Rebellin

Saturday morning, JB lept out of bed and opened the curtains. I assumed his excitement was for a day of skiing, as we had planned. The man never gets out of bed with such enthusiasm.

Oh, no, it wasn’t because we were going skiing. In fact, plans for skiing went out the window when the man decided it was time for a project.

“I think I’m going to build a shed.”

Which means, since I said “I do” to the man three weeks ago, that I also said “I do” to helping him on any projects he conceives around the house.

So instead of playing, I spent a few hours in Lowes and Home Depot, and spent quite a bit of time outside in the cold Fall weather digging and leveling and getting dirt under my nails.

Ah, married life.

My family has a strange tradition of having people go by their middle names. Hence, my first name is something I was never intended to be called.

I started calling myself A. Lynn3tt3 C00k (numbers used to fool search engines) in high school, and even got the DMV and the Social Security office to start calling me that.

I’ve had telemarketers call to talk to A, or AL. I’ve had computer forms call me Alynnette. I’ve even had junk mail come to me as Alynn3tt3 A. C00k.

The A confuses people and computers, and now that I’m married, I decided it’s time to drop the A when I changed my last name.

I was told to start the name change process with Social Security. They didn’t have a problem with dropping the A.

Then I went to the DMV, who told me it would take a court order to drop the A. But after waiting in the hellaciously long DMV line, I went ahead and got my new license as A. Lynn3tt3 B3llin.

So now, I am Lynnette Cook Bellin to the Social Security people, and A. Lynn3tt3 B3llin to the DMV. And I think this is really going to screw things up for me.

I called the court house to ask about the proceedure for getting a court order. I was told to find out myself by reading the Nevada Revised Statutes. After searching the damn statutes for 30 minutes, I’m no closer to knowing how to get the court order without calling an attorney.

Sorry, Mom and Dad, but this going by your middle name tradition will be ending with me. Somehow, some way I’m dropping the A, and I’ve decided just now not to pass the Curse of the A on to any of my children.

And no, I’m not pregnant. I’ve already been asked that question upon the return from our honeymoon. WE HAVEN’T EVEN BEEN MARRIED THREE WEEKS, PEOPLE!

Update:
Holy crap. The name change information from the court is 18 pages long. Here is the process:

Sign the Petition and the Verifications attached to the Petition in the presence of a Notary Public.
1. Make three copies of the Petition after it is signed and Notarized and staple the copies in “sets”. All the original pages in one “set” and the copies, pages 1 – 4 make up each other “set”.
2. Fill out, sign and date the “Civil Cover Sheet”.
3. Do not fill out the NOTICE, but make three copies of the NOTICE.
4. Take the Civil Cover Sheet, the Petition and the copies of the Petition and the Notice and the copies of the Notice to the Filing Clerk’s Office at 75 Court Street, Reno, Nevada, with your
filing fee.
5. The Clerk will file stamp the original Petition and the copies. The clerk will keep the original Petition and give you back the file stamped copies.
6. The Clerk will fill in the information on the NOTICE and the copies of the NOTICE, file stamp them, keep the original and give you the file stamped copies back.
7. AT THIS TIME, DO NOT FILE THE DOCUMENTS TITLED PROOF OF
PUBLICATION, REQUEST FOR SUBMISSION AND ORDER.
8. Take the NOTICE to the newspaper to have it published one time a week for three consecutive weeks.
9. At this time, take a few minutes and fill in the Case No. and Dept. No. that has been assigned to your case on all the other documents you have. Everything in this case must be identified
by that Case No. and Dept. No.
10. At the end of the three weeks publication, the newspaper will mail a “Proof of Publication” to you which will be an Affidavit and a copy of the published Notice. This is then attached to the Proof of Service sheet that is included in this set of documents. Make two copies of the Proof of Service cover sheet and the attached Proof of Publication and file it with the Filing Clerk at 75 Court Street, Reno.
11. Ten days from the last date the Notice appeared in the paper, you may “submit” the case for review and decision by the Judge. To do this, sign the Request for Submission and make two copies of it. Make THREE (3) OR MORE COPIES OF THE ORDER. YOU MAY WANT MORE THAN ONE COPY FOR FUTURE RECORDS. THIS IS THE TIME TO MAKE THEM.
12. Take the Request For Submission and the copies of the Request and the Order and copies of the Order to the Filing Clerk. The Clerk will file in the Request For Submission, keep the original and give you back the copies. These are for your records. The Clerk will keep all
of the Orders for the Judge’s signature.
13. The Judge will usually sign the Order within a week or ten (10) days. The Court may notify you that the Order has been signed, HOWEVER, sometimes, the Judge signs the Order and,
for whatever reason, you are not notified that the Order has been signed. It is up to you to keep track of your documents within the Court process and when asking about the documents, you must always have the Case No. and Dept. No. ready for whoever is assisting
you.
14. It is wise to get at least three (3) “certified copies” of the Order. The orders you brought in with the Request for Submission can be certified and should be in the file. These “certified” copies are necessary for such things as school records, Social Security name change, etc.

Are you kidding me?! I just want to drop the A. At this point, the A is winning. I guess I could hire a lawyer to do the above listed beurocratic nonsense, but for right now, I’ll just sit here and fume.

Now presenting the new improved version of me — Mrs. B! We’re back from our honeymoon in Italy, which was wonderful! We got back Friday at about 11:30 pm after 24.5 hours of travel. We’re both jet lagged. In fact, it is 5:30 in the morning right now on Sunday, and I’ve been up for an hour. Despite being very tired, my body clock is still very off.

The wedding was wonderful. A bit overwhelming, but wonderful. Most everything went smoothly.

One of the best decisions we made was to go on our honeymoon two days after the wedding. Even though it was great to see everyone that came to the wedding, I was so excited to be alone with JB for 11 days in romantic Italy.

I haven’t touched a computer in 17 days, which I think is a personal record. At least, that’s the longest I’ve gone without touching a computer since probably high school. And it was wonderful. I admit that the Internet cafes were a bit alluring, but then I stopped myself, knowing I’d be attached to a keyboard again soon enough.

I kept an old fashioned paper travel jounal while in Italy, and I hope to get some of those entries posted for all of you soon. Basically, our honeymoon consisted of the following:

• Arrive in Naples, Europe’s most densely populated city
• After spending one night in Naples, we went to Capri, a small island off the coast of Naples
• We spent two nights in a DELUXE resort on a cliff that overlooked the ocean
• We then took a ferry, bus and train to Florence. We spent two days in Florence, the first of which JB caught a cold and the second of which I spent half a day doing laundry. Doing laundry in an Italian laundrymat was an experience in itself. More on that later.
• From Florence, we went to Cinque Terre, where we hiked 7 miles between the five fishing villages, and probably another three within the villages and to a nude beach that was completely and utterly vacant.
• After two nights in Cinque Terre, we took the train to Venice, where we got endlessly lost on the ancient Roman street grid and did the traditional gondola ride. We also enjoyed deuling orchestras at night in St. Mark’s Square, which has to be one of the most romantic settings EVER.
• After three nights in Venice, we came home. We spent yesterday opening packages, cleaning the house, and walking the dogs, who after almost two weeks of no dog walks and attention were BOUNCING OFF THE WALLS.

Overall, it’s good to be back. The last two weeks, including the wedding and the honeymoon, went by so fast, but have so many wonderful memories. They have to be the best two weeks of my life.

I think I’m finally coming down with the cold that JB had for the second week of our trip. At least I didn’t get sick on the trip… Now, the only thing I’m dreading is going to work on Monday after being gone for so long. I should start a pool for people to guess how many unread e-mails I’ll have. For some reason, the number 4000 sticks out in my head, but then again, I think at some point I probably exceeded my account size and Outlook probably shut down my account.

Until next time, I sign off as Mrs. Lynnette Bellin, the deleriously happy newlywed.