Expidite the expidited

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I am headed to the passport office this AM to get a new passport. I didn't have time to do the expidited renewal after getting back from Japan. So I made an special expiditing appointment with the passport folks in Atlanta. I am glad I only have to drive into Atlanta, not fly up to NY or Washington DC. It seems I have had to do some expiditing everytime I have renewed my passport. Passports are good for 10 years. When you get a new passport it is a time to ponder where you will be and what the passport will look like in 10 years. The pic belows shows the wear on my now cancelled passport. it was a 50 page book (the extra pages version) and 46 pages are fully used. Many countries require 3 empty pages to enter their country. So, I got full use of the larger size passport. If you need more pages, you send the passport in and they will "sew-in" more pages. The thickest passport I ever saw was at the Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan border. A truck driver I saw had a Uzbekistan passpo...

Today is Sunday again. I got up early and walked up oberservatio hill before 7 AM today. The cross at the top has a great inscription.

From Wikipedia:

Observation Hill is a large hill (750 ft/230m) adjacent to McMurdo Station in Antarctica and commonly called "Ob Hill" (prononuced Obie). It is frequently climbed in order to get good viewing points across the continent. Regular clear skies give excellent visibility.

Robert Falcon Scott's party was found by a search party led by the surgeon, Dr. Edward Atkinson. They were found dead by the members of the base camp, who took their photographic film, scientific specimens, and other materials. They had to leave Scott and his men in their tent, and later parties could not locate the campsite, since that area had been covered in snow. So Scott's party eventually ended up drifting out to sea as part of an iceberg as the ice shelf made its way to the sea.

The search party then returned to what is now known as McMurdo and climbed Observation Hill. There they erected a large wooden cross, inscribed the names of the fatal party and a short quote from an Alfred Tennyson poem which reads "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

Climbing ob hill by yourself early in the morning is a great simple pleasure. It is not easy to climb, first of all. The view is fantastic and the solitude and respite from town, welcome. It took me less than an hour. My clothes were still in the dryer when I got back.

I have been working on my 5 minute movie for the annual McMurdo Film Festival. I am happy with the results so far. I have a lot more editing to do.

The building in the picture is the National Science Foundation administration building on campus, the Chalet. It overlooks my shop, bldg 159, AKA; the puzzle palace.

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