Thanks be

I am thankful for my faith: my rock, my stronghold, my home. I am thankful for family, near and far. I am thankful that our family has grown in the past year through both marriage and births, with no corresponding diminishment. I am thankful for my cats and my dog.

I am thankful for music, and for the tools of music: for FLATPICK-L, for The Waltz Books, for all the many sites out there with tunes to grasp for. I am thankful for the Collings OM1 guitar that has been the love of my musical life for over a decade now. I am thankful for my Rigel A mandolin, which has seen me through jams and gigs across the country and never let me down, and for the little rough and ready Recording King 000 guitar that has my back when the going gets a little too tough for the Collings. I am thankful for electric tuners and for metronomes, and for Amazing Slow Downer. I am thankful for those who bring live music to the area, and for those who make music festivals work. I am thankful for jams, for open mics, for Kamps, and the multitude of musical friends and acquaintances I've made over the years.

I'm thankful for books and writing: for novels, for non-fiction, for poetry. I am thankful for words, for all the richness and nuances of the English language, for all the languages that brought it into being. I am thankful that we have written means to express and record these words. And I am thankful for writing tools: for Parker 51s and Pelikans and Lamy 2000s; for Noodler's ink; for pencils; for Clairefontaine and Rhodia notebooks and notepads; for Staples bagasse paper and cheap Walmart "Made in Brazil" composition books.

I'm thankful for typewriters; for the marvelous Olympia SG-1, for Bernard the SG-3, for the mojo Hermes 3000, for Stinky and the pretty SM-9, and for the homely but comfortable Galaxie Deluxe. I'm thankful for ink ribbons and Duffy Moon typing paper and BAROPS. I'm thankful for clickity-clack ding. I'm thankful for that nifty paper load lever on the SG-1. I am thankful for pretty Flickr typewriter pictures, and for typecasters of all stripes. I'm thankful there are still such things as typewriter repair people in this world.

I am thankful for my Alphasmart Neo--my lean green word-spewing machine. Who could have imagined when the first electric typewriters were coming out that someone would come up with a thing the size and weight of an A4/letter-sized notebook and a battery life of a couple years that could hold an entire book's worth of writing ready to print or store digitally at the touch of a button? It isn't glamorous, but it is a fine companion in these waning days of NaNoWriMo '09.

I am thankful NaNoWriMo is in fact waning. It's been a rough go of it. I've done more writing over the entire year than ever before, and I think have my routines more set than usual, on top of everything else going on this month. As someone who can't think four moves ahead, I need more breathing room to think over the next move each step of the way, and you don't get that with NaNo. A lot of what I end up writing at this excelerated (for me) pace is the thinking space between moves, and it's messy and useless writing that I'd normally try out in my head rather than recording. I don't like that. But I'm thankful for NaNoWriMo for showing me--way back in 2002--that I can write more than those heady first fifteen thousand words--I'd never made it past that point before.

I am thankful for turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and gravy. I am thankful for tea and chocolate. I am thankful for eggnog and coffee--and may the twain meet with frequency over the next month, even though I'm not typically a sweet coffee person. I make an exception for eggnog.

I'm not thankful I have to work on Friday, but I am thankful I have a job I mostly like and am mostly pretty good at.

I am incredibly blessed.