Happy 229th Birthday, USA

Today is Indepencence Day here in the grand old USA. My country is 229 years old. This doesn't seem like much in comparison to the histories of many Middle Eastern and European countries. For example, when I was in Jerusalem in 1996, they were celebrating the 3000th year since King David made that city his capitol. Now, that's history, my friends. Seriously, folks: is there another country so relatively young that has made such an impact on the world, either for good or bad as the United States? If you know of another country that fits this description, please comment.

I visited the family today to help celebrate this grand old American holiday, and we had a nice lunch of lobster (not me), hot dogs and hamburgers cooked on the grill, potato salad, fruit salad, potato chips and soda. Good eating.

Now I am back at the apartment, ready to begin the daunting task of cleaning up the clutter (just a bit), because the countdown is down to 6 days. This is going to be and already is the longest week of my life.
She told me today that she has purchased the train ticket from Yoshkar-Ola to Moscow, (a journey of 497.1 miles and 20 hours on the train - her time estimate, not mine) and that she must take care of some final paperwork at the US Embassy in Moscow to complete the visa process. I only hope things continue to go as planned.