A Case of Identity Theft...

A good friend and customer came into Snap Snap to sell me mass quantities of clothes last week...this happens a few times a year and has been happening for many years now. We know all about each other's families, and lives...and all the goings on in between...In fact, we're always planning on visiting each other in our off hours (sometimes it even happens) She mentioned casually that she is taking a rather large and amazing trip soon. I told her while I was very excited for her, I was also wildly jealous. She threw it out there that I could come, free place to stay etc. etc...I laughed it off.

Well, except for the small part of me that whispered...we could do that you know.

There's nothing standing in my way...the small problem of finding someone to watch Snap Snap aside, money, etc. etc. Oh, and the teeny fact that I've overlooked renewing my passport. Or more likely, as I dug out the dust covered paperwork that I've moved to no less than 4 places in my house since I filled it out...I've failed miserably at renewing my passport.

I decided since I've heard the turn around for passports is now about 2 weeks, I certainly have time to run around like a maniac on Monday and get this taken care of (finally). Looking over the paperwork I noticed I signed it on the eve of when it expired in 2006. Ahem...I was at Snap Snap, so I snagged my White Out and took care of that problem, and I am happy to say that all the other information is the same...I packaged it up in an envelope I found with the fee written in check form (which I realized is now more than what was printed on this vintage passport renewal form I possessed, according to the website...LeSigh...so, now I have no idea if I will even get said passport) took it to the Post Office, and even paid extra to have the entire thing tracked. All the while, I'm thinking to myself "boy am I excited to get a new passport photo, because in my previous passport I was about 60+ pounds heavier..."

That is, until I got the picture back from the photographer.

Damn.

How could it possibly be that I look tired, confused and heavily chinned? I mean, technically I had not even been traveling in a foreign country before I went to get this photo taken (because this is just sometimes how you look when you're in a place where you can't communicate well, or have no idea where your hotel could have gotten to...) I've just sat on a stool and tried to smile and be my charming self, totally confident that any picture was better than the previous picture. Boy am I wrong. Could it be that fact that in every passport photo they use a flash, all while setting you against a white backdrop? This immediate use of artificial light washes out any kind of contrast on your face...except now my make-up and hair looks like it was done by the Junior High version of myself. Why is it that we can't just submit a picture of ourselves that we happen to like, maybe one we've taken while we were somewhere exotic? I mean, as long as you're not wearing sunglasses and you can see your facial details, who cares? That would be so much better than hoards of The Dawn of the Living Dead zombies that are vacationing from America...

It has to be a government conspiracy to keep the people who's job it is to stamp the passports active and interested...I know it can't be fun to sit in a cramped little Plexiglas box on a tiny stool all day and ask people, who are on vacation (while you are not) why they're visiting your home town/country and then stamp some random page with whatever fancy stamp is legal...unless you get to see the most horrible and comical pictures of that person ever taken...and then used as a very legal form of identification that they then have to wave about if they're to get anything done at all on their vacations.

Well, someones stolen my identification then...

I can't possibly have that many chins or look that fat or apply my make-up quite that badly...