it's official

So, I'm now officially a resident of North Carolina. I know I've lived here for 6 months, but I had to go to the DMV today and make it official. This state is very particular about certain things, and this is one of them.

Jay was able to buy a car off of his aunt (so now we have two cars!) and in order to transfer it to my name* I need an NC license. And in order to get that, I need proof of insurance. That was hurdle number 1. We got that taken care of, but then I couldn't find my social security card (passport wouldn't cut it), so we spent most of today looking for it. Luckily we found it - it just hadn't made the final move with us. It was with all of our books sleeping in Jay's sister's garage. (Yeah, we should really finish moving all of our crap over to our house at some point...)

Keep in mind, I only have one weekday off per week, so if I miss my chance one Tuesday, I have to wait til the next one. We spent so long this morning getting everything together that we didn't make it to the DMV til about 2:30pm. Throw in an hour or so of waiting, then me doing the vision test and basic written test (of which I missed 3, still passing on the 1st try), and that didn't leave us much time to go to the other DMV office to get the new plate. Yeah, there are two DMV offices in Asheville - one for driver's licenses and one for car registration. It's really a very stupid system this state has.

Doesn't matter though, because even though I was issued a temporary paper driver's license, I was told that this wouldn't suffice to change the car title over. I have to wait the 1-3 weeks until I get the hard copy in the mail. Which is retarded. The one upside though is that once I do get the hard copy, it's good for 8 years. So even if I move states again (which is highly likely) there probably isn't a pressing need for me to go to the DMV until I'm 8 years older. Even then, it should be relatively painless, as I can simply renew my CA or MI license (assuming I live in one of those places again).

But the point is, I shouldn't have had to do it in the first place.


*We didn't transfer it to his name because my MI license expires before his does... He just spent a lot of money renewing it right before we left.