Haha, I know exactly what you mean!
Although my needles are in far smaller haystacks than yours, it is nonetheless a daunting task searching through the many small towns in upstate NY, for a great grandmother I am not even sure is still alive in 1940!
At this point I can't even find my grandparents and mother who lived right on the edges of a town- about to go post a help message about that right now. Searching through many pages- ugh! I keep these windows open on my computer and go through a few at a time when I am up for it!
As far as the handwriting goes.... as a volunteer indexer I have seen some awful script! Makes it hard to decipher names correctly. There are some nice, neat, beautiful pages, but for the most part- not.
Brenda- who thinks all census takers should have had hand writing classes first! ;)