La Floride

Yesterday, Monday morning, I headed out to the airport just like I was told to at 3 a.m., to catch a plane leaving at 6:45 a.m. As I get to the airport, I prayed that all would go well. I prayed 'cause late on Sunday night, I looked for my passport and realized that it had expired in December!
I got to the airport hoping that my other I.D. cards along with a recently expired passport would get me through the Homeland Security barricades. After playing dumb, cajoling and almost begging the not-so-nice ticketing agent, I gave in.
I called Northwest Airlines (my carrier) then called the passport office, then surfed the web to find that there were two passport offices near the airport. The first of these was in Brampton.
The plan was to, as a last ditch effort, go to the passport office, plead ignorance about the expired passport, explain that I had missed my flight and wanted desperately to get back to the airport and TRY to get on a later flight on the assumption that Northwest would re-book me as a result of my lack of foresight.
The Brampton passport office opened at 8 a.m. To kill some time, I ate a danish, put my suitcase in storage, again, on the assumption that I would get a new passport and be able to re-book my flight and therefore, actually have a need to come back to the airport.
My cabbie took me to the old location for the Brampton passport office. Then, to the new location. At the new location I learned that the Brampton office could only give me a passport within 48 hours. BUT, the Mississauga office could give me a passport today!! Again, I had time to kill and so used my time to get a passport photo taken with the help of a calm and calming old commisionaire (Gill was his name...look him up) at the Brampton office.
Another long cab ride led me to the Mississauga passport office. When I got to the passport office, I was shocked to find about 60 people already seated and waiting to see a passport officer. After standing in a long line up and explaining my problem to one of the passport reps, I was told that, 'yep,' I could indeed get a passport there and then. But, I had to fill out an application and stand in line again to get a number, which would put me in yet another longer line.
Fine. I did what I had to...fill out the form, stand in line and get approved to stand in another line.

More to follow...