Legal for Six More Years

 Our first order of business today was to set up a schedule grid and pencil in all the things on our to-do list to prepare for our move next week. It was a lovely day for a walk, and we almost felt like we had accomplished some of our accumulated tasks just by getting them all written down and scheduled.

After lunch we headed to the Hidalgo County tax office to renew our truck and trailer registrations. That can be done by mail, but then we'd have to worry about where to have the license plate stickers sent and whether we'd receive them in time. Actually since we had all our paperwork in order, this process didn't take too long. Then we walked to the property tax area to investigate whether we were getting our senior citizen refund on our 2013 property tax. After a bit of research, the clerk assured us that we do have a chunk of change coming back, probably in the next six weeks.

Next we went to the McAllen office of the Texas Department of Public Safety. On the way in, instead of taking a number in the old fashioned way, we input our cell numbers so that we could get text message updates on the status of our wait time. After waiting almost an hour, we were next in line. This process too was pretty quick and easy because we had filled in our forms online and printed them before going to the office. Texas is less stringent than California in the vision requirements for drivers. If you wear glasses, you have to have "with corrective lenses, 20/50 or better with best eye or both together; any score with other eye: restrict to corrective lenses."

This evening we went to Tropic Star for Joe Saltel's C-1 dance. As usual we got to see new photos of his little granddaughter, Shania, the star of his life. Jane was back dancing, finally, although she is still having some problems hearing and will have to continue treatment. It was good to see her smile.