A Briar Patch of Red Tape

As the title suggests, we are finding ourselves running into a mess of red tape.  This past week we found out that Toby would have to wait at the quarantine kennel over a weekend because our original flight was to land on a weekend and the UK does not check in foreign dogs on the weekend.  Then, we found out that our work visas are going at a tortoise pace through the UK consulate in New York because (a) it's the holidays and (b) more people than normal are requesting work visas for the UK.  Go figure.  So we find ourselves looking at re-booking the plane tickets.  However, it is not just as simple as paying the fee to re-book   We have to try and figure out when we will get our passports and work visas returned to us from the UK consulate.  Instead of being able to wait until the day our passports and visas arrive to re-book  we also have to take into consideration that in order to get Toby overseas, he has to have a health check by a vet 10 days prior to our arrival, and then make an appointment with the USDA to get their raised seal of approval and then go back the vet within 24 hours and five days of our arrival to get a tapeworm treatment.  Did I mention that his pet passport expires on the 31st of January?  We also then have to call back our health insurance to extend our coverage past when we thought we would need it, call Verizon to extend our cell phone coverage past when we thought we would need it, call the kennel in the UK who is helping us get Toby through customs, call the hotel to re-book our stay, and call the Realtor in the UK (although they are called property agents over there) to re-book showings of apartments.  We tried calling the UK consulate, but they will not give out information regarding the status of work visas, even after we paid $3/minute to talk with them.  We also started calling our Washington D.C. senators and representatives to see if they could help us with this process.  One of them, Debbie Stabenow (well, at least the workers in her office), was helpful and is passing our name along to a caseworker who deals with passport issues with foreign countries.  Based upon our own gumshoe detective work, that looks to be January 17 or 18.  However, we'll know more in a couple of days when Senator Stabenow's office gets back to us.  On top of all of this, Dave is feverishly making the needed revisions on the dissertation while also starting to do research for his new job, and I am starting to pack, list our Subaru for sale and get blood work done to find out when the pregnancy hormone has left my body (it hasn't yet).  At least speaking for myself, I am very much looking forward to arriving and leaving behind this messy red tape.  My personal opinion is that given where we are in world history, we should be able to travel to other countries without this much work.  I guess the silver lining is that we'll get to watch the season premier of Downton Abbey instead of waiting for it to get uploaded to Hulu, which we would have to do if we were in N. Ireland.  In case you've never seen Downton Abbey, it is a great show about the good old days of the UK before they invented the latest bout of red tape.