American Community Survey

About a week ago we got a friendly note from our government informing us that on top of the 2010 Census forms we would be asked to fill out, we had been randomly selected to fill out the American Community Survey.  It's a more in-depth questionnaire, they told us, and we would need to fill out BOTH forms.  By law, the extra American Community Survey isn't "extra" at all:  if we don't fill it out, they can hunt us down and shoot us.  (That was in the fine print.)

No problem.  I can fill out a survey.  We got it in the mail yesterday and it informed me that it would take me about 38 minutes to fill out.  I started right then.

So what does the government want to know?  As it turns out, a whole bunch of stuff!  Not only where Rob works, but how many hours a week he works, what kind of company he works for, and even when he leaves for work in the morning and how long his commute is!  Not just if we own a house, but how many rooms it has (by their definition, by removing the wall between our kitchen and dining room, we downsized our house a whole room!), what our gas and electric bill was last month, what our 12 MONTH water bill is, what the annual real estate tax is and if it's included with our mortgage payment or not.  ...  Why does the government need to know some of this stuff?

One thing I do want to know is this:  What do I put down for Ethnic background?  The survey wanted to know if I considered myself English or Russian or Finnish or Scandinavian, etc.  Well, I consider myself American, honestly.  How many generations does one's family need to be in the States before we're just American and no longer Other?  I mean, on my father's side, we can trace our roots back to America in the 1700's.  That was almost 300 years ago!  Aren't we American yet?!  ...  My solution:  I put down Prussian/American for mine, and English/American for Rob's.  For my kids I put down American.  Period.

The survey's in the mailbox right now, and it really wasn't that hard to fill out, but I think they should have warned me that it would require me searching through tax documents, housing and insurance paperwork, and old water bills.  ...  I guess I'm just glad that about a month ago I decided to fire our Secretary in Charge of the Filing Cabinet (aka Rob), and just filed everything myself.  So everything was right where it should have been, and finding all that paperwork was easy.