How we ended up in Houston today
Feb. 15th, 2008 10:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scottahillSo next week the three of us are going to Banff in Alberta, where J has a conference to attend, and last night it occurred to me: did Miriam need a passport to fly into Canada? I knew that she currently only needs her birth certificate to drive across the border, but a quick web search showed that, indeed, she would need a passport. It was late Thursday night when we figured this out, and we are scheduled to leave on Tuesday, so this did not look good at all. We briefly considered the possibility of flying into Seattle instead, taking a train to Vancouver, and then flying to Calgary, but that would end up costing us twice as much, not to mention being a ridiculous hassle.
It turns out, however, that the State Department has regional passport centers where people who need passports in a hurry can go and get them (with proof of travel). It was clear that they could manage to get out passports in a couple of days, but we didn't even have that kind of time: we had Friday (because Monday is a federal holiday and we leave Tuesday morning). Could we get a passport in a single day? We decided to try, so we made an appointment with the center for 11am.
Houston is a four hour drive from Dallas, so we left here about 6am, although after getting gas and a stop at Walgreen's (which I'll explain later), we weren't on the road until 7am. The drive down was pretty easy though long; we didn't have to deal with the Dallas am rush because we were too far east, and we got to Houston mid-morning. We even had 70mph speed limits for most of the trip. This was actually the farthest we've ever driven our '94 Ford Taurus, which passed with flying colors (yay car!). We get to Houston about 10:45am, 15 minutes before the appointment.
That sounds great; however, there was the small issue of passport photos: we didn't have any. My original plan was to take a picture of her against a white background, filter the photo through ePassportPhoto.com (which sizes the picture properly and makes sure the forehead and chin are where they're supposed to be), and then have the photo printed at a Walgreen's somewhere. Unfortunately, by the time we realized all this last night Miriam was asleep, and unlikely to give us the opportunity to photograph her with "eyes open and mouth closed". We hunted through our collection of Miriam photos, but there were none against a white background; I chose one against a mostly plain, light-blue bedsheet, ran it through ePassportPhoto, and sent it to Walgreens' website for pickup the next morning at a 24-hour Walgreens' nearby. (Photo cost a whole $0.21. :) At night, I thought there was a chance the photo might be acceptable; however, by the time I got to Houston I was sure that they wouldn't accept it, so we needed to find a place that took passport photos, quickly; our appointment was in 15 minutes, and they said that if we were more than 15 minutes late, we would have to reschedule our appointment.
So when we got there, Jen went to the federal building to start filling out the paperwork while I took Miriam and headed towards a passport photo place nearby. I gave Jen the carseat because it was a lot easier to carry Miriam without it. When I got to the photo place, I asked if they could take a picture of Miriam, and the fellow said "Only in a carseat". Doh! We tried sitting her on the fellow's usual stool (she can manage not to fall over when put into a sitting position, although she does droop forward unless I support her), but he said it just wouldn't work. Meanwhile I got a voicemail from Jen (my cellphone's vibrate setting is sporadic at best) saying there was a passport photo place inside the federal building, so I thanked the fellow for the effort, and headed over to the building.
The passport photographer turned out to be some fellow who worked at the lunch counter, who apparently took these pictures as a sideline. Still, he had a chair with a proper back set up, rather than a stool, so Miriam could sit up. I figured that Miriam would look at me and not the photographer if I stood next to her to keep her from falling, so I asked another employee to stand near her (in case she tipped over) while I stood behind the photographer to get Miriam's attention; unfortunately she misunderstood and actually held Miriam around the waist, so her hand was in the picture. The fellow said the pictures would take two minutes to develop. Meanwhile Jen was saying that she thought we wouldn't make our appointment, because the application form needed to be filled out before we signed in, and we only had five minutes to go. I figured it was worth a shot, so we rushed upstairs, and while Jen and Miriam stood in line to sign in, I filled out the application form as fast as I can, worried that I would make some stupid mistake and have to start over again. It turned out that I needn't have hurried; Jen's line didn't move the entire time I filled out the form. I brought the form to her, and that's when we discovered that we had forgotten to get the pictures from downstairs. I rushed downstairs, got the pictures, discovered the aforementioned hand in the photo, but paid the fellow $20 anyway. Dash back upstairs, line still hasn't moved.
When we finally get to the window, the fellow goes through our application. We were afraid he'd tell us we were too late for our appointment, but he didn't. He balked at the picture with the hand in it, but he ended up trimming the photo so that only Miriam's head is visible, a very generous act given the anal requirements for passport photos. We then went over to another window, where a woman told us that the passport would be ready at 2:30pm. Huzzah!
It was now noon, we were famished (hadn't eaten since 6), and we had 2-1/2 hours to kill, so we went looking for a restaurant in downtown Houston. What stuck out to us about Houston was the lack of street-level shops. All the buildings seemed to be parking garages or professional buildings, and we had to walk several blocks before finding a food-court area. Granted, we didn't see much of it, but Houston seemed a really boring city .
I should mention, by the way, that Miriam is being a model baby in all of this. She got fussy a few times of course, but most of the time in the passport center she was content to look around at all the people and the scenery, or to giggle when I "num-num-nummed" her feet or her tummy. We have one patient little baby and I was very proud of her.
Anyway, back to the center and SUCCESS! a passport secured in only 3.5 hours (not counting travel time Made the drive back home, got here at 8:30, Jen went to bed soon after, and I'm on my way once I'm done typing this. Mind you, all of this could have been avoided if we had applied for her passport in December like we had originally planned (which is why my mother is not going to hear this story), but mostly I am left with a feeling of accomplishment, that we were able to overcome this obstacle together.
It turns out, however, that the State Department has regional passport centers where people who need passports in a hurry can go and get them (with proof of travel). It was clear that they could manage to get out passports in a couple of days, but we didn't even have that kind of time: we had Friday (because Monday is a federal holiday and we leave Tuesday morning). Could we get a passport in a single day? We decided to try, so we made an appointment with the center for 11am.
Houston is a four hour drive from Dallas, so we left here about 6am, although after getting gas and a stop at Walgreen's (which I'll explain later), we weren't on the road until 7am. The drive down was pretty easy though long; we didn't have to deal with the Dallas am rush because we were too far east, and we got to Houston mid-morning. We even had 70mph speed limits for most of the trip. This was actually the farthest we've ever driven our '94 Ford Taurus, which passed with flying colors (yay car!). We get to Houston about 10:45am, 15 minutes before the appointment.
That sounds great; however, there was the small issue of passport photos: we didn't have any. My original plan was to take a picture of her against a white background, filter the photo through ePassportPhoto.com (which sizes the picture properly and makes sure the forehead and chin are where they're supposed to be), and then have the photo printed at a Walgreen's somewhere. Unfortunately, by the time we realized all this last night Miriam was asleep, and unlikely to give us the opportunity to photograph her with "eyes open and mouth closed". We hunted through our collection of Miriam photos, but there were none against a white background; I chose one against a mostly plain, light-blue bedsheet, ran it through ePassportPhoto, and sent it to Walgreens' website for pickup the next morning at a 24-hour Walgreens' nearby. (Photo cost a whole $0.21. :) At night, I thought there was a chance the photo might be acceptable; however, by the time I got to Houston I was sure that they wouldn't accept it, so we needed to find a place that took passport photos, quickly; our appointment was in 15 minutes, and they said that if we were more than 15 minutes late, we would have to reschedule our appointment.
So when we got there, Jen went to the federal building to start filling out the paperwork while I took Miriam and headed towards a passport photo place nearby. I gave Jen the carseat because it was a lot easier to carry Miriam without it. When I got to the photo place, I asked if they could take a picture of Miriam, and the fellow said "Only in a carseat". Doh! We tried sitting her on the fellow's usual stool (she can manage not to fall over when put into a sitting position, although she does droop forward unless I support her), but he said it just wouldn't work. Meanwhile I got a voicemail from Jen (my cellphone's vibrate setting is sporadic at best) saying there was a passport photo place inside the federal building, so I thanked the fellow for the effort, and headed over to the building.
The passport photographer turned out to be some fellow who worked at the lunch counter, who apparently took these pictures as a sideline. Still, he had a chair with a proper back set up, rather than a stool, so Miriam could sit up. I figured that Miriam would look at me and not the photographer if I stood next to her to keep her from falling, so I asked another employee to stand near her (in case she tipped over) while I stood behind the photographer to get Miriam's attention; unfortunately she misunderstood and actually held Miriam around the waist, so her hand was in the picture. The fellow said the pictures would take two minutes to develop. Meanwhile Jen was saying that she thought we wouldn't make our appointment, because the application form needed to be filled out before we signed in, and we only had five minutes to go. I figured it was worth a shot, so we rushed upstairs, and while Jen and Miriam stood in line to sign in, I filled out the application form as fast as I can, worried that I would make some stupid mistake and have to start over again. It turned out that I needn't have hurried; Jen's line didn't move the entire time I filled out the form. I brought the form to her, and that's when we discovered that we had forgotten to get the pictures from downstairs. I rushed downstairs, got the pictures, discovered the aforementioned hand in the photo, but paid the fellow $20 anyway. Dash back upstairs, line still hasn't moved.
When we finally get to the window, the fellow goes through our application. We were afraid he'd tell us we were too late for our appointment, but he didn't. He balked at the picture with the hand in it, but he ended up trimming the photo so that only Miriam's head is visible, a very generous act given the anal requirements for passport photos. We then went over to another window, where a woman told us that the passport would be ready at 2:30pm. Huzzah!
It was now noon, we were famished (hadn't eaten since 6), and we had 2-1/2 hours to kill, so we went looking for a restaurant in downtown Houston. What stuck out to us about Houston was the lack of street-level shops. All the buildings seemed to be parking garages or professional buildings, and we had to walk several blocks before finding a food-court area. Granted, we didn't see much of it, but Houston seemed a really boring city .
I should mention, by the way, that Miriam is being a model baby in all of this. She got fussy a few times of course, but most of the time in the passport center she was content to look around at all the people and the scenery, or to giggle when I "num-num-nummed" her feet or her tummy. We have one patient little baby and I was very proud of her.
Anyway, back to the center and SUCCESS! a passport secured in only 3.5 hours (not counting travel time Made the drive back home, got here at 8:30, Jen went to bed soon after, and I'm on my way once I'm done typing this. Mind you, all of this could have been avoided if we had applied for her passport in December like we had originally planned (which is why my mother is not going to hear this story), but mostly I am left with a feeling of accomplishment, that we were able to overcome this obstacle together.
