I woke up at 9:15, instead of 8:15 as planned. Had a half hour to get dressed, brew some tea, and get to Harry to get him to his appointment at 10:20.

I poured half the pot of tea into a thermal cup, grabbed a banana, located my cell phone, then picked up the paper on the way out, and ran out to the car. Called Harry from the car and told him I was on the way.

There was a HUGE truck and trailer blocking the street where Harry lives, so I had to go around the back way. This truck had a driver in the back to control some attachment to the trailer. Trauma Mama, you've seen fire trucks that have a similar arrangement?

Anyway, we got to the doctor in plenty of time. Harry was called in within a reasonable amount of time considering the facility is associated with that medical facility I hate. The procedure took about 15 minutes, and we were out. Harry needed some money, so we stopped at a bank on the way home. I dropped him off and it was a little past noon.

So I decided to go by Jewish Family Services and drop off a volunteer application. As it happened, the social worker who called me about the job was in the office, and we had a chat. There's a bit of urgency to get this volunteer visitation project going, so I decided to go ahead and get my fingerprints done today instead of waiting until Thursday, as I had planned.

Now, this is where the day *really* started going downhill. The Sheriff's branch station that I thought is nearest my home is actually about 8 miles away. I got there, found out that they don't do fingerprinting there. I was given the address of the branch station that is -- get this -- in my neighborhood, within FIVE signal lights of my home.

There's a parking space right smack-dab in front of the door, and I can't find the form "Request for Live Scan Service" (fingerprinting). Ah, no! Did I leave it at the other station? Thank you to whoever invented the cell phone. I called the first station, and sure enough, I had left the form on the counter where I had put it down when I wanted to write the *correct* phone number of that particular station. The phone number was wrong on the page given to me by JFS.

Okay. So I go back to Station #1, get the form, hustle back to the Station in my neighborhood. And guess what? There's a fee. Oh, the DOJ fee is waived for volunteers, but they have a new, electronic machine that scans the fingerprints. No more of that black ink that takes days to leave the cuticles. But they have to pay for their new gadget, so there's a $12.00 "scanning fee."

They don't take cash, credit cards or ATM cards. They do take money orders or personal checks. I didn't have my checkbook with me.

OY!

So I came home. It's getting close to the time that my sister and I would be IMing, so I fired up the PC. Wrote an email to my contact at JFS giving her the correct phone number, and the correct information about fingerprinting.

Then I get a phone call from sister saying she won't be on today. She's sick.

OY VEY!

Maybe it was a 3 day, after all.

Shalom