Saturday, September 14, 2013

Working on the Passport

The hold-up is getting the application printed.  It turns out that the Embassy only accepts appointments for various things and re-upping a passport isn't one of them except under very unusual circumstances.  So, the way it's done is to complete the application online, print it, and then mail it.  There would be about the same level of technology in sending it via carrier pigeon but so it goes.

I'm now on the second print shop to get it printed.  This stuff is marginal as well as the submission aspect is fairly straight-up but paying for it is a wee bit confused.  Thus far, I haven't even managed a confirmation from them in accepting the job.  Oh for Kinkos.

The process for getting the passport renewed once I have the materials in-hand is not difficult and should take about two weeks.  As to the rest of it, that much is the same as anywhere else:  there's no simple thing a bureaucrat can't make needlessly complicated.  This should have all been wrapped four days ago ... blah, blah, blah.


Mark Twain is reported to have said, "The coldest Winter I ever spent was the Summer I spent in San Francisco."

If you think the above is funny, come on over to Scotland and yuck it up, Funny Boy.  They get bent when I say it was nicer in Greece but of course it was nicer in Greece.  People save up all year to take their holidays there.  Greece is nicer than just about anywhere; that's kind of the point of this whole exercise.

The book has not been abandoned.  I'm deliberately letting it set as there is time to do it and I want to give more thought to the part about Greece to open and the part about England / Scotland to close.  There's kind of a travelogue part in the close that doesn't compare England to Greece but rather to America and that may not be useful to the overall theme.  It's not at all a situation of everything is better in America to slam Scotland as that's not at all what I've written but it would be more relevant, assuming I compare Scotland to anywhere, to make the comparison with Greece as that, according to the book, was Paradise.  It will come.

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