My new and improved birth certificate arrived day before yesterday from the State of Michigan. Why did I need to spend good money (and actually wait a month until I turned 65 so I could SAVE twenty bucks) on a new birth certificate when I already had one that has seen me through just about everything a birth certificate needs to see you through in 65 years? Because the original wasn't good enough to get a passport. I evidently was born in the days before raised seals making it officially official enough for a passport.

So today I finally got my posterior down to the post office to get photographed, submit the application and the necessary identification, and get the whole shebang in the works. Of course, the form I got last December wasn't good enough either -- they'd redesigned it and rearranged the positions of the information, so I had to fill out the new application. And write the checks. But, tah dah! it's done...except for the waiting for the actual passport and my birth certificate to arrive in the mail.

And then I may, at my leisure and during good weather, be able to visit a friend in Strathroy, Ontario, Canada. (Oh, and maybe some other friends, too.)

No, Canada does not require a passport for a US citizen to visit. But if I want MY country to let me back in so I can go home, I need the passport.

Bureaucracy!

I've been trying to figure out if the photo is better or worse than my recent driver's license photo... I think neither. I still look like my mother. (Not necessarily a good thing...)

Anyway, I did get a few other things done today, such as bringing slate tiles upstairs so the floor can be installed next week. And I got the old wheelbarrow up to the road with a FREE sign on it.

Now I'm going to feed the cats some wet food (treat!) and pour myself a weak G&T and maybe go out on the deck (it's almost dark) and see if there are any more lightning bugs. I don't think there will be any stars.

Linn