Welcome to Mayberry

Speaking of Passports . . . we sent our passport applications off today. We have to have them before we submit our paperwork to Bulgaria. We had our pictures made at Walgreens. I've been telling Patrick he can't smile for the passport photo, but he insisted he could. The lady put him in front of the screen, and he cracked a big 'ole smile, and she said "sorry sir but you can't smile". Ahem . . . what have I been telling you? I'm much better at not smiling. I practice everyday while teaching a classroom full of fourth graders.

So once we had our supermodel worthy passport photos in hand, we headed to the courthouse annex building to send off our passport applications. This is where my mother told me to go. She knows these things. Anyway, we get there and there is no one anywhere near the entrance. We walked around the metal detectors . . . the security is top notch (insert theme song from the Andy Griffith show here). I mean Washington D.C. has nothing on the courthouse annex in our county. We finally found a very sweet, but slighlty clueless girl, to help us. She informed us that we weren't at the courthouse annex (uh yeah it says Courthouse Annex on the outside of the building but okie dokie), and the only thing they handled was criminal court cases. Which is why they had the stellar security at the entrance. Patrick then tells the girl we'll go "ask around" and find out where we get passports done. I'm not exactly sure where we were going to "ask around" but that was the plan. Did I mention that throughout all of this we had Andrew, who's 3, and my nephew Anthony, who's 8 - they walked through the metal detector . . . multiple times. So as we're headed out to "ask around" and the same sweet girl comes running back and says that we were indeed in the right place. We were then directed to the District Clerk's office. At this point it was a little after 4:30 and the lady at the desk informed us that they only process passports between 1:00 and 4:30 p.m. All I could think was "you have got to be kidding me!" Don't worry I didn't say it. She then says that she'll make an exception (thank goodness I didn't say what I was thinking). She was actually very nice once she started going through the paperwork. Ten minutes later we were done and on our way. We walked out past the invisible security guard and headed home.

And this ladies and gentlemen is why the next time I have jury duty I will wear a bullet proof vest and possibly a helmet.