Eleven years ago, my friends and I started talking about a trip to Canada. I\u2019d never gotten a passport, but there was time enough before our tentative plans to do that. It turned out to be closer than I would have liked since I had to request a copy of my birth certificate from Illinois – and then submit that with my application. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I tend to be a nervous person when it comes to paperwork – especially something as important as the passport – but I carefully worked my way through the forms and attached one of the worst photos I\u2019ve ever had taken. I\u2019m pretty pale, but this one had me so washed out I could have blended into a snowbank. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, I did everything right and got the documents submitted – then began the long wait to get the actual document. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
By the time it arrived, we\u2019d decided we weren\u2019t going to go.\u00a0 But, I figured it would be helpful later on and it was – I used it to get my driver\u2019s license updated when the needed \u2018extra ID\u2019 to verify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I stored the document in my lockbox and mostly forgot about it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fast forward to last week when I was talking to a neighbor about\u2026well\u2026 the state of things in the country and he mentioned that he and his wife applied for passports recently. Just in case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This prompted me to check on mine and unfortunately, it had expired in 2024. Time flies, I guess. While it\u2019s no longer valid, it was close enough in time that I could still renew it – instead of having to start over. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I looked into doing this online, but this required creating an account and that didn\u2019t seem as safe as I would have liked. I opted to use the \u201cform-filler\u201d tool to generate a PDF and print out the application. I went over it three times to make sure everything was correct before firing up the printer. Again, nervous about making a mistake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(This is the same reason I pay to have my very easy taxes done. I’m convinced I’ll make some kind of error and commit tax fraud and go to federal prison for 70 years. )<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last evening, I went to Walgreens to get a new photo taken.\u00a0 The process was easy – if a little pricey – and I had my photos in hand at the right size in a few minutes.\u00a0 There was also an option to have them emailed to me, but what I got was the un-cropped original photo.\u00a0 I\u2019ve taken selfies that were closer to regulation. Sigh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today, I wrote out the check, got out my old passport and headed to the post office to get everything mailed in – along with a check for $130. Given the importance of the document as a citizen, that seemed pretty steep, but it was worth it to me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The clerk at the post office commented it was a \u201cpopular zip code recently\u201d. I guess lots of folks are thinking this is a good thing to have just now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So now I\u2019m home with my receipts and time. Provided nothing else goes awry in the federal government, I\u2019ll have my new passport in 4-6 weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s funny looking back at the old passport and the terrible photo. I was a different person 11 years ago and a lot has changed in my life. I\u2019m actually pleased with the new photo – though Jim did ask if they let me see the photo before they printed it. Which could have been taken as an insult, but I just thought it was funny. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t have any travel plans, but it will be nice to have that piece of mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Just, you know, in case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Eleven years ago, my friends and I started talking about a trip to Canada. I\u2019d never gotten a passport, but there was time enough before our tentative plans to do that. It turned out to be closer than I would have liked since I had to request a copy of my birth certificate from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2998"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2999,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2998\/revisions\/2999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}