Happy Thanksgiving!

Okay, it's technically not Thanksgiving anymore, but I wanted to wish you a happy one, just the same. I want to say that I'm thankful for my family; they are the most important people to me. They -- along with a few other staple items -- are always at the top of my list of things I am grateful for.

Tonight I want to give my thanks, though, for two other things: my ability to read and my access to information. After mom and dad went to bed for the night, Brooks, Jacki, and I stayed up reading. Brooks and I got into a conversation about cotton because my parents (perhaps illegally) picked some when they were on their way to Tybee Island earlier this year. We wondered about the cotton plant and marveled at cotton production. I consequently pulled the C World Book encyclopedia from the living room bookshelf and looked up cotton. While we were reading about the cotton gin, Jacki picked up a book about 20th-century America and started reading that. So there the three of us were -- sitting around on Thanksgiving night, expanding our minds. Brooks and I went from cotton to silk to Damascus to oil to petroleum to natural gas. Brooks then brought my dad's laptop out, I went up to my old room and grabbed my molecular model set for organic chemistry, and we just kept learning.

Brooks and Jacki finally went to bed about a half an hour ago, and here I am typing this blog post. But I just wanted to publicly give thanks for the amount of information at my fingertips and my ability to take in that information. People with great minds have invented miraculous machines throughout the centuries and life is full of awesome natural processes, and at some point before tonight, someone wrote about those machines and processes and published their writings in encyclopedias and on the internet -- from which I can now enjoy the luxury of learning. There are few things more gratifying than getting understanding, and that's what I'd like to celebrate during this holiday weekend. I am so thankful for learning.