24 November 2008

[24] pretty happy; slightly bitter

It is a banner day. A big, once-a-decade day. A day that I have been anxiously anticipating for at least two weeks. 

I got my new passport in the mail.

I may be mostly broke, but I could not face the idea of living without a passport. My old one expires in January and I renewed early to avoid the terror of even a few weeks without a valid passport. (I know. Most US Americans don't have one. But it makes me itchy to think of being unable to travel. I need at least the possibility.) I wrote the $75 check, and it was probably the best money I spent all month. I am actually pleasantly surprised that it only took two and a half weeks from mailing off the application to the little stiff envelope in my mailbox.

It's a dandy new passport, all pristine visa pages and stiff front pages (I ignore safety admonitions and carry my passport in my back pocket in airports, so the old one is all comfortably battered and soft like a good t-shirt).

I confess to a little bit of... um... uncertainty about the new design. It's very... active. I first saw the new passports in the visa line in Nairobi last year, where a naturalized Kenyan-American had a sparkly new passport while I had an old crumpled one full of African visas. We traded. I looked dubiously at the stylized photos - must there be fields of grain on the visa pages? quotes about freedom? - and he admired the visas in mine. I'm still not convinced. The back page has a satellite on it. That's just odd. 

But regardless of the design, I am thrilled to have a new passport. I actually look normal in this photo. (In my last one, I looked like a convict. I have seen better mugshots of drug addicts. Drug addicts who were severely high when the photo was taken.) 

So today I tore open the envelope of "official US government mail" today and snuggled with my new passport. Then I made out with it for a while. I can hardly let it out of my sight. The one single sad moment was when I noticed that the passport number is different. I will have to memorize a new one, and I was so attached to the old one. I could rattle it off in my sleep. 026...

The date is okay, though. I can remember 21 Nov. 2008 and 20 Nov. 2018 as the date of issue and expiration. (What? You actually open your passport to look at the number and dates when you fill out immigration forms? Amateurs.)

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