AUGUST

Here we are in the middle of August and I still haven't made an entry in my blog. Well, actually, I did, but I deleted it. Can't recall why anymore. It was causing some kind of a problem. Whatever, here I go again.

AROUND THE WORLD

Now I remember! I found this site recently where a person could check off the countries he/she had visited and it would display a map with the visited countries marked in red. Unfortunately, the site seems to go up and down, so it didn't always display. That's why I took it off again. In any case, I found that I had visited only 16% of the countries of the world (there are some 225 or 230, depending on what you count as a country) and it looks like I won't get to all of the rest in this lifetime. What I have seen of this planet was worth it though. Some fellow by the name of Frysinger (from Wisconsin) claims to have visited 169 countries by 2002. I guess that makes him the champ, although my brother, Ralph, and his wife, Ilse, can't be far behind. You can check out the site at: http://www.world66.com/myworld66/visitedCountries , if you'd like to do your own calculations.


PELICANS AND A HERON

Dickie and I drove out to Bodega Bay recently and I got a chance to snap a few shots of the brown pelikans that are presently visiting our part of the world. They come by the hundreds and line the banks, waiting for the fishing boats to return so they can catch a meal. Here's what it looks like:

Looks like that's it for this time. I can't get any more pictures to upload, since blogger is being finicky at the moment. I'll try again later.

Or maybe not. There is always a way to beat this game. I wanted to post the picture below. It's a heron that I discovered fishing on a local lake here in Windsor the other day. He/she cuts a fine figure, don't you think?:

Okay, that's all I've got today.