So I started out trying to find an image of a medal or some other ribbon to commemorate 100 days of flossing. My previous flossing record was in the single digits. I don’t know why it’s a thing I always had trouble with and why I suddenly started being able to do it regularly. Meditation too, 100+ days. Helpful.

But I wound up flipping through some books on Open Library and found this entry in an auction catalog which led me to this coin from 1860 (above) and this forum posting explaining what the heck it is. And I still only sort of understand it, but it was an enjoyable 15 minutes poking around search engines with synonyms until I got an explanation.

I celebrated National Library Week (which was last week) by making a post a day on MetaFilter and listed the posts I’d made over on facebook. Similar stuff. You might like it. This week is nominal vacation week after giving a talk at the University of Rhode Island about the digital divide so I’m down in Westport, cleaning out closets and fixing toilets. More fun than it sounds.