"They Won't Let You Take Passport Photos Naked"

To celebrate the birthday of DM, it is now a weekend long celebration of the self-proclaimed "Queen of the Universe". Even through all the fun, there are a couple of things that we need to make sure to accomplish.

The first thing we needed to do today was to spend time standing in line at a government office to obtain our passports. Banker's hours are typically 9 to 5, so our thoughts fell along those lines. We figured the passport office would be open until 5 PM and so getting up early was not a priority. Last night, we chose to sit and watch episode after episode of "Quantum Leap" and then we slept quite late.

When I finally awoke (DM got up a couple of hours before me, typical for a day-walker), we searched the Internet for the information we needed. As it turns out, we needed to obtain DM's birth certificate and also have me find my old, expired passport. Amazingly, I was able to find the old passport quickly and luckily, DM was born within a thirty mile radius and we were able to go get her a birth certificate.

The office where DM's birth certificate was on file was also a place to apply for passports. How convenient! Now, if we had only gotten there in time for the passport service! As it turns out, the office we went to only allowed passport services until 3:30 PM and we arrived at 3:45. We figured it would be a good idea to at least get our passport photos taken at that office.

While we were getting the pictures taken, the photographer asked me to raise my shirt higher in the front. As it turns out, the V-neck is not something they appreciate in passports. Who knew? Since the pictures are a headshot, they want to make sure that clothing shows in the picture.

Hoping against hope, we decided to try another passport office. We had one hour to get there before they closed and fought traffic (with snow! Ugh, the snow!) to make it to an outlying suburb.

We made it to the office with DM directing traffic from the passenger seat. She got quite upset when the cars did not part at her will, bumper-to-bumper traffic will cause a little road rage in some. (Sorry Dana, couldn't resist.)

When we got to the other office, DM saw someone walking outside. She said, "That looks like a bald Tammy Driskoll*". I really need to get my hearing checked. My response was, "A bald tuna frisco?"

Well, long story short (too late!), we have our passport applications on file and in about three weeks, we should receive them in the mail. And we're getting more and more excited every day about our trip!

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*DM actually said a different name of someone else we know, but I changed the name to protect the individual (slightly).