three hours

a timeline of my afternoon last thursday, just to save others future pain:

1.45pm: leave house to go to DMV to get temp tags. planning on 30 minute travel, 1 hour wait for temp tags, and arrival at inspection station around 3.30, which is supposedly the best time to go. perfect!

2.05: chicken out and don't take the whitehurst freeway (got lost using it once), so i end up in georgetown. stick in traffic. follow a crazy taxi and find water street, which gets me to a good spot

2.19: find DMV. no parking. try to go around block, but accidentally pull into 395 entrance ramp. get off at the first exit south, but the exit ramp is full of parked cars. everyone angry, nowhere to go. many horns. find out a firetruck has blocked entire street around 2 corners.

2.33: eventually get moving. drive north across the mall. marvel at the majestic view of the capitol, then marvel that it's so difficult to follow the law and register a vehicle only 3 blocks from the capitol. the US CAPITOL.

2.37: realize that my previous thought about the relation between efficiency and the US CAPITOL was completely backwards.

2.38: find DMV again. no parking at the DMV. impossible, but true. everyone angry, more horns (not mine). slowly weave between vehicles parked randomly in middle of street and vehicles careening between the parked ones.

2.52: find a parking spot a couple blocks away. walk to DMV.

2.55: line is out the door of the DMV. can't even get in because there's a security screener. xrays and everything. (which i soon realize is necessary, because the impulse to KILL arises frequently at the DMV)

3.08: find the room for temp tags. take a number and wait. get coughed on by smelly smoker, but fortunately am not breathing due to heavy perfume smell of other neighbor.

3.22: lady announces that you must have your drivers' license out. worry that i do not have a DC license, although it never, ever said in the instructions that you needed a license to get temp tags. jump up to ask when the next number is called - find out, of course, that i need to have a DC license. choose not to argue that the requirement is not even hinted at in the instructions.

3.29: find the room for licensing and begin waiting in line.

3.37: make it up to the desk. find out that i can't even get my license today because i don't have my social security card. realize that means i can't get ANY bit of the registration done today. tell the lady that i am very sad. she seems unmoved by my disappointment.

3.42: make it back to the car, which at least does not have a ticket. eventually find a good road out of town, but it is somewhat surreal because all four lanes of the DIVIDED road are traveling north. end up somehow in rock creek park (i was keeping up with traffic, which was not slowed by the surreal traffic pattern, and didn't see how it happened)

4.14: get home, with only a headache to show for my efforts.