In other rustling, my boyfriend and I usually take a trip to Niagara Falls on the Canada side around our anniversary date (Feb 15th) but didn't last year since we didn't have money and we weren't really planning on it this year. He decides he wants to do it this year, though, and wants to go during the end of his winter break from work, so the Feb 22nd and through the weekend. I hadn't thought ahead for this, so I hadn't yet renewed my passport which expired in July and now we're pretty much exactly at two weeks for me needing this thing. I go ahead and apply for an expedited renewal with a company we used at my family's small business to get it done. It'll cost a little extra, but I don't really have another option as the enhanced driver's license takes two weeks to do and I don't have a current passport for it and my parents still have my birth certificate.
So I get all the forms filled out for my expedited passport and tell them I need this thing before the 19th so I can know whether or not to cancel my hotel reservation without getting hosed for $600. One of the things the State Dept. requires is either a flight itinerary or a letter on company letterhead stating the reason for travel and signed by management. Well, it's a pleasure trip and we live two hours from the border so we're just driving over so I can provide neither of these as proof of departure. Call up the company and ask what should I provide. I'm told to just write a statement saying I'll be driving over the border for a pleasure trip. Sounds good. I write it up, I have it out and FedEx'd Friday night so it'll get there Monday the 12th and they have my appt. setup to submit it on the 14th.
Late in the afternoon on the 13th, I get an email and a call saying my proof of departure letter isn't good enough and they can't accept a hotel reservation as proof of departure and I need to send either a flight itinerary or a company letter. I guess they didn't read the fucking one I wrote already saying I don't have those things and why. Doesn't matter, they want a new letter. So I rewrite it and email my agent back within 10 min or so asking if the new wording would be okay. No response, so I just fucking haul ass to the FedEx and get it overnighted.
Next day the day of my appointment's scheduled, and sure enough the overnight gets delayed by something and misses the morning courier. Call up my agent, let them know it might not make it that day, so now I'm going to miss my appointment. She tells me there's no other appointments open until the 21st, the day before I leave. Fuck. She'll check to see if something opens up later in the week, but other than that, I'm screwed. 8pm that night, I finally get a response to my revised letter email from the night before with her saying she can't accept it because it's not signed... I only send it over for her to check the fucking wording, not to print it out and use it because I know it needs a fucking original signature. Also, by this point my actual letter's arrived by the afternoon courier and she acknowledges that, so she has a fucking signed copy already in her possession, but she tells me she'll try to have them make an exception on the signature for me (???).
Thursday comes and my parents were nice and hunted down my birth certificate and sent it up to me, so I bust down to the DMV and apply for an EDL in the hopes that maybe it can make it in time, because I sure as fuck am not counting on the passport making it anymore. Get to the teller and they tell me they have an expedited service for the EDL and all I have to pay is for a UPS overnight and it'll be done in 2-3 days. Sounds fucking good. 7pm rolls around and my passport agent tells me my app's been submitted and that's it. I don't hear a word from them Friday.
Monday rolls around and boom, UPS shows up with my enhanced license. Woop, I'm good to cross the damn border now, and don't have to cancel the hotel. Awesome. No word from the passport company. Today rolls around. 8pm tonight, I get word that my passport's been shipped and it'll get here tomorrow, two days after I told them I needed to have it. I get the invoice as well. $700. Fuck. That. Jimmies are supremely rustled right now as this is double what I was expecting to pay since I apped for this 10 days in advance and they're charging me for 2-3 day speed. And of course I didn't even need to do any of this because apparently you can expedite the fucking EDL which was listed nowhere in the FAQs on the site, but I would have gone straight to that if I'd known.