A two-part post of no enormous import…
Texas
Just finished checking Zelienople Public Library, the alphabetically last library in Pennsylvania, for presence on Facebook and Twitter. That process began with A Hufnagel Glen Rock Library on November 17. Given the bad cold I’m finally getting over and other stuff like turning around the micropublishing book and helping (a little) get ready for Thanksgiving, I guess I shouldn’t be too unhappy with that progress. That’s 453 libraries in roughly four weekdays and one weekend; a little below my 100-per-weekday, 100 over the weekend goal, but not badly so.
Now on to Texas’ 561 [565: Seeing that the table I had was only showing city names, I found another table, showing 565 main libraries with population figures, and it has full library names] libraries, aiming for 50-75 today, the rest starting Friday. (For those who follow my activities closely, if there are any of them, the reason I’m posting this on a Wednesday morning instead of being out hiking is because I *am* about 95% over the cold and decided to take it easy–and because it’s threatening rain out there any minute.) I might miss the aim: As always, I’ll help with anything Thanksgiving-related my wife asks me to do, but I’ve found in past years that I’m usually most helpful by staying out of the way.
The Texas process will be a lot slower because November 25 is also precisely four months past the point at which I began the original 25-state/2406-library scan, and thus marks the start of the four-month rescan. So I’ll be happy with 25 or more new (Texas) libraries per day…
And somewhere in there I may put out a truncated little C&I issue…
Thanksgiving
I won’t scan any libraries tomorrow. We’ll be hosting a small dinner (brother & sister-in-law, sister & brother-in-law; none of the nieces and nephew and grand-nieces are here this year), with my wife doing, oh, 95% of the work. That may be a conservative estimate. It’s her choice, although it’s my immediate family. I doubt that I’ll even be on the computer tomorrow–and if I am, it won’t be until late afternoon at the earliest.
I could provide a gratetude (Jon Carroll’s marvelous term) of things I’m thankful for (John Scalzi’s been doing a wonderful “Thanksgiving Advent Calendar” series of daily gratetudes at his Whatever blog), but I’m not much of one for lists. At a start, there’s my wonderful wife (we met not much more than 34 years ago, and we’ll celebrate our 34th anniversary on New Year’s Day). Then, there’s good health (this cold being a rare exception–I’m 66 years old, not taking any prescription medicines and not having any real complaints, so I’m extremely thankful to my father and other ancestors for great genes!). And, to be sure, being in a country, state, and community that I love, despite all their failings; having not only a roof over my head but the nicest house we’ve ever owned; good food (much of it local, most of the produce from farmers’ markets) and having not gained the habit of eating too much of it; good wine (some of it very local, nearly all of it from within 200 miles); good music; good friends locally and the many good virtual friends of LSW (and others); good books and a great local public library to borrow them from…
And more, but I think that’s enough. On to Abernathy, Abilene, Alamo…
