Passport Woes. Wo Wo Wo is Me.

Here's the scoop for all of you trying to follow our 'going to Spain' highjinx.

First, the visas took so long to get processed that we had already moved by the time the prepaid, preaddressed envelope shipped containing our passports newly outfitted with visas. We had been planning to fly out on September 5th ever since the passports have been supposed to ship for the last three weeks.

Second, even though we had changes our address with USPS a couple weeks before, the envelope didn't reroute to the new address, but came to our old address and our previous land lady, in a fit of not really thinking about what this package may contain, informed the mailman that we had moved. A couple minutes later she realized what it probably was and felt more than adequately sorry. She makes up for it later, just wait. We call the post office around 12:15 and between Michelle, close to tears, and myself, close to uncontrolled rage, manage to get the extremely nice post office lady to call the mail man and get him to redeliver our package. Enter repentant land lady who accepts the package and saves the day.

Third, my passport is not inside. Du du duuuuuuuuhhhhhhnnnnnnnn. Cue lightning. Turns out, they only processed the visas for the people who are going there to work and NOT their loving family members who are planning to fly with them and near as we can guess they had retained mine to continue processing the visa. Mistake!! Luckily we hadn't bought tickets till the visas came in and the Spanish consul in Seattle got the consulate in San Francisco to overnight my passport, so we could fly out Thursday. Here's a hitch. It was Saturday before Labor Day. They wouldn't even be able to get the overnight package out until Tuesday the next week. Cutting pretty close for our Thursday mornin flight. But that's what they do.

Fourth, (this is getting longer than I expected.) it ships Tuesday and doesn't arrive Wednesday. The consul uses the tracking number emailed to him from San Francisco and there is no record of it yet. He calls the post office. No known record of the package to track. So we pray about things and inquire about dates to change flights to and decide Michelle should leave Thursday morning as planned and we book a flight for me Friday night. Give two days to arrive. Next day she flys out and I patiently (or at least try to) await the arrival of his important package gone MIA.

Fifth, Thursday I get a call around 1 from the consul. Still MIA. there is the chance it is lost in Regular mail and won't resurface. Least of all in time to catch my flight the following day. the consul suggests preparing to get a new passport the next day. Under special circumstances such as mine, they have been known to issue a visa in one day. So I start the process, get a new copy of my birth certificate (all of our other copies are in some file box in Wenatchee.) I set up an appointment for the following morning with the passport agent in Seattle, and am feeling pretty good about things. I get back to our friend Ben and Rae's house who are so graciously letting me crash in their spare room for as long as need be and eat all their vegemite, and punch in the tracking number just for kicks, and what do I see?? It was scanned in in California yesterday afternoon. It says it is guaranteed by noon today. Well, I decide to hang my hat on that hope and save us $200.

Presently it is 7:30 AM on Friday morning, I'm blogging, I'm supposed to fly from Seatac to Charlotte, North Carolina tonite at 10:20 PM and the package was scanned in in Seattle at 5:45 this morning. Here's hopin'!!!!!!

Hollis

P.S. I've already checked in for my flight and so I can't cancel it now. Even for a fee.