Here’s what’s happening.

Security clearance paperwork submitted.  Man, what a pain in the ass that was.  Took me over five hours to complete.  They basically wanted to know everything I’ve said, everywhere I’ve been, and all that I’ve done (or didn’t do) for the past seven years.  Well, not quite.  Where I’ve worked and lived had to go back ten years.  And then I had to provide basically the same info on my dead parents, my brothers, my kids, my wife and my in-laws.  The latter three being foreign nationals opened up a raft of additional questions.  Oh yeah, they wanted to know about my ex-wives as well.

It was especially frustrating because for every place I’ve lived and worked I had to provide the name, address, phone number and email of someone who could verify that information.  Later on, they asked for the names and associated information of three people who “know me well” (i.e. for seven years or more) that preferably live in the USA, and they couldn’t be anyone I had previously listed.  Hell, I’d used up my limited circle of friends for my address verification.  Which made me feel kind of sad.  Anyway, it’s done and now I wait.

What else? Some day I’m going to write the story of my life. Already have the title.

Sunday I was on the escalator at Gireum station and two women stood side-by-side preventing me from walking down as is my custom. Sure enough, when I reached the platform the subway doors were just closing. Two minutes later I’m on the next train. Arrived at Samgakji and just missed my connection to Itaewon. Eight more minutes waiting. Which by my reckoning is ten minutes of my life I’ll never get back. Not counting the time I’ve spent writing about it now. Guess I need to learn to say “get the hell outta my way” in Korean.  And after all that, I got a message between Samgakji and Itaewon that my dart opponent was canceling. Nothing to do but drink some OB Lager’s, right?

Said dart match was rescheduled for Monday night.  A friend was jonesing for some beers after a stressful workday so I agreed to meet him at Shenanigans at 4:30.  We drank some OB Lager’s and threw some darts.  When it was time for my dart match at 7:30 I was feeling pretty buzzed.  Of course, I drank more OB Lager during the match, which finished around 10:30 with me taking home a 13-3 victory.

Except I wasn’t finished and didn’t take it home.  At least not right away.  I decided to pop into Dillinger’s where my pub league teammates were purportedly practicing for next week’s playoffs.  They had all already left, but I sat down and chatted with the owner and his partner for a bit.  They bought me an OB Lager.  And about the time I finished that one, they bought me another.  And then it was midnight and I’m like oh shit, I’ve got to get home!

Well, I figured my best bet was going to be the 110B bus.  So, I sat down and waited. Pretty soon the 421 comes by.  So I wait some more, and another 421 comes and goes. I figured the 110B would surely arrive soon, but nope, the next bus was once again the 421. It’s 12:30 now and I deduced there weren’t gonna be any more 110’s on this fine Monday night Tuesday morning.  So, I stopped a cab and told him Gireum station and he didn’t give me any crap about it.  Of course, during the week there are more cabs than people wanting cabs.  It’s Saturday night that’s tough.

So the cabbie did what I told him–he got me to Gireum station.  He went some weird ass way I didn’t recognize and dropped me at the subway entrance furthest from my apartment.  Well, no big deal.  I did a nice walk through the park and took a leak there just like any drunk ajusshi would do.

And the fact that I had a massive hangover on Tuesday had nothing to do with the amount of time it took me to complete my security clearance paperwork.  I swear.

This is me at 21. Could be I was more suited to massive amounts of OB Lager back then.