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Proper identification
Jan. 25th, 2007 09:58 pmWe're slowly assembling what we need to get ourselves properly registered as Pennsylvania residents. I would actually be more lazy about this, but our car insurance company needs us to get our car registered in Pennsylvania before they can switch us over to Pennsylvania car insurance. And as it turns out, there is a delicate interrelated web of documents that need to be procured before that can happen.
First, I went to look up how to register our car, and discovered that we can't register our car without proof of Pennsylvania car insurance. Well. Fortunately, I was rescued from the conundrum of how to accomplish two tasks, neither of which could happen without the other happening first, by the discovery that an application for Pennsylvania insurance is good enough. Whew.
However, then we moved over to the identification portion. We have to prove we live in Pennsylvania by showing some sort of government issued id with a Pennsylvania address, and since it would take absurdly long to get new passports and neither one of us wants to enlist in the Army just to get a military id, we need to get Pennsylvania driver's licenses first.
To get a driver's license, in turn, we must produce either a passport (valid, which means mine won't work since it expired a year ago and apparently I ceased to be myself at that point), or a birth certificate, and two documents that prove our address, which will turn out to be our lease and something... else. We haven't done our taxes yet, we don't have a mortgage, we haven't gotten any utility bills here yet and our library cards won't cut it. Fortunately, I finally remembered that our insurance company sent us a bill for our renter's insurance and the new policy, so unless they think we're buying insurance for a place we don't live, that should be acceptable even if it isn't technically a utility (along those lines, I spent Tuesday trying to find the local Water Revenue Board so I could switch our water bill to our names in person with the required two forms of id and my firstborn, because apparentlys there's an epidemic of people trying to fraudulently trying to pay other peoples' water bills). So in a nice bit of circularity, the insurance company that set off this frenzy of documentation will provide us with the key piece of paper necessary to make it possible.
And meanwhile, the Department of Transportation web page claims that the nearest place we can get our car registered is Harrisburg. Which is 93 miles away. Um, no. That can't possibly be right. So the entire process is on hold while I try to find our phone book and see if it can give us slightly more accurate information. Because I can't imagine the entire population of Philadelphia driving over to Harrisburg every time they need to register a car.
In the next exciting installment of Procure That Government Document: I try to find out if they will accept the fact that our bank has the title to our car and not demand that we drive back to Indiana and get it from them. Plus, I figure out how to get the super-secret form we have to fill out that is only available at the mythical place we can register the car (in Harrisburg) and is not available for download off of the web.
First, I went to look up how to register our car, and discovered that we can't register our car without proof of Pennsylvania car insurance. Well. Fortunately, I was rescued from the conundrum of how to accomplish two tasks, neither of which could happen without the other happening first, by the discovery that an application for Pennsylvania insurance is good enough. Whew.
However, then we moved over to the identification portion. We have to prove we live in Pennsylvania by showing some sort of government issued id with a Pennsylvania address, and since it would take absurdly long to get new passports and neither one of us wants to enlist in the Army just to get a military id, we need to get Pennsylvania driver's licenses first.
To get a driver's license, in turn, we must produce either a passport (valid, which means mine won't work since it expired a year ago and apparently I ceased to be myself at that point), or a birth certificate, and two documents that prove our address, which will turn out to be our lease and something... else. We haven't done our taxes yet, we don't have a mortgage, we haven't gotten any utility bills here yet and our library cards won't cut it. Fortunately, I finally remembered that our insurance company sent us a bill for our renter's insurance and the new policy, so unless they think we're buying insurance for a place we don't live, that should be acceptable even if it isn't technically a utility (along those lines, I spent Tuesday trying to find the local Water Revenue Board so I could switch our water bill to our names in person with the required two forms of id and my firstborn, because apparentlys there's an epidemic of people trying to fraudulently trying to pay other peoples' water bills). So in a nice bit of circularity, the insurance company that set off this frenzy of documentation will provide us with the key piece of paper necessary to make it possible.
And meanwhile, the Department of Transportation web page claims that the nearest place we can get our car registered is Harrisburg. Which is 93 miles away. Um, no. That can't possibly be right. So the entire process is on hold while I try to find our phone book and see if it can give us slightly more accurate information. Because I can't imagine the entire population of Philadelphia driving over to Harrisburg every time they need to register a car.
In the next exciting installment of Procure That Government Document: I try to find out if they will accept the fact that our bank has the title to our car and not demand that we drive back to Indiana and get it from them. Plus, I figure out how to get the super-secret form we have to fill out that is only available at the mythical place we can register the car (in Harrisburg) and is not available for download off of the web.
