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 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 around the wor...
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Busy and Busier

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It has been busy and somewhat stressful. I am reflecting on the comparatively relative low stress of traveling alone in Southern Africa last year at about this time. I mean in Africa, I only had to worry about getting in car accidents (maybe running someone over), missing flights, getting robbed or attacked. All of these possibilities in a very unfamiliar land. Now interestingly, I seem to have more stress -- over what? It is probably a very good example of good stress versus bad stress. Good stress comes from calculated self-directed challenge. Bad stress comes from captivity and what we feel we "should" be doing. "Should" indicates there are external forces we are beholden to --without our own devices or agency.

In April, I am speaking at CIDM Convex in San Jose CA. https://convex.infomanagementcenter.com/. I also learned I am speaking at LavaCon in October https://www.lavacon.org/. There were 150 speakers considered and only 40 selected. It will be my first time at this particular conference and it will be in the hometown of Atlanta.

The house projects are stacking up a bit more than usual it seems. A rotten step board quickly turned into a complete staircase replacement --as an example.

The view from my top-down convertible is where a nice neighborhood house once stood. It didn't burn. It didn't flood. However, it also didn't optimize the land it was on. They tore the nice house down and are buiding a new super nice house. People are buying for lot value on our lake even in this up-market. Always buy real estate for land, the particular land. Understand the dependancies that makes it "particular land".

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