The following photo of me with a visa application was taken in January of 2007:

I am proud to announce that today, over a year later, I have finally sent in my application for permanent residence in Canada. Stark and I have been working and working on that damn thing all this time, and every time we thought it was done, suddenly a new requirement would manifest itself. First there weren’t sufficient numbers of photos, so more had to be taken. Then the FBI had to be contacted, the doctor had to be seen, tax forms received, certificates ordered, essays written, calls to the Canadian Immigration HELP! Line made repeatedly, bottles of wine consumed out of stress. In the end, the application was one hundred pages long. One hundred pages! Look at this monster:

Up until this morning, we were totally overwhelmed by this process. Look at what this process has done to poor Stark:

But today, at approximately noon, we mailed that sucker off to the Case Processing Office. It is now officially out of our hands. We can stress no more about it, now it is Canada’s turn to be stressed! And let me tell you, this whole thing better work out, because I can’t afford a second application.