So I stopped by the Illinois Secretary of State‘s (aka the Department of Motor Vehicles) office yesterday afternoon, because I’m a masochist or something. Actually, it’s because Dan’s car still has North Carolina license plates, and they expire at the end of the month. So I went in to find the place blissfully uncrowded. I got the forms needed and started to fill them out, until I got to the line: FILL IN YOUR IL DRIVERS LICENSE NUMBER. Um, whoops. See, I’ve never quite gotten around to getting an Illinois driver’s license, even though I’ve been here for about a year. Heh. My bad.

Well, the Drivers License office was right next door, so I figured what the heck? I opened the door and was shocked to see that it, too was uncrowded. I was directed to a large, unsmiling man who asked me what I wanted and what documentation I had. I handed him the bundle of papers I had, he looked through it and said, “Where’s your Social Security card?” Aw, crap. I haven’t seen my Social Security card in more than five years. And if it’s still around, it’s somewhere in our storage locker – good luck.

So now it looks like I need to come in a early one day next week and leave by 2:30 PM so I can get to the Social Security office in Waukegan before they close at 4 PM. There’s an office right near us in Chicago, on Lawrence between Western and Damen, but it too closes at 4 PM. And me with a 40-60 minute commute to get there? Yeah, I’ll go to Waukegan. And theoretically all of this needs to get done by the end of the month. Um, yeah. We’ll see.