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Well, I've been back in the USA for seven weeks now and my new wife is already nagging me -- from like, a million miles away -- to get back to writing my weekly Thoughts. I was on a pretty good roll there, before leaving for South Africa; but when I returned, I found that I had no Internet connection and I've been trying to get back on track ever since.

Actually, I've been trying to get things back to normal ever since my friend, Phil, came to stay with me until he could get a place of his own -- again. Last June he decided to move back here from Wisconsin, to where he had retreated just over a year ago. With planning a wedding and rearranging my life, I very reluctantly agreed to let him stay here while he organized an apartment. He showed up here with no warning at 2 A.M. on a Monday morning! I was not at all happy about this but I could have gotten over it if he wouldn't have broken my computer while I was at work that same day. Since then I threw him out and got a new Dell computer, but my life has been an uphill battle ever since he came crashing back into my world. I haven't heard from Phil since then but I wish him well, wherever he is.

I managed to save most of my important files from the old computer and get the new one set up to my liking and thought that I was back to normal, and for the most part, I was. Then, Lee and I decided that we should contact the attorneys that we had chosen to handle her immigration. And that was when the next bomb was dropped on us, the change in plans I had written about in August. As I wrote in my last column, though, all turned out for the best; then when I got back home again I discovered that my Cox Cable high-speed Internet connection wasn't working. A lot of good a new computer does me without the Internet.

I'll spare you all the technical details (and spare myself the trouble of trying to explain it), but it took 3 weeks and a whole lot of time on hold before I was back up and running. They had scheduled 2 service calls, which they then cancelled without contacting me and I didn't know that they were cancelled until I called to ask when the guy would be here. I talked to 4 different technical support people that were very patient and courteous but not very helpful -- well, I take that back, the last guy did get me going; and in all fairness, they did credit my account for the 19 days that it took to get me back online. I really do love the cable Internet connection when it's working, though; it's very fast and it's very nice to be online all the time with no dialing. My only real complaint with Cox is their technical support. It's difficult to get on-site service after hours or on weekends and I can't take time off from work to wait for them; when I do get after hours service scheduled, they don't bother to show up, anyway!

I thought I'd never get caught up with email once I got back online (though I still owe an email to Lee's friend, Terry, and I'll get to that, just now -- promise). Then I had to get the stories written for the 2 weeks that I was away: our wedding and honeymoon. After that I was just burned out and tired of sitting in front of this computer, new and fast and really cool, not withstanding, I'd had enough. I was planning on catching up with each week's column, but I'm settling for this catch-up column and then I'll try to keep up from here. While I was offline I got back into the Braille book I started earlier this year, "House Of Thunder," by Dean Koontz, and it's really getting good now. It's also football season and I've got season tickets for the New Orleans Saints. I'm trying to sell most of them now, because I don't have anyone that wants to go with me and I'm really not very interested in going to the games anymore. Nonetheless, Butch and I went last week to watch the Saints beat the Chicago Bears. Even that game was boring so we left before half time to find a bar with the Green Bay Packer game, but we ended up drinking tequila and beer at Coyote Ugly.

Also, during this time we've been sending paperwork and documents to our attorneys, who filed the forms with the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS), and yesterday I got what I've been waiting for in the mail: the receipt from the BCIS for our form I-129f! This is the important one, the application for the K3 spousal visa, which is what allows Lee to enter the United States and join me here so we can begin the rest of our lives -- our life together.

We were hoping to be together by Christmas -- and we still are -- but this isn't looking very promising, so Christmas might be postponed for us; because it won't be Christmas until my wife is here to decorate the tree with me. We've done all we can and it's out of our hands now. All we can do is hope and pray that the gears of the government machinery turn quickly. In the phrase, "hurry up and wait," we have now entered the "wait" phase. This has all been much more difficult and is taking longer than I ever thought it would, and this long-distance marriage really sucks. There's nothing else to say here.

So, now that I've done as my wife has asked, she can quit nagging me for another week; and until next week, I've got a book to read.