I’m never making an appointment with the DMV again. I called for one this morning. The earliest one available was next Thusday at 2PM. Since this matter really couldn’t wait that long, I decided to risk the Friday afternoon lines. I was in and out within 20 minutes. Time saved by NOT making an appointment: 5 days and 23 hours.
California’s a strange place with respect to driver’s license renewals. To start with, you don’t leave with an actual new license. You leave with a piece of paper clipped to your old one. The new one comes in the mail few weeks later. So much for instant gratification.
Of course, you can always renew by mail, which is what I tried to do in the first place. Thanks to the US Postal Service, however, my check and form are probably now in Oregon somewhere. The thing about renewing by mail is that you end up with the same picture for a decade or so. This is known as the “Dorian Gray Reversal Syndrome”. You age, but the picture stays young.
They must use the same system for newspaper obituary photos, which would explain why that 80-year-old woman who just died in Antioch or Fairfax doesn’t look a day over 40 and still has a big beehive hairdo.
Coming soon: my horror at the fact that my Lucky supermarket on Allemany has suddenly become an Albertson’s.