A early (un)happy birthday present

Courtesy of the Ingham County Sheriff's Department, that is.

After doing the whole family dinner thing, I decided to undertake a voyage to a friend's house for a night of something new to me, drinking wine. Grabbed a couple of interesting looking bottles from Meijer's then headed to her place.

It was a lovely evening, and I can say now that I actually do like wine and will be drinking more of it. ;) Also, Bono from U2 loves his crotch... a lot. She was watching Jurassic Park 2 when I got there, so we finished that and she popped in her U2 video dvd. Figure I might as well get a little more familiar with their music since we're going to go see them when they come to Spartan Stadium next summer in June.

I headed home sorta late-ish and much to my surprise when I got almost to 127 on Jolly, red and blues in my rear view. Great. I wasn't speeding or anything and by that time I was fine to drive so I have no idea why I'm being pulled over.

The deputy walked up to the van and mentioned something about how loud my muffler was and asked for my stuff. No problem, handed her my papers and sat back finishing my smoke, just going over the last few hours in my head. When she came back she asked me if I knew my license wasn't valid and that she was going to have to give me a sobriety test. I was a little stunned, but with a little explanation of the fact that I can barely feel my feet because of my diabetes, she had me do the drill and then blow in a breathalizer. And then she said she was getting my van towed and giving me a ride home. She also mentioned that it had been that way since July 12, 2007.

Took my license, towed my van, but at least she was nice enough to grab my iPod for me. So I get home, call into work because obviously at this point, I don't have a way to get there and try to settle down from traffic stop fun.

So today, I call my dad and ask him to give us a ride to pick up the van and call the towing company to see if they indeed had my van and how much it was going to cost me. $195. I was just a little stunned, but I gotta have the van and Chel can drive me to work until I get my license straightened out. I was already going to renew it since it expires on my birthday but damn. Remember the part above about it being since July of 2007? Mind you in this time, I had gotten the new van, renewed the registration for it and changed the address on my license. You would think that at some point they would've have said oh by the way your license is invalid. So, I guess on Monday I'm going to be making some phone calls and try to figure out what the hell happened because my license should have been perfectly alright.

Talking to the lady at the towing place (who apparently used to work for Sec of State) she noticed my driver's license renewal slip in with my other papers and mentioned that if my license was suspended/invalid then I probably wouldn't have gotten a renewal notice. So, now I'm trying to put two and two together. I know a couple years ago, after the last time I had issues with my license being expired, I had to pay that damn driver's responsibility fee, and was late paying so they suspended my license, but I took care of all of that, and paid to get my license reinstated. Great mysteries abound.

But all in all, even with that, it couldn't tarnish the awesome evening I spent with my friend, many laughs, good wine and interesting conversation. I hope to share another evening like that soon. It was good for my soul.