Details

The passport is in Denver. It arrived there yesterday. Since Denver's so close (cough, cough), we're going to run down there this morning to pick up the passport. That's what we're going to call it from now on, The Passport.

The office of International Passport Visas Inc. from which we must retrieve the passport is open today from 10:30 am until 11 am. Ergo, the obnoxiously early hour you'll see timestamped on this post.

Now, as much as I obviously am shaking my head about the whole escapade, especially the need to drive to Denver (twice!), I must mention yet another benefit of this choice. Thursday morning when I went out to the car to go to work, I was quite pleased to see that while in Denver, the car had been detailed. It looks fabulous. It hasn't been this clean since I brought it home from the dealership 8 1/2 years ago.

Me, me, me

It's all about me.

Steve drove to Denver in a snowstorm, will probably be driving back on Friday or Saturday and then back again on Monday (remember, we're talking 4+ hours one way).

But that's all good 'cause I got this cool new carving board out of the deal.

Diminishing Returns?

Today, they had 16 inches of snow on the Front Range.

So, it seemed like a good idea to hand deliver the expired passport to the office of the passport expediters in Denver.

After all, it's only a 4 hour drive one way in good weather.

I'm not sure it's about the vacation anymore. It's more the challenge.

The passport still has to travel to DC and back by Monday.

Errrr . . .

Today's drama involves an 8 am scheduled departure to Mexico tomorrow, an expired passport, the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative and much contradictory information on various and multitudinous websites.

First off, 10 years is a remarkably long time to try to keep track of an expiration date. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating for more frequent renewals but I'd love to see some statistics on just how many people miss their passport expiration/renewal date.

In a tangibly staged process, we first decided that the course most likely to be successful was the one where the expired passport holder shows up at the airport, feigns ignorance and surprise and, after some minimal hassle, is allowed to proceed.

Weighing in favor of this approach was the argument that entry to Mexico only requires proof of citizenship and proof of identity coupled with a US State Department website statement that an expired passport is in fact proof of citizenship. In addition, the State Department website's FAQs regarding the passport requirement explicitly states that, upon return, should a traveler not have a valid passport, s/he would simply be subject to secondary screening.

Mitigating against this approach were United Airlines' hard line approach that a valid passport is required to leave the country, not just to re-enter and the $3300 fine an airline must pay if it does not comply with the WHTI.

So on to stage 2 of our problem-solving attempt wherein we try to take advantage of the fact that a valid passport is not yet required for overland border crossings. After spending much time researching a bus to Glenwood Springs to a bus to Denver to a flight to Phoenix to a bus to Nogales to a bus to Hermosillo to a flight to Puerto Vallarta to a bus to Sayulita, we get shut down by some schmo in the Mexican Consulate in Tucson who says that, no, in fact, an expired passport will not suffice as proof of citizenship.

Next stop, stage 3. In stage 3, we discover, a half hour after FedEx closes for the day, that there are businesses out there to which we can overnight the expired passport, pay beaucoup bucks for an super expedited rush turnaround and possibly get a renewed passport in time for the rebooked departure a week from tomorrow.

Of course, it's too late to call any of these businesses this evening but guess who will be on the phone at 7 am tomorrow?

Will there be a stage 4? Will the expedited passport business deign to expedite our passport? Will we be re-rebooking? Tune in tomorrow, same bat time, same bat channel.

That's so cool!

Chicago, my birthplace, has an awesome skyline. The lakefront is a beautiful place to bike, walk or run. Every visit home, I look forward to an excursion downtown. We usually take the Metra train which is such a relaxed way to get there but, if we have our bikes with us, we'll drive to the north end of Lakeshore Drive, park and ride our bikes south. A stop at Millennium Park has become de rigueur.

And now, the Chicago Spire.

This looks very exciting. The architecture of curves is visual eye candy. Having just been in Seattle and seen the fun and whimsical Experience Music Project, I'm thrilled to see that Chicago once again appears willing to embrace exhilarating architectural vision.

I hope this project comes to fruition.

Seattle

Note: This post was written last week during a particularly boring conference session.

I'm in Seattle attending a conference. Seattle's cool. I like it. Having been to a number of convention centers, I have to say so far Seattle's facilities and amenities top the list. The downtown area is vibrant with lots of stores, restaurants and hotels. It's close to the waterfront with its attractive and enticing Public Market and the original Starbucks. (*see below)

Starbucks. I like Starbucks. I've mentioned previously my proclivity to seek out Starbucks when I travel. My biggest disappointment when visiting China was our inability to find the Starbucks in the Forbidden City.

I am frequently made to feel that my affinity for Starbucks is shameful. Oftentimes, it's implied as in Seattle's Rough Guide when it states that the original Starbucks' interior is the same as every other Starbucks (not true). Other times, it's explicit such as when the friend who styles himself as a coffee aficionado sneers and looks down his nose at the suggestion we stop by Starbucks for our caffeine fix.

When traveling far afield, it is comforting to stop in a Starbucks. I'm not saying I'm going to spend all my time in Seoul in Starbucks and then claim to have seen Seoul. But it certainly was interesting to see how the Seoul college students commandeer their local Starbucks as a study hall/student center, much more so than any other Starbucks I've visited.

I'm staying at the Sheraton Seattle which is the conference hotel which is why I chose it. Wishing, however, that I had stayed at the Grand Hyatt. It's equidistant to the Convention Center, has a Starbucks and a Ruth's Chris Steakhouse in the lobby and is not a construction zone.

At the Sheraton, we have a bar and restaurant. Period. My first night after verifying that the hotel lobby gift /sundry store was open til 11 pm, I went down for a snack only to find out that for the duration of the construction, the lobby shop is closed.

Of course, there's an enticing little food basket conveniently placed next to my TV with candy bars for $3 and bottles of water for $5.

*It turns out that even though everyone freely refers to the 1912 Pike Place location as the original Starbucks, there was a store at 2000 Western Avenue which predates the Pike Place store. Not sure what the explanation is for this . . .

Last week's favorite

Remember, I live in a tourist destination . . .

This week's favorite

My favorite from this week's PostSecret.

Sun-Maid Raisin Bread UPC?

On March 21, I wrote a post about my difficulties with Gristedes.com. In that post, I mentioned that Sun-Maid cinnamon swirl raisin bread has a different UPC than Arnold's raisin cinnamon bread.

Pretty much didn't think anything more about it.

Until . . .

Starting at 9:32 pm on April 1, I started seeing traffic on my blog, almost exclusively from Canada, driven by variations on the search terms, "sun-maid raisin bread upc."

Huh??

Since Sunday evening, I've had a dozen visitors looking for the Sun-Maid raisin bread UPC.

Welcome! Please make yourselves at home. I hope I can be of assistance.

But, could someone please enlighten me as to why you're looking for the Sun-Maid raisin bread UPC?

I feel like I'm part of some trivia contest . . .

The Feminine Mistake

Leslie Bennetts writes an opinion piece at HuffingtonPost.com regarding her recently published book, The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much?

It would probably annoy Bennetts to no end that, like those she complains about, I haven't read her book either.

But that's not going to stop me . . .

By presenting her audience as either the women who have chosen to stay at home and the women who have chosen not to, Leslie Bennetts is missing a key audience, an audience for which her book might just be the most helpful, the women who haven't made the choice yet.

As Bennetts explains her book, it serves to reinforce the decision of the working mom and serves to criticize the decision of the stay at home. It's unlikely to affect the behavior in any appreciable way in either of these two groups. The stay at homers will tend towards defensiveness (as Bennetts complains they have) and the working moms will tend towards smugness.

Just as telling a friend who's in a bad relationship that she is in a bad relationship is rarely productive, likewise, I suspect, a friend who's made the "Feminine Mistake" is unlikely to be receptive to having this pointed out to her.

But, the women who haven't had to yet make the choice . . .

Bennetts states that

My goal in writing The Feminine Mistake was to provide women with what I saw as one-stop-shopping that would help close this information gap. My goal was to gather into a single neat package all the financial, legal, sociological, psychological, medical, labor-force, child-rearing and other information necessary for them to protect themselves. My reporting revealed that the bad news is just as ominous as I'd feared; so many women are unaware of practical realities that range from crucial changes in the divorce laws to the difficulties of reentering the work force and the penalties they pay for taking a time-out. I devoted two chapters to financial information alone.

If this is the case, then clearly her target audience, the audience who would be most benefited by the information presented, is made up of the women, young, unmarried and/or childless, who have not yet been faced with the choice of whether or not to "abandon their careers and become financially dependent on their husbands." This is the group who can then weigh their options and make their choice more fully informed.

But Bennetts doesn't seem to get it. She's surprised by the defensiveness of the stay at homers and wants to save them from themselves. This is highly unlikely. Like the millions who play the lottery, they will continue to hold out hope that each will be the one to beat the odds, the exception to the rule.

Instead of complaining about the lost causes, she should be focusing her energies on those she can sway.

This week's favorite

My favorite from this week's PostSecret.

Ignant

as in "Rosie O'Donnell is an ignant fool."

Ignant: proudly, willfully ignorant. Holding up one's ignorance as a virtue, and using it as rhetorical and moral leverage. cf. Ignorance.

when you know you wrong.

So, college drop-out Rosie O'Donnell thinks she can hang with the big boys.

"That's retarded." (Rachel's response when I told her about the 9/11 conspiracy theories.)

O'Donnell has bought into the 9/11 conspiracy theorists' argument that it was all just a government plot and is spouting this nonsense on The View.

Now, in the past, I've really had no issue with Rosie. She can be funny, I'll give her that. I liked her in A League of Their Own. She can also be brash and abrasive but it's never bothered me.

But now, she's just being stupid and she's doing it on national television, giving credence to a whole subculture of conspiracy theorists.

But, hey, let's not let facts get in the way of a good rant.

I'm embarrassed to be on the same side of the political spectrum . . .