Dispatch from Vogsphere

Disclaimer: This is not supposed to be in a complaining spirit. But sometimes the federal government Vogons produce stories too good not to share.

Every good Army wife has two passports. One is your typical tourist one, and one is a "no-fee" passport that looks exactly the same but you are supposed to use it when you PCS overseas and back. (No-fee passports are not the same as official passports, which are maroon and allow you to go through the diplomatic immigration line. Having a cherubic infant also allows you to go through the diplomatic line, but I digress.) For various reasons having to do with rushing out of the country ASAP after marriage, my no-fee passport was issued in my maiden name. Last winter we finally got around to sending it in to get it changed, and 3 months later it had not been sent back. The State Department's central passport processing office had a record of receiving it, but there was no sign of the packet itself--including my old but still valid no-fee passport and marriage certificate. After several follow-up emails between the Fort Huachuca passport office and the central processing office, it was determined that my packet had vanished into thin air. I maintain that someone filed it under "Helper" and no one has had the brains to check on that. (Digression #2--why is it that Japanese and Thais can get Hepler right but no American ever has?)
We didn't determine that my packet was gone forever until after we moved to Okinawa, so in a move of dubious legality I just came here on my tourist passport. Now we are trying to finally get my no-fee passport, and found ourselves at the local passport office today being told that it wasn't enough to fill out the passport application and the lost passport report, we also had to file a police report or have an affidavit.
You want me to file a police report stating that the State Department lost my passport? Seriously. After much debate between the Vogons and my Vogon-slayer husband, it was decided that it was enough that I contact the Fort Huachuca passport office and get them to forward me the email sent to them from the central processing office stating that my passport had been eaten. And I could forward that email to this passport office.
As I was about to hand in my passport application I checked it over one last time and realized that I had put the wrong social security number on it as mine. In 99% of situations, an Army wife has to put her husband's social security number down instead of hers. The Vogons don't even bother saying "your sponsor's SS number", they just say "your SS number" and you know what they mean. But here I had put down Nathan's (from memory, of course, and apparently it was the first SS number to pop into my head) and for once they wanted mine. Foiled again, but by myself.