Beware A DMV Bearing Gifts

Sometime in the middle of September I received in the mail a congratulatory notice from the California Department of Motor Vehicles informing me that I - because of some outstanding personal accomplishment - was eligible to renew my driver's license on line.  I went immediately to my computer to enjoy the reward only to discover that the DMV website was down.  One thing lead to another in my busy and amazingly productive life and I didn't get back to the website until the first week of October.  Not to worry, though, because my congratulatory and instructional letter informed me that I would have my new driver's license in the mail within five days of on line completion.  I was still two months away from an expired license.  This time I easily got on the web site, completed the application, gave a credit card number for the fee and began marking the five day waiting period off on my calendar.  The five days grew to almost the two months left of my license.  I tried calling the DMV but was put on hold where I stayed for well over thirty minutes.  I planned my next attempt at calling around my work schedule.  I set aside a block of time to do paperwork, used the speaker phone and, after going through a myriad of punch this number if you want that service selections was finally put on hold where I remained for well over an hour.  I've never gotten so much paperwork done at one time in my entire professional career.  Finally a human came on the line.  I was told that it actually takes about three months to renew on line but I would receive a temporary license if I wanted to do so within two weeks.  That was getting close to driving with an expired license time but I had no options left.  Yes, please, I begged for the temporary license and was assured that one would mosey down my way from Sacramento.  Two weeks to the day later, at the very moment my license was to expire, my new plastic sort of permanent license arrived in the mail.  Three days later I received my temporary license.  I'm thinking I should use the temporary one until it expires and then start using my more or less permanent one.  And I suppose just about anything is better than waiting at the DMV for several hours.  So all in all this renew on line thing worked out pretty well, I guess.