Survival Guide

Getting a legal name change is a royal pain. Each place needs its own documentation, but no office tells you exactly what you need to bring. Frustration.

Name change survival guide, with the things I have learned from our misadventures:

Start out with the Social Security office. You will need the card for other places. Bring your old SS card, if you can find it (which I couldn't.) I used my marriage license and birth certificate and was fine. They will mail your new card to you within a week or two.

Then to the DMV to spend the next several years waiting in line and trying to finish the longest form in the history of bureaucracy. After you answer questions about your breathing status, (O2 tank dependent? Needing an inhaler?) and if you would like to sign up to be an organ donor and make a "life saving anatomical gift", you continue to wait. I picked up a form and filled it out at home before we went. This was nice, but you have plenty of time waiting to fill it out. I brought my birth certificate, new SS card, marriage license, and old drivers license. Between all of those, I had enough proof to get my new drivers license. If you are changing your address while you are there, you will need to bring two proofs of your new address, like an apartment contract, utilities bill, the little paper hooked to the SS card when you get it in the mail that has your name and address on it, etc. I didn't bring these things, but I had changed my address online before, because you are supposed to do it within 10 days of moving (surprise!). Beyond all the papers, it was pretty painless. (Hint, don't go during lunchtime. It is busier.) They will give you a paper temporary license and tell you to wait 4-6 weeks for the plastic one to come in the mail.

Where you go next has more flexibility. To change marital status and name at school, you need your SS card. With the proper information, it was pretty painless. They asked me for Davids SSN, which was weird, but he knew it so it was fine. They said that it takes 3-5 days to process the information and to get it up on the system.

After the name change has gone through with the school, you can go get a new ID card. This was easy as well. I just gave them my old ID and told them that I needed a new card because I got married and they took a new picture (Hooray!) and printed out a new one for me.

Another place to go is the bank to change the name on the account. Not too hard, but you need the marriage license and a drivers license or ID. (They accepted my old ID without problems). This is also when we put David on the bank account. I went back and got my new bank card after I had all my new IDs so that I would be able to prove who I was with the new name.

Pharmacies are another place that will need to be notified of a name change. Mine hasn't had any problems, but I plan on calling the doctor and asking for them to change the name on the prescription so that I won't have problems with that.

Be sure to check if your name was changed on your records with the Church. The lady in Records at the temple changed my name when we were getting married.

Basically, be sure to have proof of who you are for anything you change. As long as you can prove it, you should be fine. Good Luck!

Profundity.

David told me that we needed to post something profound so here we go...

There are two theories to arguing with women. Neither one works.

If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

No clue what any of that means, but hey, its profound.

Our First Wedding Casualty

Our beloved Lil' has mysteriously been wounded. We found her on the floor when we got home last night, still doing her job. She has been a bit more... mobile... lately. She will move closer to the edges of things and has fallen a couple times. She has also been louder, so we decided to take a closer look and see if something had worked itself loose. Part of her back casing had separated, but thats easy. We took her cover off and noticed that one of her blades had a long crack in it. That would explain why she was louder and off balance. We are going to super glue her back together, with any luck. Any suggestions on a glue that works on plastics?

Misadventures in bureaucracy

Getting a legal name change is a royal pain. Each place needs its own documentation, but few offices tell you exactly what you need to bring. Frustration.

First we went to the DMV. The sign on the door said "two hour wait from this point". We grabbed the form and took off. No way I was going to wait two hours in the 'express office'.

Downstairs to the bank. No real problems with the name/address change there. The real problems came when he wanted us to spend 'two minutes' opting into a free account option. Forty minutes later, we leave, without having that option activated due to a lack of proof of something. Lame.

Then to BYU. No line! Hooray! Straight up to the window, tell her I need a name change and marital status change. She asks for my new social security card. Poop. Haven't gotten there yet. Guess we get to go back later

Home for a coke break, plus a few rants.

Off to the social Security office! Finally, an office that tells you exactly what you need to bring.

Marriage license, birth certificate, and Drivers license. We walked in and signed in on their nifty computer, got our number, (A298 if anyone was wondering), and waited. About 10 minutes later, they called our number. Up to the window, present the documents, wait for a minute while he types in the information, then agree that everything is what you say it us, under penalty of law. Yikes. He asked if I wanted a receipt, which, contrary to what I had hoped, is not a temporary form of the card. It just tells you that it will be mailed within two weeks. Poop again. Guess we aren't going back up to campus for a couple weeks.

Beyond that, there isn't much else we can do until we feel like braving the DMV again. Until then, I have my double-sided, legal paper sized form to ponder.

Coming soon: A Name change survival guide: Learning from our misadventures.

The Prank that Keeps on Giving

So, in our haste to post something onto our dying blog we realized that we forgot to post about the prank of wonder and awe. About halfway through the day Jamie and I needed to take the last of her stuff over to our place. Upon our great surprise we opened the truck to put stuff in the car and found that it was loaded to the brim with 2-Liter Coke bottles. We ran inside to spred the news among Jamie's family by saying "Our trunk is full of Coke!" Jamie's Grandpa said very matter of factly, "And there is something wrong with this?"

So we load everything in the back seat and run our errands. Fast forward through the reception we are making our grand exit into married life only to be stopped by what we think at first is just a saran wrapped car.

Being te resourceful little boyscout that I am I shout, "Don, where's your knife?" to make quick work of the gift wrapped glory.

Little did we realize that this was only half the prank that night. The best was yet to come. We open the door to find coke lining the front two seats and much of the back seat, the truck is full to the brim and we have no where to put it all. All the while everyone is singing, "99 bottles of coke in your car..."

After finding all the nooks and crannies in our car we finally start to drive off and boy is our little rice burner not happy about the extra weight. Whenever we turned the weight of the shifting liquid floods to one side of the car making it hard to control. We felt every bump in the road and considering there is road construction everywhere that is a lot. Finally we get home declaring "We'll deal with this in the morning."

Morning came and we're faced with the daunting task of bringing all 99 bottles of coke up to our second story apartment before we leave on our honeymoon. We get a sudden stroke of inspiration that only could have come from above. Use our suitcases. So we load up our suitcases with coke and make three or four trips upstairs. I loaded the first guy up so much I almost threw out my shoulder. Once it's upstairs we leave, declaring, "We'll deal with this when we get back."

Well to shorten this painfully long blog we put all the coke on the wall... kind of. Now whenever we take one down we sing, "Take one down and pass it around..." Jamie had one more stroke of genius that I will be forever grateful for. MyCokeRewards.com Each cap has a code. Each code is worth three points. Meaning we have over 300 points to spend on stuff like magazine subscriptions or cooking stuff or if we really wanted more Coke. Right now, with bonus points and a work party, we're at over 50 points. We'll let you know what we save up for.

Mawage

Okay, so we figured that since the planning, pictures, moving, packing, unpacking, shopping, wedding, and honeymoon are over that we should post a little something about how amazing the wedding day was. First of all, all of our family got into town the night before the wedding and we had a ton of pizza and palettes in Jamie's family's back yard. It was a blast.

We all went home and as Jamie was walking me out to my car we had this sudden stroke of realization... we were getting married in the morning. Not that we were nervous or regretting our decision; it was just the kind of realization that happens before one gets married I suppose. After convincing each other to take some Benedryl before trying to sleep we were about to get to sleep at a reasonable time.

So, in the morning we both woke up way to early and got ready to head over to the temple. We had to be there at about 10:00 AM and it was an half hour drive up there. I was ready before 8:00. Needless to say I sat around feeling nervous and excited. Finally the time came, the temple was fantastic, we were married at 11:11 AM on July 8th, 2010 (Yes, for those of you realizing the time I did make a wish. It was grand).

We both got ready after that in record time and got ready to take some

pictures of the family. It was a wonderful experience. Our photographer is so much fun. We definitely recommend her to anyone looking to have amazing photos at their wedding.

Afterwards the luncheon was great. We had a ton of food and a lot of fun. Although we couldn't get certain family members to stop taking pictures of us eating. I kept telling them we're not Brad Pitt, we don't look cute eating. See?

It just doesn't work.

After averting disasters with music, time seemed to fly right on by and the reception was underway (I debated for a few minutes about making an underwear comment... but I decided to refrain myself). The reception was amazing! The color scheme was glorious (thanks Jamie), the cake looked fantastic, and most of all Jamie looked AMAZING! Here are some pictures.

Some new favorite toys

Vacuum: This is our wonderful vacuum. It really really sucks, just like any vacuum should. (Sorry, I couldn't resist using that)

Chairs: Finally! We got chairs and they are great. Easy to put together and nice looking.

Delilah: This is our apple peeler corer slicer. We named her Delilah because calling it an apple peeler corer slicer is quite a mouthful.

Pans: This set has a good mix of sizes and types of pans. They also hold heat very well.

Knives: Fantastic. Very sharp and easy to use.

Lil: BEST INVESTMENT EVER! She travels between rooms with us and is nearly always on.

THE BEAST: This is the most beastly rice cooker that we've ever seen. I'm pretty sure it even has a cure cancer button on it.

The Food Processor of Death: It slices. It dices. It grates everything from a block of cheese to your hand in under 5 seconds.

Bobby's TV: Thanks to David's old roommate and AMAZING friend for this super awesome gift!

Apple Remote: David has always wanted one of these things. It works great when we use his Mac to watch movies.