(NonZombie Blog) Dr. Lech Vs the DMV

As many of you know this past Wednesday I had to travel to the local Department of Motor Vehicles to renew my driver’s license, even though I don’t have a car I still need to have a valid driver’s license for when
I do drive. I was planning on blogging about this sooner however it took me
this long to recover from the amazingly painful hell that is American bureaucracy
at its finest. Now sit back and relax while I spin you a tale of Dr. Lech’s journey
through hell.

Wednesday morning 4:30 am, it was still dark outside as I pulled myself out of bed so I could cross the room to turn my alarm off, I do this because I have a habit of turning the alarm off and going back to sleep if
its too close to the bed. The first thing I noticed is the dull grinding pain
in my right knee, only awake for one minute and my day already sucks. I ignore
it for now as I limp out towards the living room to turn a light on. From there
its to the kitchen for my morning cup of tea, I’m not a coffee drinker, while
in the kitchen I notice a pitter pat sound coming from the air vent over the
stove. Limping back out to the living room I look out the front door, rain, no
wonder my knee was hurting.

5:00 am, I’m up and dressed and getting ready to leave. The closest DMV was on the other side of town and if I was going to bus it over I needed to leave now so I would have plenty of time to get there before they
opened. In the back of the house I hear my dad starting to get up for his day. Looking
at my watch I decided I had plenty of time so I waited and had a morning chat
with dad. Good thing I did because I found out he had the day off and was
willing to drive me to the DMV and wait for me. “kick ass!” I thought. All I
had to do was wait till we dropped my little sister off at school, at 8 am, that’s
when the DMV opened. No big deal, in the car it only take twenty minutes to
drive there, so once again “kick ass!” Three hours to kill now, no problem. So I
headed off to my computer to kill some time, or so I thought. Once at my computer I do the normal, check my
e-mails, check my Deviant Art account, YouTube, and LiveVideo. You know what I
found? Nothing! Absolutely nothing. It was like the inter net was dead, no
updates, no submissions, Nothing! Even the LiveVideo blogs had nothing to offer
me. That only left me with one last resort, early morning TV.

7:55 am, Finally we are on the road and dropped off my little sister at school, and then it’s off to the DMV. After we drop off the little one pop tells me about a DMV near where he works that has short lines,
once again “kick ass!” So now we are driving towards Rocklin, pop is one of the
Day managers at the Super Wal-Mart up there. From Sacramento to Rocklin is
about a forty minute drive, that didn’t matter because if the lines were as
short as he said then I would be out of there in no time. After all it was just
a license renewal, it’s not like I had to take the test again, Right?

8:40 am, Once in Rocklin pop starts taking all these crazy back roads, needless to say I’m already lost. Finally we pull into one of those road side office complexes, you know the ones that have a dentist, taxidermy,
H&R Block, and an auto detailing place in them. This is where he said the
DMV for Rocklin was, so we looked, and looked, and looked. No DMV, pop said it
was near the back of the complex. So we drive to the back and sure enough there
was a government office there, a DMA. Facepalm. Pop laughs as he remembers they
closed the DMV last year. I just shake my head. Ever the ray of light pop tells
me he knows another DMV and that it was close. So now we were off once again,
this time to Roseville, yay Roseville.

8:55 am Roseville, It started raining again as we drove up to the DMV, my eyes almost jumped out of my head when I saw the line that started at the front door and went down the sidewalk and encircled the building,
“Oh fuck me…” I said with a hopeless tone. Turns out that the DMV in Roseville didn’t
open till 9:30 am. Lucky for me pop talked me into getting some breakfast at
the Denny’s down the street. So now we’re off to Denny’s, yay Denny’s.

9:10 am Denny’s. This by far was the only thing of the day that went right this day. It was good to sit down and just hang out, just me and pop. The food was good and we spent most of the time just sitting there
telling dirty jokes back and forth to each other. Fun indeed.

9:45 am DMV. The first thing I notice as we pull up this time is that the line was gone and the rain started to let up, “kick ass!” is what I thought, however that quickly changed as I entered the building. The
place was literally packed to the gills. Everywhere I looked there was people
standing, all the chairs were filled and almost all the side doors were
blocked. Again Facepalm.

?:?? am Hell. I’m not sure what time it was, because I didn’t have a watch on me and there were no clocks in the DMV, so I’m not sure just how much time I spent standing in the first line that was the check in desk, it
felt like an hour. I finally get to the desk and tell them why I was there, she
kindly smiles and hands me a number print out, G029 this number will be forever
burned into my mind, so I thank her and I make my way through the ocean of
humanity that was inside the DMV. Once in the waiting area I look up to the
screen to see what number they are on. Now in California they issues letters (ranging
from A to M) and numbers (1 to 100) to help keep things running smoothly,
bullshit. Again I look at my number, G029, and then to the screen, they just
called G001, Facepalm.

You know when TV shows make fun of the DMV buy showing all the crazy characters waiting around? Characters like monks, luchadors, hookers, ninjas, old people, midgets and every other imaginable facet of humanity, I use
to think that was a joke, dear lord I was soooo wrong. Now you would think with
all these people they would have as many employees working as possible, right?
Wrong, only two windows were open. I’m not sure how much time had passed all I
knew was I was standing waiting for my number, G029, to finally be called. One
would think they would simple go down the alphabet taking a few numbers from
each letter and move along smoothly, right? WRONG!! Their system was so damn
random I almost lost what was left of my mind. It didn’t help that people who
walked in after me were getting called up and taken care of before me. If I didn’t
know any better I would think Cthulhu was running the place, it was just that
maddening.

After what felt like an eternity my number, G029, finally came up. So I walked up to the window and old Asian woman sitting on the other side asked why I was there, “To renew my license.” She then told me to cover
one eye and read line 1 on chart a, “B L Y U P C H T”. She then tells me to do
the same with the other eye; this time read line 2 on chart b “Z Q E W T Y T G”.
she then charged me $31 had me sign a few print outs, stamped them and then
told me to stand in yet another line, this time to have my thumb print taken
and a new photo taken as well. Lucky for me this line had two windows open and
two very nice middle aged women working it. Finally I was free, I almost ran
back to pops car, but thanks to the standing and the weather my knee was
killing me. Once I was in the car I finally get to see a clock, 12:45 pm. Yeah….three
fucking hours of standing in a crowded building for not even five minutes of
paper work!! I almost went ballistic! But thank god for pop, he talked me down.

1:20 pm home. Finally home I sit down on the couch, and turned on the TV. Pop suggested we get a PPV movie while the kids were still at school. “kick ass!” I thought as we go to the On Demand new release section and
after scanning through all the damn chick flicks that came out this week we
find The Box, a movie from the same director that did Donnie Darko. Being a
huge fan of Donnie Darko I talk pop into getting that movie, big mistake. I’m
not saying the movie was bad….bullshit…The Box was the most confusing movie I’ve
seen in a very long time. Even when thy explained what was going on I was still
completely lost. After two hours my mind was ready to force its way out of my
skull and leave me forever. And honestly I couldn’t blame it. Standing up from
the couch my knees reminded me they were hurting, so I limped back to my room
where I took a vicodin and laid down for a well disserved nap.

So that’s my story for the DMV….hell pure hell… But thank you for stopping by and reading the insanity that is my life.