Broad Shoulders to Dreaming Spires

Having finally gotten all the paperwork together for my student visa, it seems like now is as good a moment as any to begin chronicling my year away at Oxford. Provided all goes well with the visa process, I'll be leaving Chicago for the UK at the end of next month. I'm a little anxious about the whole visa situation; already its been a nightmare to get the American immigration people to process my biometric data (digital fingerprinting and whatnot) for the British immigration folks. And until I know without a doubt that my application is approved, I'm going to be stuck with this nagging paranoia that somehow, unbeknownst to me, there is something in my record that'll prevent me from going. With my luck, Bush's phone tapping program cross-references the word "Cheney" with the the word "shit-sack," in which case like half of the phone conversations I've had since 2001 will be enough to land me in Guantonamo rather than London. Keeping my fingers crossed...