When the Washington State Department of Licensing (or was it the DMV?) informed me that I had to renew my license plate tabs, I thought that’d be all she wrote. Nu-uh: I was informed I had to purchase new plates as well. Upon reception of this notice, I reasoned that there must be some crucial cosmetic change in how our state’s license plates look to necessitate such a hasty trashing of my one-year-old plates, which are still in perfectly fabulous condition. Nu-uh, again: the new plates look like my “old” plates, just with a different number. I defy anyone to explain how this makes any practical sense beyond giving prison inmates something to do all day. Seems pretty dang wasteful in a place so green.