So this is the photo that will be on my passport for the next ten years. After I found the same shop I had had my photo taken at in 1999, I spent $13 for four small photos only to discover later in the lobby of the embassy an automated photo booth that takes legal size/shape photos for $5! Ugh! If I had known that machine was there.... Grrr. Anyway, since the conservatives increased government control of and interference in our lives with the ominous Department of Homeland Security (aka, the KGB), things are different in the passport renewal business. In 1999, I took my old passport in for renewal with a legal size photo and had my new passport within the hour. Now, you have to wait two weeks to get your renewal passport so that the American KGB can collect data on your private activities abroad. They didn't even give me a temporary paper in case the local authorities want to see my passport for some reason. The police can demand to see any foreigner's passport at any time, though they don't usually do that. However, since they
can do it, I'd rather err on the side of expecting the worst. I've sat in a Korean police station lock up before, and it's not something I want to do again anytime soon.
Yesterday the dentist pulled out my stitches. Next week I'll go back, and we'll start the arduous process of capping two teeth and building a bridge over the space between them. Sounds fun. At least nobody said "root canal". I don't know what a root canal is, but I do know the very words make grown men quiver and faint, so it is definitely not something I want to go through, being a grown man only on the outside! LOL
Simon loaned me a copy of
Fallout 3, an XBox game.<-- [Correction! Simon says he didn't loan it to me. Maybe it was Joel who loaned it.] I started it, and now I'm getting hooked! It has the feel of
Oblivion, but with modern clothes and weaponry. If Bethesda came out with more games like this, I'd probably never get any work done!
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