I’ll be going on a trip to Sweden soon, and I’m doing the paperwork for getting a passport. For the past few days, it looked like I’d be going mid-February, but that may be too soon for the legal paperwork, so now it looks like the trip will be in late March or early April. I’ll definitely be going, whenever, and I’m a bit excited by the idea.
I’ve travelled some: several of the Southern states, as far north as New York and Illinois, and as far west as Texas, Arizona, and California. But I’ve never gone out of the country. Foreign travel is one of those things that I think could be interesting, but I’ve not had the urge, really, to go. There’s still many places in the US I’d like to see if I felt like travelling. And I’m a homebody by nature.
So, I’ve never had a need for a passport. I’m surprised by how expensive it is. I expected some fairly complicated paperwork, but the cost takes me aback. It’s going to be several hundred dollars, all told, with getting it expedited. Had I given it any thought, I’d have guessed less than a hundred bucks.
Today I’m running the errands for the prep-work for getting the passport. I’ve got to pick up a certified birth certificate, get photos taken, go to the post office, etc. It’s not like getting a driver’s license.
Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com
January 22nd, 2008
Categories:
LifeAfter I made the post about our recent snowfall, I saw these in our neighborhood:
You can judge the size of these snowmen by the street curb in front of them. (The third one is less than 12 inches tall.) You can also tell by the lack of snow around them that the builders had to use every bit of the white stuff in their yards. These pictures were taken less than 24 hours after the snowfall ended — no real melting had occurred yet.
Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com
As you can see, I changed how I present things here a bit. It was kind of silly to have a static main page and a daily changing second page. If I ever changed or announced anything on the main page, the folks who bookmarked the secondary page would never see the note. I do intend to have new stuff for the site — I’m working on some articles and some serial fiction — so I figured I should bring the daily postings to the main page where I could make announcements on the sides and have it actually seen.
I removed the link to my comic book postings because I just wasn’t making many posts there. I just didn’t and don’t have time to keep up so many sections. My table games and computer games sections are scarcely updated as it is, and I play those at least on a weekly basis.
Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com
January 20th, 2008
Categories:
LifeThey forecasted a little snow earlier this week, but it never came. So when they forecasted it for yesterday, I dismissed it as a probability. Cowgrit told the boys about the forecast, and got them all excited for snow. I felt that was a little cruel, as I really didn’t expect anything.
Then at around 3:00 in the afternoon, it started snowing. Small flakes at first, but lots of flakes. After half an hour, the flakes were bigger, just as many, and started sticking to the ground.
I took the boys out walking in the snow, and they loved it. It usually only snows one to three times a season, here in the South (unless you live in the mountains), so we don’t have real snow attire for the boys. The boys ended up just like I did when I was a kid and it snowed: cold and wet. Cowgrit and I have some good snow clothes, because we’ve been skiing a few times (West Virginia and Colorado), and we are past growing out of what we wore two years ago.
In this area, if you buy snow clothes for young kids, they’ll grow out of them before they actually have a need to wear them. Cowgrit bought Calfgrit7 some good snow clothes several years ago (when he was Calfgrit3-4), but he only wore them one or two days ever.
The snow only dusted the ground this time. There’s really nothing to play in. One of these days we’re going to take the boys to the mountains somewhere and let them see and experience “real” snow.
We get an ice storm about every other year, and a blizzard about once a decade. If snow actually stick to the roads in a noticeable amount, our cities pretty much shut down. Transplanted Yankees think this is funny — that people down in the South can’t handle a little snow and ice. But it’s not that we as a people can’t handle it, it’s that our infrastructure is not prepared for it. I read an article in the local newspaper a few years ago (during our last blizzard) that said our entire state has as many snowplow trucks as the city of Chicago has.
I remember seeing a Christmas episode of In the Heat of the Night (80s TV series with Carroll O’Conner) where it snowed on Christmas day, in Mississippi. That must have been a Christmas miracle.
Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com
