100 and Done! (Countries that is...)

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We are back! This last trip brought the total countries visited to 100! It is a crazy milestone. It is difficult, time-consuming and can be (IS) expensive. After I got back from Antarctica in 2007, I started thinking about it. After 2010 I was thinking about it more (as I moved from NY to Georgia) and in 2014 it had become a real goal. Between Angie and I we have been to 109 Countries. We are tied at 100 countries each. We have 9 countries different in our lists. For example, I have been to San Marino. She has not. She has been to Israel. I have not, yet. There has been some fun competition in this area. That's why we had to establish rules. 1.) Must be listed (as a country) with the US State Department 2.) Being in an airport doesn't count. You have to get through immigration somehow and not in a DMZ or a no-mans-land 3.) A passport stamp is not required. I have been to Canada, Paraguay, and Uruguay without getting my passport stamped. There are friendly borders in many places...

I find some weird stuff out there on the web. I would call this style "relentless_unknown_dream_beat".

www.mywebpages.comcast.net/dragineez/OddShorts.HTML

I really get a kick out of people. The good stuff is on the web, served up for your amusement if you have the ability to concentrate on the question, not the answer. How long will it take? Maybe forever.

O Wondrous Llama

Much is made of the llama, that frisky little critter who is frequently glimpsed chewing on large distended sacks of filth over by the side of the highways and byways of this great land. But how much do we really know about this rakish knave, this whimsical creeper in the twilight world of the underbrush? What are his habits, his dreams, his preoccupations, his intimate hygienic problems, his credit card numbers?

At home, the llama is a savage brute, fond of rubbing ferns on his bottom and playing the kazoo. He beats his children daily with hardened balls of inexplicably furry mucus. And yet, there is a softer side. He is an accomplished cinematographer, and occasionally poses for modelling shots that would make any upstanding citizen cringe in fear. On weekends, and during periods of heavy downpours, he will go from door to door collecting newspapers, which he then laboriously molds into tiny blowfish.

We are left, after examining the evidence, feeling that we have never really gotten to the soul of this dashing charlatan of the woods. He remains, as ever, an enigma, aloof, forbidding, and perpetually infected. Perhaps man was never meant to know the dark secrets of this peripatetic "Mime of the Deep". We can only peek at his towering form behind the safety of our custom blast shielding and wait for him to get out of the driveway, all the while silently marveling at the crimes of Mother Nature.

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