passport adventures part i and ii

i had to correct some things with the passport office regaurding my photos that were sent with my original passport application. this all began saturday when i returned home to a letter that said that my photos were inferior (because they were of my face! gross!) and so i waited until today to call these people at the passport agency and the people were like “um. you need to get the tracking number and call us back.” so this is cool enough. i decide that at approximately 8:30 pm CST that I will call them with the tracking information. I am on hold with their office for 56 minutes. During this entire time I have to cock my head so that I can hold my cellphone which really just manages to distort my vision. Further, I receive 2 phone calls at work during this time. 1 is from a guy who just needs to be transfered. the other is from my least favorite city league caller. he’s a really nice old man but as someone who is trying to communicate a list of scores to me, he fails miserably most of the time. he spells and repeats things that are completely unnecessary. Meanwhile, the Nat’l Passport Center people NEVER change their hold music. It’s always the same generic symphony. Then. I get off hold with the passport people to be told that I need the tracking number, who signed for it, and what date they signed for it. This means that I have to call back the next day. So fuck. I will call back the next day and then we will have this adventure in part 3 form. Oi-vay. The good news is that I’m not too upset about being on hold that long. It was something to do.. at least. Also, I looked up visa requirements for Britain and it turns out that I won’t have to deal with these people again until perhaps January when I look into going to China. Go China! Yah! The moral of the story is: “YAY BUREAUCRACY!”

I called Joe in Japan today. We were on the phone for about an hour and it was nice because I haven’t gotten to have a voiced conversation with him for that long since he left (2 weeks!) ugh. And usually we can talk for hours and hours on the phone so these talks were something I had missed dearly. Also of interest, when i called the Japanese had hold music. But theirs was mutch better than American hold music, indeed! It was the popular Christmas Carroll “Away in a Manger” except it was in Midi format. Rock-on, Japanese! This is obviously why Hyde was predispositioned to be in your country. Haha, take that you Japanese techno-savvy people in this world.

• Category: Journal