I've been stewing over this for days now. From the website of the company that is a supposed liaison of sorts (can I be any more vague) for the consulate:
"03 August 2009: Possible delays to visa processing in the US. Due to a major IT upgrade at the UK Border Agency at the British Consulate-General, Chicago, visa applications processed between Friday 21 August and Friday 28 August 2009 will be subject to delays. The visa application centres will remain open and will continue to accept applications in the usual way but we will not be able to issue visas during much of this period. Applicants who are planning to travel to the UK in August are strongly recommended to apply well in advance of the above disruption to normal service."
They received my application on June 24th and I've yet to hear a thing. I think alerting people of a week long hold up three weeks beforehand isn't going to do a damned bit of good. If you were planning to travel to the UK in August you probably should have applied in December. And that's not entirely a joke.
Fridays are hard enough as it is - knowing that there's no chance of an email for two days - but today was the worst because it sounds like my chances of hearing anything next week are slim to none.
That said, I cried a lot today.
I'm trying to detour the sadness with a little knitting, though, and started the Summer Lace Shawlette yesterday. Well, really I started it two days ago but I lost a stitch somewhere around row twenty-five and was in such a sad/bad mood that I just ripped it out completely and started all over. I lost a stitch tonight but managed to keep myself in check - despite the fact that it managed to produce a few extra tears - and I just ripped back enough to correct the mistake. I finished the Gaia Shawl this week, too, and hope to take photos tomorrow.
Time to crawl into bed - something I've wanted to do since about 6:30 this evening but managed to put off until I was, you know, actually tired.
Oh, I couldn't figure out why in the world I wasn't getting email alerts regarding the comments...I'd forgotten that I'd had to set up a new Gmail address since my other was already affiliated with the Dainty Kitty Typepad blog and I'd yet to set it to forward to my regular email address. This means I also missed a reply to my comment regarding feedback on the "new Typepad." It's much easier to navigate but I didn't like that in your comments left on other Typepad blogs the link that would normally take someone back to your blog actually linked to your Typepad profile instead. The reply gave me a very easy fix. There are lots of reasons why I love Typepad and their customer service is certainly one of them. It's nice to know that they're actually reading and responding to the feedback they requested.
