Carte de Sejour

This is the residence card that I have to go and renew every darn year. It takes forever to get the first one, which starts with an application for a visitors visa that has to be made in the US before coming here. For me, that meant a trip to Chicago, the office covering the midwestern region. Luckily my friend Neal drove me up since I had to carry a packet full of documents, including French translations of everything, that was about 5 inches thick. I received the visa about a month later, just in time for my flight to Paris. Once here I had to start the whole process over again on this side of the Atlantic, that was May 2008. Now, every May I have to get out all the documents again, update a few things, get a recent photo taken and head off to the Prefecture de Police, the government agency in charge of immigrants like myself. The appointments for these meetings have to be made months in advance so like a good little resident, I got online in February and went through the online registration for a meeting. After clicking the button to confirm my time/date I was taken to a blank page so I clicked the back button to see what happened. Again, I clicked the date but the time I had clicked before was not available so naturally I thought it was done. In the past I have received a confirmation in the mail so I waited about 3 weeks but got nothing so I phoned directly to the Prefecture's office. After a long wait with an annoying repeating message, I finally got a hold of a real person who informed me that if I registered online that I would not receive anything in the mail. I told her that I also had not received a confirmation on the website so wasn't sure if I had an appointment on May 17th or not. She kindly asked me all the info to check and found out I was not, in fact, registered. Rats! Fortunately, she gave me a date and time to go in but it's not until August so I asked her what I was supposed to do since my carte de sejour runs out in May and I need to leave the country in June. She told me, no problem, just go to the Prefecture's office in the 9th arrondissement, districts within Paris, and they will give me the paperwork I need to continue my residency in the meantime. Now this whole conversation was in French so my end of the phone was struggling at times but I did get all the info I needed. Today, I decided to go and get my extension taken care of and asked a French friend to go with me. When I got to her apartment she thought we should call just to make sure...and low and behold, we found out that it isn't in the 9th that I have to go to but in the 18th! And, I don't just need my passport, carte de sejour and paper stating my appointment date and time but I also need a photo, confirmation of where I live (document like a gas bill) and some other thing. Ah, you gotta love the French for their inventive powers when it comes to bureaucracy!