jimsjournal |
|||||
|
My new passport came in the mail today. My old one had expired on September 30th (which was a couple of weeks after I had mailed it in along with my application for a new one.) Ten years can go by quickly.
I was glad that they sent me back my old passport along with the new one... looking at the pages in it reminds me of some of the trips I took. (Hmmm, I think that, like the photos, these came out larger than life size.)
The page below has both entry and exit stamps from Sydney, Australia (March 9th and 22nd, 1997) and an entry stamp for Norway, Sept. 24, 2000. The one that is upside down is Vienna (Wien), Sept. 12, 1998. One thing I accomplished with this travel -- I now know the word for airport in various languages (Lufthaven, Flughafen, Aeroport, etc.) and other such bits of trivia. These days I try to avoid air travel as much as possible -- that's one of the reasons I switched into my current quality assurance role rather than continuing to write courses and then sometimes having to travel to teach them. In a very real sense the Muslim terrorists have won a continuing victory -- we are bleeding billions upon billions of dollars every year in the nonsensical waste of time and energy and effort and sheer bureaucratic stupidity of the Transportation Security Agency and our supposed fight to prevent another 9/11 (not to mention driving airlines into bancruptcy and clogging our highways with people choosing to drive rather than fly, etc.). Ah well, I now have my new passport -- which will soon be needed for trips to Canada -- and for any future Caribbean cruises -- and which I will need if our plans work out to travel to London in 2009 for our 30th anniversary.
|