So let me tell you about my day.

We’re heading north this afternoon, going to visit my folks and spend the weekend in and around Chattanooga. We are meeting friends from Nashville and as I will be serving as something like a tour guide, I figured this a good enough excuse as any to have someone detail the interior of my car.

I’ve not had a thoroughly detailed automobile since I traded in my 1986 Acura Legend. Whenever the Legend needed service, I took her to a part-time mechanic over in Doraville. See, his garage was actually a detail shop, but under-the-hood work would be done for select people with the right references. Via an ex-girlfriend, I became a select person. So the way it would work is that the guy who ran the shop would repair your car with utmost precision, then hand it over to his detail crew — for no additional cost — before releasing it back into your care.

The Focus, however, has never received so much attention in all of the six years I’ve had her. Yes, I’ve vacuumed and occasionally made with the Armor All^TM, but I’m no expert.

Like I said, it seemed like a good idea to make my car company-ready. So I took it over to Auto Indulgence, an all-around gas-up/oil-change/car-wash/detail place across the street from North Point Mall. Given the range of choices from the Basic Indulgence (car wash, wax, vacuum, wipe down, window cleaning, protectant) to the Executive Indulgence (dipping the car in Dom Perignon, apparently), I went with the Basic.

The outside lackey placed the politi-magnets in my driver’s side door pocket and motored the car around back, so I went inside to pay. I had a check, so the cashier asked me for my driver’s license. No problem. I handed it over. Her brow furrows as she squints a bit. “Oh, sir,” she says, “the date, you see?” I nodded and took the license back from her as she finished the transaction. Then I see it.

I’ve been driving on an expired license since my birthday. In March.

So I get back to my office and hit the Georgia DOT website. At this point, I’m thinking of all of the times that I’ve been over the speed limit since March, all of the idiots on 400 that almost sideswiped me since March, all of the times that I’ve been carded since March, and I’m wondering just how I could’ve missed this expiration. And I’m wondering just what it is going to take to get me unexpired. Resurrected, as it were. Is there a fine? Am I doomed to a day at the DOT? Will I have to be retested?

No. No fine. Just the typical renewal fee, though it cannot be done online past the expiry date. And yes, I will have to go stand in line somewhere, but there are two different satellite locations within a 10-mile radius of my house. And no retesting. Had I remained blissfully unaware until March of 2008, then a new test of my vision (at the very least) would be in order.

So the detail place calls, tells me they’re ready, and I get a ride back. (Thanks, Gray.)

The car looks better than it has ever. Even when I drove it mostly new off the lot in Chatsworth, the wheels weren’t so bright. And so I start my slow and paranoid creep down to the DOT service center in Sandy Springs. Of course, it starts raining. And I encountered this mysterious white fog created by a highway improvement project. But all the same, I survived and arrived.

This is where you would find a tirade about the horrible state of governmental bureaucracy. I expected to spend the rest of my afternoon standing in line, slowly starving as dinnertime approached.

That didn’t happen. Instead, I walked in, got a number from the desk and sat down. No sooner had I cracked open my book did I hear my number. So I got back up, talked to another clerk, told her that my address hadn’t changed and that I was still happy about the whole “organ donor” thing. She gave me back my number and told me to sit again. I asked her, “Do you think I’ve time to go to the restroom before I’m called again?” She shrugged politely and answered, “I don’t know, but maybe not.”

A couple of book pages later, I handed my number to one more person, smirked for the camera and signed my name on a rolling strip of paper. She called my name a few minutes later and handed me my still-warm driver’s license. I was done. All total, I was there for about fifteen minutes.

My photo is different now. Gone is the van-dyke / goatee, an artifact from 2001 or so. The glasses are newer. My shirt has a collar now. The hair is a bit longer, though I’m wishing that I would’ve renewed a few months ago when I had crazy Armado hair. But really, the license looks a lot more like me than it has in awhile. And maybe that’s why nobody ever noticed the expiration date before, as they were spending too much time trying to reconcile how the person on the card only vaguely resembled the fellow standing before them.

So that was my day.