Happy Thanksgiving, Globally Speaking

Here in the United States, we have a holiday called Thanksgiving, a day on which we pause to reflect with gratitude on all of the blessings that we have received over the past year. Also, we generally have a big meal with family and/or friends, during which we stuff ourselves with roast turkey*, potatoes, stuffing, cranberry relish, yams, and other good things from the kitchen. Then we roll away from the table, and the football fans watch football (no, not soccer—football, the game where oversized lunks knock each other down to get control of an oval inflated ball), and everyone else waits until they're hungry enough to go for leftovers.

(*Vegetarians sometimes try eating a product called "Tofurkey," which is an attempt to make tofu taste like turkey. We tried it one year, because we all like tofu. I have never tasted anything so vile in my life. Unless—no wait, there was something worse—it was "Tofuti," a substitute for ice cream. Oh God, the memory. I do not recommend it.)

All of this is a long introduction to my saying Happy Thanksgiving! to everyone, whether or not you happen to celebrate it as a holiday in your country. We all have things to be grateful for, and one of the things I'm grateful for is that I've had visitors to this blog (and to my writing web sites) from so many places around the world. A while ago, I ran a list of countries I'd noted from a casual scan of the web logs. Here it is again:

Canada, England, Singapore, Iran, Japan, India, Australia, New Zealand, Slovenia, Italy, Bulgaria, Germany, England, Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Brazil, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, France, Poland, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Lithuania, and Mauritius.

Since then, I've had visitors from:

Argentina
Austria
Belarus
Belgium
Bolivia
Chile
China
Costa Rica
Croatia
Cyprus
Denmark
Ecuador
Egypt
Estonia
Finland
Georgia
Greece
Indonesia
Kenya
Mexico
Morocco
Republic of Korea
Romania
Russian Federation
South Africa
Sri Lanka
Sweden
Switzerland
Thailand
Turkey
Uganda
Vietnam

There may be others I've missed, since my log-checking is anything but rigorous.

To all of you, best wishes and Happy Thanksgiving!