You? You're not going anywhere!

Written at 11:45 AM:

The quote of the day is from ZPJ: "clearly I have put too much faith in the US Passport office..." We are still, at 11:45, waiting for our 9:30 appointment. An hour ago they let us in the building and now, after a series of redundant lines, we are sitting in a waiting room that shames even the most bleak and noisy of DMVs. We finally got a number- but there are 60 numbers ahead of ours and they have only gotten through 14 in the last 35 minutes. I long ago finished the reading material I brought and am amusing myself on ZPJ's crackberry.

This would merely be a rotten way to spend a day, but it has risen to an anxiety-producing level the closer it gets to 3:30, at which time I have a job interview uptown. It is an exciting interview, for which I bought an exciting outfit, but I am not wearing this outfit because I foolishly did not expect my appointment to be 3 hours late. How did they get so far behind so early in the day? What about those people who have 2:00 appointments? I have so many questions and concerns right now. And I'm hungry. They made us throw away our food before we came in the building. Dear readers, if you are even THINKING of travelling in the next year, renew your passports NOW. Do not resign yourself to my unfortunate fate!!!

UPDATE:
I sat in that chair for another two hours. At 1:50 our number finally came up, 4 hours and 35 minutes after we began waiting. Our applications were processed by 1:55. Our passports, however, will not be ready until 10 am tomorrow morning. I will not be showing up at 10 am. I will show up at noon. With several books.

At 12:30, when we still had 50 people ahead of us in line, I called the place that I'm interviewing and asked if I could push it back a couple hours and they were very great about it. So now I'm home changing and getting ready to head up there. Wish me luck. It's a great job with great pay and great responsibilities, and the best part is that it's part-time, so I can keep doing all the other stuff that I do. I'm very hopeful...