Name change

There's a crustacean on my driver's license. I have found myself compelled to become the resident of a new state, officially leaving my beloved California for the east coast. I feel like in California they're a lot more serious with their licenses, because there are a ton of cutesy little things on my new one, including a donor's heart. I also took the opportunity to apply to register to vote in my new district, so that's pretty exciting.

My "new" name is also on the license -- the first step to what will be a series of notifications of name changes, to creditors (student loan people!), alumni associations, banks -- but social security should be my next big step. It took some soul-searching for me to decide on changing my name and the combination of names I wanted, but I'm satisfied with the result. The thing is, I suddenly have an extremely exotic name. People are already confused about where I'm from because of the way I look and my weird way of speaking English (due to spending most of my time with non-native English speakers and being a confused language person in general, I think), so now the name is just going to throw them completely of my scent. Maybe I'll run into a certain Mr. Higgins who could tell me where I'm from upon my uttering a simple sentence.

The most important thing for me, regarding the name change, was that I share the same name as any future children we might have. And it's also kind of fun to have a new name.