Past ports

Since Laurel and I are going to San Diego next month, I figured we could take a day to go across the border to Mexico. Laurel pointed out that our passports expired the week before that. Oh no! Time to get some new ones (US passports, that is; my Belgian passport under the name Xavier St. Cloud is valid until 2011).

We were able to fill out most of the forms on the internet, and then they print out all nice and typed, but you still need to staple pictures to the forms. We took our own pictures at home, but they printed out poorly, so we went to Bartell's drugstore to use the Kodak Photo Center to print them instead. They came out great, for only 63 cents. But despite knowing we needed to staple the pictures, and not knowing if we had any staples at home, we left the store with just the photos. We got home, and sure enough, no staples in the stapler. So we go back out, figuring we'd get staples on the way and took everything we needed to go straight to the post office and send our passport applications -- except the stapler itself. So I went into Bartell's again and bought a stapler. We're driving off when Laurel notices that the stapler didn't come with staples. So now we have a stapler with us with no staples, a stapler at home with no staples ... so I stop at the Safeway we happen to be near; no staples for sale. Back to Bartell's for trip #3 (and you know how fun that can be if you've ever been there) ... finally, we had everything together, and got our applications sent off before the last mail pickup of the day. We should have them back in plenty of time for our trip!