Wednesday

Yesterday, I put off required passport-related red tape because I hadn't been feeling well the night before. I'm much better now, thanks. I took the Metro to the only place I could think of advertising instant passport photos: a camera store located conveniently beside Karma Bar, where we'd had mojitos shortly after I was supposed to have done this stuff yesterday. The little studio area I was shown into was tricked-out with complex flashes, a friendly photographer, and a real camera instead of the Polaroid double-lens Passport brand contraption that makes everyone look like a raw, cyanotic carnie. I am pretty sure he took the best passport photos ever. I am very impressed. Having performed this basic service for many years myself, I was under the impression that photos like these--peachy skin tones, white whites, identifiable eye color--were unobtainable in regulation two-by-two on government ID documents. Fresh from this elation, I walked down 19th Street to the Passport office, where I discovered I didn't have to stand in any of the four lines snaking down the street from the doors. I wanted a "special issuance" passport, and that office was upstairs and through security. I've been referring to my government document as an "official passport" in this Update just to remain vague; but today I learned there's a specific type of passport graded "Official", and I was certainly not there for one of those, though the Official people's parallel line was smaller than mine. I filled out all the necessary forms while waiting, and by the time the special issuer, behind her bulletproof glass, was helping me, the waiting room had dwindled to a milling few. The remaining process was painless, and twenty minutes of red tape later, I was sitting down to lunch at Karma. [Cavin]