Friends list pruning

Removed a couple of users from my friends list whose entries I don't read that often.

It's nothing personal as such; mostly a way of helping me deal with my friends page. If any of those I removed would like to remain on my friends list in order to read my FO entries, I'll add you back but leave you off my Default View. (Most of my entries are public, though, so you'd not be missing much.)

If anyone would like to remove me from your friends list or your Default View, perhaps because you hardly ever read me, then you can do that, too. (Though if you post mostly friends-only and you don't mind my reading your journal, it would be nice to take me off the DV rather than unfriend me.)

Passport!

New passport arrived today. Wow, that was quick!

They said to allow for three to four weeks, but I'm fairly sure I sent the application off this year… so it only took them about one week!

The machine-readable page is no longer part of the back cover, but is a page immediately before that, which kind of sucks; it's rather warped due to the plastic lamination, which probably wouldn't have happened on the (stiffer) back page. But eh: can't be helped.

The new one has my signature digitally scanned onto that last page; by the looks of it, the picture is also a scan rather than the physical photograph I sent in.

I'm also glad that they were satisfied with the documentation I submitted and didn't balk at the dates, for example, or require me to submit more documents.

Meh—now I have to remember a new passport number, though. I knew the old one by heart (seven-oh-one-one-seven-five-two-nine-five), mostly from having to write it on every MSF cheque I cashed during my mission in Greece. They returned my old passport with the top corner cropped.