Today we all went down to Carlow town (isn’t that a song?) and went to see the garda about Shaun’s passport. It actually went really well; the essence of it is that Shaun and I (because I’m the citizen in this scenario) need to establish that we’ve had a long-term permanent domicile sharing in the States, which can be shown by bills addressed to us separately at the same address, and that we intend to continue a long-term permanent domicile sharing in Ireland. They pretty much don’t give a rat’s ass about anything beyond that. It’s a matter of jumping through the hoops, which is exactly what the nice man said, except he used an Irish phrase that meant jumping through the hoops instead of that particular phrase. :) Anyway, we send the relevant pieces of information to the Department of Justice stating Shaun’s long term plans and that I (we) intend to continue putting him up, and then, as the nice man said, we wait. :) If his extended passport date runs out before the waiting is done, we just come back down to Carlow with a copy of the letter and paperwork we sent, he gets his passport extended again, and we wait some more. Eventually everything will get cleared and then we go back to Carlow and the nice man gives Shaun an ID card that says he’s registered to be here for an extended stay (ie, years). So yeah, that all went really well and we’re all very glad about it.
Now Ted and I have to go to the garda and show them our marriage certificate and my paperwork and that should take care of all that. We think we’ll be able to do that in Athy, though, instead of having to go to Carlow. We’ll see.
Anyway, Carlow was a nice town. Much larger than Athy, about 40,000 people apparently, and we had a walk around and found an internet shop (of course) and the movie theatre, but it doesn’t open til 6 on weekdays, so no Narnia for us. We’re going into Dublin tomorrow, though, so I expect there will be Narnia for us then. :)
I’ve completely lost count of my miles. I desperately need a pedometer.