Gratitude never ends

Well, it shouldn't anyway, just because Thanksgiving is come and gone.  Thinking of things to be grateful every day is a good exercise.  I like that it gets me to post more - maybe if I keep that as my general objective in blogging it will help me do it more often.

I failed to post yesterday, but I had a good excuse.  I spent the entire day with my oldest niece.  She's in college right now and needed to work on an assignment that involved coming to SLC and visiting the Family History Library.  My good friend works there so I'm somewhat familiar with the place and since I've always wanted to learn more I was happy to spend the day with her looking for dead relatives.  As she pointed out, though, it's a lot easier to look for people who have already been found - we were just reworking the problem to find out how they were found in the first place.  I learned about the microfilm and microfiche and even the books they have there.  The microfilm and microfiche machines brought back lots of memories as that's one of the ways we had to do research back in the dark ages before the internet.  She was surprised that I had used them before and was familiar with them.  The computer and internet are amazing inventions, but I think the micro machines were pretty amazing too - considering the amount of data they contain in such a small size.  There was a lot for me to feel gratitude for yesterday, but in the end I settled on being grateful for the millions of people who have slaved over the thousands of years to record information.  One of the books we found looked like it was hand written and individually typed using what I think was onion paper.  I vaguely remember that type of paper from my days of learning to use a type writer.  The book was a just an index of a bunch of graveyards in Kansas somewhere.  It's not the sort of book that brings glory or fame or money.  But it is useful to those who seek to find their connections to the past.  It certainly reminded me of how every little act of service no matter how small it may seem can have lasting repercussions. 

So today is a new day and I haven't done much other than eat breakfast.  I had chocolate pecan pie for breakfast.  I don't think I've said it yet, but I am grateful for pie.