they're just fucking with my mind

in an unprecedented (and previously believed impossible) show of efficiency, the ins (now the cis, but i know from experience that changing a name while maintaining the same or higher level of bureaucratic red tape and exceptionally bad customer assistance means they the same old shitty ins) actually sent my new green card in the mail months before i expected them to take care of it. of course, due to their new "appointment" system that's absolute bullshit, it still wasn't taken care of in time to guarantee i'd be able to go home for carnival and it's too late to get a ticket now on my budget, but as they rudely informed me, they don't care how much my life is disrupted or about the fact that i was unable to travel, even for a family emergency. if i did have an emergency, it would be up to their discretion whether my emergency warranted an appointment- sounds like the same old shitty ins to me.
i think the only reason it came so fast was that they knew what assholes they'd been to me on the phone (3times just for this single appoinment, not counting the other times i had to speak to those assholes in the past few years) and at the counter (he was a prick in the way that only a man with a small one can be) when i finally got an appointment after weeks of trying because their system only books 2weeks in advance, in spite of the fact that time is infinite. i woulda taken an appointment for a slot 3months away just to know i had one, but instead you have to keep trying repeatedly until your attempt coincides with their system adding a new calendar day to the appointment book, and hope you get there before everybody else. and of course, they don't know what time the new day is added...
anyway, the card is here. ugly, and later than it shoulda been (they gave me a file-by date for my paperwork which i complied with, then months later sent me a notice saying they'd need up to one year to process it- clearly the same old shitty ins), but here. so i'll shut up about it already.
zed's home for her 2week carnival vacation. i'm suitably jealous, being as the temperature here is cruel and inhumane.
this is lame.
i think i need some dinner.
walk good.