License to drive (practice)

Yesterday at work was a bit crap, so I forgot to mention that I took a quick trip to the DMV. Now I haven't had a driver's license since leaving New Hampshire... so the quick recap of that is this. I had my Employment Authorization Document renewed months before I was going to leave my job at Brewster and move to California. Because the government doesn't believe in using things like 'registered mail' or 'precautions', my EAD got lost in the mail. Fortunately, the government has a great remedy for this. It's called 'pay us a few more hundred dollars and we'll eventually send you a replacement, if we don't suddenly come up with a reason to deny you this time'.

Now when you're on an EAD, you can only renew your driver's license up to the point when your EAD (or H1B or whatever you're on) is going to expire. In a dramatic twist that would have been better left to literature, my replacement EAD showed up the day before I was going to leave New Hampshire... far too late to renew my license in that state. I was at the very, very end of the previous EAD's lifespan (I was somewhat terrified that it would run out before the new one showed and let me continue to work here) and so my driver's license expired on my way to California. Once in California, everything was within walking (and later biking) distance, so I put off the annoyance of getting my license from scratch in my new state.

Well, I finally decided to bother. I went in to take my written test at the DMV and almost aced it (missed one question about Do Not Pass signs). So now I just need to take my driven test and I'll be licensed again. Getting closer and closer...