewey's and Star Clipper (I seem to remember taking some pictures at both locations), I went to the Science Center to ask them about it. They don't have it either.

I have to resign myself to the fact that I've lost something I paid over $700 for. Not to mention the hundred or more pictures.