{"id":6638,"date":"2011-03-09T06:25:35","date_gmt":"2011-03-09T12:25:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/?p=6638"},"modified":"2011-03-09T06:25:35","modified_gmt":"2011-03-09T12:25:35","slug":"i-love-columbus-ne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/2011\/20110309-6638.htm","title":{"rendered":"I love Columbus, NE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The weather forecast was predicting half a foot or so of snow in Grand Island yesterday afternoon&#8211;and when I called one of my Grand Island facilities at 7 yesterday morning, the dietary manager said she had little for me to look at. <\/p>\n<p>Not relishing the thought of getting stuck in Grand Island overnight, I elected to stay in Columbus and run some errands&#8211;and then work from home on some menu stuff (that I have a hard time doing in the office where there are interruptions galore.)<\/p>\n<p>My first order of business was errands. <\/p>\n<p>Errands. I don&#8217;t really relish them, but these ones were somewhat important.<\/p>\n<p>I turn old next week, so it was time for me to get a new driver&#8217;s license&#8211;and probably time for my license to reflect my new dwelling place as well. <\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, just over two years ago, my car (Jack) was rear-ended and I had to buy a new car (Luci). Which means that registration is due this month. And it&#8217;s probably about time that my license plates reflect my new dwelling place.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s more, Nebraska generally holds primary elections in May&#8211;and though I&#8217;m not quite sure whether we&#8217;ll have any of note this year, I make it a point to vote in every election. Except that my voter&#8217;s registration says that I live in Lincoln, which is definitely no longer the case. It&#8217;s time my voter&#8217;s registration reflected my new dwelling place.<\/p>\n<p>Thankfully, all three errands could be completed in one place&#8211;the Platte County Courthouse.<\/p>\n<p>I have to say that I was a bit leery of becoming an official &#8220;10 County&#8221; resident (mostly because 10 County drivers lack the get-up-and-go of Lincoln drivers)&#8211;but my experience at the Platte County Courthouse largely assuaged my fears.<\/p>\n<p>It was there that I discovered that I love Columbus, NE.<\/p>\n<p>Why do I love Columbus, NE?<\/p>\n<p>First, because when I went to get my car registration taken care of, the lady at the desk assumed that I had specialty plates since my current license plates started with &#8220;RFS&#8221; instead of the ubiquitous number designating the county (Platte County is &#8220;10 County&#8221;, as mentioned above.) <\/p>\n<p>I had to explain that no, those plates weren&#8217;t specialty plates. They were LANCASTER COUNTY plates. (The three largest counties in Nebraska&#8211;Douglas, Lancaster, and Sarpy&#8211;have enough people that they need the extra leeway allowed by the 26 letters over the 10 numbers, so they use a three letter\/three number combo instead of the &#8220;County number-dash-four digit code&#8221; that the rest of the counties use.)<\/p>\n<p>Then it came time for ME to get an education on getting a license plate in Platte County.<\/p>\n<p>The gal at the desk asked me what I&#8217;d like as my leading letter.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Leading letter?&#8221; I was thoroughly confused.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;How about &#8216;R&#8217; for your first name, since we don&#8217;t have &#8216;M&#8217;?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Okay,&#8221; I responded, mystified.<\/p>\n<p>It was then that she handed me a looseleaf notebook turned to a page with two columns of handwritten numbers.<\/p>\n<p>R000<br \/>\nR001<br \/>\nR002<br \/>\nR003<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Pick your plates. If a number&#8217;s crossed out or has a name beside it, it&#8217;s not available.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And so, while she entered my information into her computer system, I picked out my license plate number and wrote my name beside it.<\/p>\n<p>10-R717<\/p>\n<p>The lady checked what I&#8217;d written and marched off to get me my plates.<\/p>\n<p>10-R717<\/p>\n<p>Yes, I love Columbus, NE.<\/p>\n<p>The rest of my errands weren&#8217;t quite as interesting (or unexpected)&#8230;except for my moment at the DMV where the attendant snapped a picture of me grinning my head off.<\/p>\n<p>They don&#8217;t let you smile for Driver&#8217;s License photos in Lincoln. In Lincoln, they insist that you look sober.<\/p>\n<p>I have to say&#8230;I love Columbus, NE.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The weather forecast was predicting half a foot or so of snow in Grand Island yesterday afternoon&#8211;and when I called one of my Grand Island facilities at 7 yesterday morning, the dietary manager said she had little for me to look at. Not relishing the thought of getting stuck in Grand Island overnight, I elected &#8230; <a title=\"I love Columbus, NE\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/2011\/20110309-6638.htm\">Read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">I love Columbus, NE<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6638"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6638\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}