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Showing posts from September 1, 2024

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...

Another NY Trip (but always something new)

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I flew up to the farm in NY. I rented a Kia EV6 Electric car. It was ok. Better than my 2013 Nissan Leaf, but not as nice as my 2024 Tesla Model Y. It had pretty good range and comfort that comes along with an all electric vehicle. They didn't include a mobile chanrger, but did include a useless adapter that plugs into the charge port and allows household electic items to run directly from the battery, crazy. I had to pay 64 cents a kW at the NY sanctioned changing stations. That is 10 times the regular rate for electricity. Totally expected for a NY government franchise that is well known for corruption. https://evolveny.nypa.gov/ . Nevertheless, I felt proud that I could easilty drive a rear wheel drive electric car on my new driveway up to the planned yurt site. I met up with two very old friends (Jeff Kuebel and John Kucharski) that I met in first grade in Irondequoit, NY at Oakview school. Needless to say, that was a long time ago. We remembered some very funny stories of m...