This is Hilarious!

So this is what Dad posted this morning on his and Mom's blog! Its really funny! =D


Thursday, December 13, 2007
I dont do forms!

Dad (Joe) writing:
Yesterday was an experience. I went to the Chinese Consulate, which is at 1 W. Erie, not 100 E. Erie as their website claims. It was supposed to be soooo easy. Just drop off our passports and the forms we filled out for our visas. When I got up to the window the nice man behind the 2” bulletproof glass said “wrong form, fill out these,” and pushed two new forms through the slot.This may have been no big deal for the average adult. But having been on overnight salt spreading duty the past two nights, with a total of six hours sleep in the last 72 hours, I hardly qualified. Every time I’ve picked up a pen to fill in some form in the past two years, my lovely Lisa springs into action, alerting me to all the possible mistakes I could make. I’ve been trained to avoid filling out forms altogether and just allow her to do it. I only provide the all-important signature. (Truth is I hate filling out forms and she seems to actually like it. A perfect marriage.) But here we were Caitie, Jonah, and me with two forms that needed filling out and no qualified person to do so.I panicked. I called Lisa and the atomic transporter was on the fritz, so she wouldn’t be joining us. She was supportive but the reality was those forms were either going to be filled out by me or I’d have to bring them home to her and let her fill them out. I called Bethanne, our social worker, and so much more. She calmed me down and convinced me that I might actually be qualified to do this. (Okay, if anyone thinks I’m starting to sound like a weenie I’d like to remind you: sleep deprived, worried about screwing up the form and derailing the whole process by misspelling a name or something. Oh never mind.)So I went over to the counter where people fill out these forms and found no pens. I turned to my daughter Caitie and asked if she had a pen. She produced a remarkable contraption that she claims I bought for her. This was a long white pen that had large blue heart-shaped crystal on the top. Lovely. When you press the pen tip to paper the blue crystal lights up. Lift it and it shuts off. When you print instead of using cursive the pen blinks with each letter. Now the spring inside the pen has to be compressed so that there is electrical contact made. This makes the tip drag along the paper because it has to be lifted 1/32nd of an inch higher than any other pen. This created a lot of odd markings as I dragged the pen-tip from one letter to the next. But the blinking blue light was a special treat.The first entry on the new form required my “surname”. I never saw the word before. Was that my first name, last name, whole name? Then the next entry was my “given name”. Oh please!Caitie was really helpful. I went with her best guesses.We got through it. I’m sure it’s all fine. Anyway, I realized that I’d better relax. I’m going to China for two weeks and there’s probably going to be more surprises. If I can get bent out of shape over this, what’s it going to be like over there? When this realization hit me, I looked across the elevator we had just boarded and said to Caitie, “I need to relax.”She nodded and said, “God’s in control, Dad.”My cup runneth over.