Change is not always good...
Jun. 6th, 2007 08:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eregyrnI can't take that "how weird is your LJ?" quiz thing, because I have no interests, and apparently that is a sticking point. Oh well. It's not like the recent kerfuffle made me want to rush to *start* listing interests.
But that's not really what this post is about.
Last week I went to the RMV to renew my license. (An hour and a half of the Land That Time Forgot, in terms of the wait; if the RMV is only going to have evening hours one day a week, you might think they would make an effort to have *every* service booth manned, instead of, say, 3 out of the 5 license booths. Yes, you *might* think that, but you'd be wrong.) It's fairly axiomatic, I think, that pictures for IDs always suck. Perfectly normal people wind up looking like strung-out drug-runners or something. But when I first got my license almost 9 years ago, (yes, I didn't get a license until very late), unaccountably, my picture was GREAT. It wasn't just great for a driver's license picture -- it was a great picture *of me*, and such things are rare as hen's teeth. People kept remarking on how unusually good it was.
Well, this time when I renewed my license, they made me get a new photo taken. I have now joined the common ranks of all those who have a Crappy Driver's License photo. *sigh*
Now, I also need to renew my passport, after 12 years. (Yes, it expired 2 years ago, but I'm lazy.) And I opened up my old one and was looking at it, and dammit -- 12 years ago, I was cute! That was actually quite a good picture of me! What HAPPENED? *sigh* (Nevermind, I know what happened.) So I went into the post office today and got new pictures taken. They are -- needless to say -- AWFUL.
It's not very fun to be reminded that 9 years ago, or 12 years ago, you looked *that* much better than you look today (even though at the time you probably did not appreciate that fact at all). It makes you feel like, today, you look like a sad, squashed toad, or something; and because you know yourself, you know how very, very unlikely it is that you, personally, will use the cute 12-years-ago picture as inspiration to pick yourself up and dust yourself off and get in shape and get *back* to something close to that. Yes, you know yourself, and you know that what you're actually going to do is be really, really tempted to eat comfort food that is bad for you and that got you into this mess in the first place.
Bleah. (None of this is helped by being PMS-y.)
Also? The last time I got a passport photo taken, I was smiling. So this time when I got my new photo taken, I smiled. And the USPS lady who took the photo did not remark on this. But when I got back to my office, my boss told me that she thought we weren't allowed to be smiling/showing teeth in passport photos any more. That the USPS lady who took *her* photo (she had to do this in the past couple of weeks, too) told her *not* to smile. I just checked the State Dept. website and it says, "The customer should have a natural expression, mouth closed, and eyes open and looking directly ahead." I'm going to have to try to ask when I go to the post office tomorrow to send this stuff out. Grrrr.
But that's not really what this post is about.
Last week I went to the RMV to renew my license. (An hour and a half of the Land That Time Forgot, in terms of the wait; if the RMV is only going to have evening hours one day a week, you might think they would make an effort to have *every* service booth manned, instead of, say, 3 out of the 5 license booths. Yes, you *might* think that, but you'd be wrong.) It's fairly axiomatic, I think, that pictures for IDs always suck. Perfectly normal people wind up looking like strung-out drug-runners or something. But when I first got my license almost 9 years ago, (yes, I didn't get a license until very late), unaccountably, my picture was GREAT. It wasn't just great for a driver's license picture -- it was a great picture *of me*, and such things are rare as hen's teeth. People kept remarking on how unusually good it was.
Well, this time when I renewed my license, they made me get a new photo taken. I have now joined the common ranks of all those who have a Crappy Driver's License photo. *sigh*
Now, I also need to renew my passport, after 12 years. (Yes, it expired 2 years ago, but I'm lazy.) And I opened up my old one and was looking at it, and dammit -- 12 years ago, I was cute! That was actually quite a good picture of me! What HAPPENED? *sigh* (Nevermind, I know what happened.) So I went into the post office today and got new pictures taken. They are -- needless to say -- AWFUL.
It's not very fun to be reminded that 9 years ago, or 12 years ago, you looked *that* much better than you look today (even though at the time you probably did not appreciate that fact at all). It makes you feel like, today, you look like a sad, squashed toad, or something; and because you know yourself, you know how very, very unlikely it is that you, personally, will use the cute 12-years-ago picture as inspiration to pick yourself up and dust yourself off and get in shape and get *back* to something close to that. Yes, you know yourself, and you know that what you're actually going to do is be really, really tempted to eat comfort food that is bad for you and that got you into this mess in the first place.
Bleah. (None of this is helped by being PMS-y.)
Also? The last time I got a passport photo taken, I was smiling. So this time when I got my new photo taken, I smiled. And the USPS lady who took the photo did not remark on this. But when I got back to my office, my boss told me that she thought we weren't allowed to be smiling/showing teeth in passport photos any more. That the USPS lady who took *her* photo (she had to do this in the past couple of weeks, too) told her *not* to smile. I just checked the State Dept. website and it says, "The customer should have a natural expression, mouth closed, and eyes open and looking directly ahead." I'm going to have to try to ask when I go to the post office tomorrow to send this stuff out. Grrrr.
