Happy Friday everyone! :) Today is a most excellent day, but this story kind of cracks me up and I had to share. Beware, it’s kind of a rant. But hopefully it will make you smile by the end!
Tom’s passport was set to expire in April. Of course, right? The year that we’re going to be traveling, it expires. It can’t be NEXT year.
So, we had to do updated pictures. Because of my drama with photo printers at home, I decided that we would just go to Sam’s Club and get them taken. Pay the $8, and get them all done and not have to worry about it. Seems simple enough. So we went to the photo counter, and told the chick what we needed… she took out a point and shoot. I was expecting a full getup. A professional camera, the nice background, ya know – DMV kinda stuff. But no, she took out the type of camera I would give to Kaden to play with. And then she told us that it would be a minimum of 30 minutes to get the prints done. At this point I very politely said, “I think we’ll have to do this later, thank you though!”
So we went home and I took some quick pictures of Tom. Easy, quick, nothing fancy. White background? Check. Two inches square? Check. Between 1″ and 1 3/8″ from chin to the top of the head? Check. Does anyone else think some of these requirements are slightly silly? And 1 and 3/8? Why not 1 and 1/2? Why make it difficult?
I got the photos all set up, correct dimensions, made sure everything was good, and put a sheet of photo paper into the printer. And File – Print. Voila – easy enough, right? Ummm no. The photos came out blue. WHY, you ask? I have no idea. Because if I printed them on REGULAR paper, they were fine. But on PHOTO paper, the kind suggested by the actual printer COMPANY, they were blue. I tried not to get too upset. So I grabbed some different photo paper, the kind that came WITH the printer. I loaded PHOTO paper, into the PHOTO printer, and the stupid thing still came out blue. This is at 11pm, people, I was NOT happy. I was ready to go all Office Space on the printer and stuff. But I decided to give it one more try. Another sheet of photo paper, loaded in, with the printer settings set to best quality. I made sure to fine tune all of the settings – and the stupid picture still came out blue. A little voice spoke to me… “Another reason I don’t do my own photo printing, thank God for photo labs!” At this point I was pondering whether the Department of State would be okay with a blue photo. I mean, it’s still his picture right? It still meets the requirements? I figured it might not be a good idea. Especially to send a $110 check. Just watch that disappear… *sigh*
So I decided to send the print to Sam’s Club so it could be picked up the next day. Which meant I had to go BACK to Sam’s, to the SAME person that I talked to previously, and pick up the picture. Yay…
The next evening, after the photo printing debacle, I finally had two good prints to use. I cut them accordingly, got them to 2″ square, and grabbed my stapler. For anyone who has completed a passport application recently, you know that you can’t tape the picture, or just drop it into the envelope. It has to be stapled, with four staples, in the exact right position. So I grabbed my stapler. This can’t be that hard, right? I lined up my stapler and pushed down for the first staple. A little crooked, hopefully the government is okay with that. I lined it up for the next one, which was not easy to do, and pushed down – nothing.
I RAN OUT OF STAPLES.
Seriously people, how does this happen? Staples are one of those office supplies that are EVERYWHERE when you don’t need any. There are boxes and boxes of them! And the boxes come with like a gajillion staples in each box, when you really only need like 200. Maybe, if even 200. But then when I really needed more, do you THINK I could find any? Heck no. I went through ALL of my drawers, and found every OTHER office supply. Paper clips, pens, pencils, sharpeners, scissors, binder clips… seriously, everything but staples. So then I started going through my scrapbooking materials. I have a super fancy stapler that swivels for my scrapbook pages, it’s perfect for ribbon! And it HAD STAPLES! Praise Jesus, the passport application was saved!
There was just one little issue… the staples were pink.
I swear people, I didn’t have ANY OTHER STAPLES. I looked everywhere! I looked for another color even! Maybe blue, green, even yellow. Anything but pink. I don’t even know why pink was loaded into the stapler, I don’t really use pink very often. But that’s all I had. So I had to do it. And then, because I have to have photos of everything, I had to take a picture of the photo with my phone to show Tom.
Ya know, nothing says “Hi I’m a responsible, manly man kinda guy who would like to renew my passport” like pink staples. I got quite the look for it. The kind of look that guys are usually on the receiving end of. The look that says “Really? Pink staples, really Brooke?!” Then he started laughing and said it was okay.
That’s the kind of guy I’m marrying everyone. He’s okay with pink staples. And I love him.
Ha! Smile everyone. :)
Looks like you did an awesome job on the picture, even with the staples. Used to be you only needed 1 staple….so now its 4. I can’t tell you how many passports I’ve had over the years and I think there is only 1 with a staple mark on it. However, I vote for pink staples for EVERYONE. I think that should be a government rule…don’t you? But to give you a laugh as well. When I last renewed my passport, we were still overseas….they used 25 staples (I just got it out and counted) to connect the old passport (that had my original admit visa stamp) to my new passport (that has my original exit visa stamp)…go figure!
Pink staples are awesome! ;)