This morning I did a quick search on mapquest and took off for the social security administration office - for what I thought would be the long and painful process of changing my last name on my social security card. But it wasn't. Mine was the first number to be called and I was in and out in less than ten minutes. The office even opened up early! What!? The U.S. government operated efficiently and in a timely manner? Well, blow me over.
I've been dragging my feet about changing my last name to Steve's. I felt like doing so would be abandoning my blood family and my true identity. I suppose I feel that way mostly because my family is pretty left and Steve's family swings way to the right. Mmmm...my father is straight from France, complete with heavy and hard to decipher accent and Steve's sister campaigned to boycott France and even called french fries "freedom fries." You can see why I'd be hesitant to bid farewell to my good french name and take on Steve's family's last name. But bid it farewell I did. I suppose I could have hyphenated. Or kept my last name. But I could tell it meant a lot to Steve for me to take his.
Then I made a quick stop at the Univ. library to pick up some Harry Potter books. They only had books 2-4, so I grabbed those up. Oh, excuse me, they had several copies of each book in Chinese, but I can't read in Chinese so it did me no good. Multiple copies in Chinese? We must have a large Chinese community at school, though I haven't noticed. There weren't any copies in any other languages. Oh well.
And then I got lost in the book stacks - literally. I always get lost in that library. It's because it's 4 or 5 floors and I keep losing the stairwell, so I can't find my way out. They keep the stairways behind these little brown doors...little brown doors that look like all the other little brown doors to the restrooms, offices, closets...