About ME

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Grand Prairie, Texas, United States
Mr. E is a Christian, Husband, Father of 2, former Army Officer and Texas Rangers Baseball fan.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

I Am Such a Geography Nerd

I have already indicated I am a political nerd, by posting about presidential candidates, in the past. Now I admit to being a geography nerd as well. I recently found a web-site that allows you to test your knowledge by naming all 195 independent countries of the world (196 if you count Taiwan, which is technically part of China). Can you Name the Countries of the World?

I recently tried my luck and I could name 179 countries without any assistance; although, it did not count several of my answers because I could not spell the name of the country correctly. Some of them are hard to spell. I didn't know I knew that many. The two newest recognized country on the planet are Kosovo and South Sudan, by the way.

There is also a link to name the 50 United States if you wish.

Monday, February 20, 2012

President's Day at the Dallas Zoo

Today my family and I spent mos of our President's Day at the Dallas Zoo. They were having a special "Penguin Days" promotion going on (due to the colder weather), where admission was only $5.00 per person.

We saw plenty of snakes, lizards, alligators and frogs in the Reptile House, including one big albino gator. We also saw plenty of birds in the aviary exhibits; however, most of the other animals were being a little elusive. Although the weather was over 60 degrees, some of the animals were inside the closed off sections of their enclosures or were grouped together in the farthest corners of their enclosures. I am assuming this was their, or the zoo's, effort to keep the animals warm. We did get to see some elephants and plenty of giraffes, which are always cool to see, and we saw some very smelly warthogs. The big cats were hiding out or sitting in places that made them hard to see. We really wanted to see the cheetahs, lions and tigers, but all we got were glimpses of them. The gorillas (photo above) were mostly indoors; although we did see one gorilla sitting forlornly by himself on a stump. The chimps were the same way. The lemurs were hiding out, but the flamingos were out in their full pink glory. We did see two very curious meerkats who came very close to the edge of their exhibit. Somehow we missed the kangaroo area. The new Koala exhibit opens in the spring.

Today was still a fun day with the family and we hope to return in the summer, when maybe the animals will be more active.