Changes are coming

You can feel it in the air.  The season is changing and people's talk is centering around the coming scheduled closure of the park (October 15).  That and the looming potential shutdown of the government next week.  But most of the government employees up here are not paying too much attention to that because they have been through it so many times and know that extensions almost always get enacted.  But, should there be a shutdown I guess that Cyndee and I will be leaving the North Rim early and might even make it to the orientation at Big Bend that is scheduled to begin October 20th.  But then again, if there is a shutdown it should affect Big Bend the same as the North Rim.  We might get to a closed park.

Regardless, we are doing prep work to be ready for our next position at the Visitors Center in Chisos Basin.  Since we will be handling the issuance of back country permits and doing retail sales in the visitor's center, in other words, have access to the cash register, they require a full criminal background check (CBC).  The CBC for the North Rim and Caprock Canyons were pretty superficial, they just ran our driver license and social security numbers to see if we were on any outstanding warrant or sex offender lists.  But Big Bend is running a more in-depth check and one of the things we had to do extra was to submit a full set of finger prints.  And not just a thumb and index print, but every finger of both hands, twice.

 

  The prints had to be done by a "certified" fingerprinter.  That's Ross taking Cyndee's prints the old fashioned way, using ink and paper instead of digital scanner.  Those are my prints laying on the table drying and waiting to be sealed in the official envelope that gets sent to the FBI for the process.

I've watched how slowly the wheels of government turn in this past year.  With the changing of our state citizenship, registering vehicles, dealing with the Social Security Administration and the National Park System we have had a dose of getting things done through and in the government.  And it is not pretty or fast.  We'll have to see if all this gets done and we are cleared to report to our volunteer jobs in November.