Do you want to know something about US passports?

I am the person to ask. In the 45 or so I just spent on hold with the US Passport Office, I learned everything you might want to know. Little tidbits of passport-related instruction periodically interrupted very cheery classical music- actually there would be as few as 3 and as many as 10 seconds of the cheery music before confident-upbeat-but-serious-man would start in again. Did you know that if one is returning from Swayne's Island, one is not considered to have left the US and need not present a passport? I don't know where it is or how to spell it, but I would not waste my time bringing my passport there, that's for sure. Nor to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, for that matter. I'm not sure I want to go to the Northern Mariana Islands anyway, as a quick check of wikipedia has informed me that it has a male-female ratio of 77-100, the lowest in the world. Also, a person going to the Canada, Mexico, Bermuda, or the Caribbean by rail, automobile, or sea (INCLUDING CRUISE SHIP) need not present a passport, though it is recommended- the new requirement applies only to air travel. I know many other interesting things as well, largely relating to the ability of customer service representatives to assist various sorts of callers and the online and e-mail options available to me.

Confidential to possums: If another of you ever takes it into your head to die anywhere in my vicinity again, I will hunt down your children and bite off their heads. I will not fall for any "look-I'm-already-dead-you-don't-want-to-eat-me" tricks either: I know full well the smell of dead possum, and I will know full well if it is absent.

Edit: And Jack's gradation pictures are up on Facebook. And I've spent sort of a long time being entertained by his class's Indian posse's facebook pictures. And I just spent a long time reading about the Northern Mariana Islands and have deturmined that I really do not wish to go there. The high proportion of females is due to huge, crowed, slave-labor-driven sex shops and sweat shops. And the government is 'nepotism under the guise of democracy,' as the candidates with the largest extended families always win. And this part has not been to possums but to any interested human readers.