Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Grateful post

In honor of Thanksgiving tomorrow, I wanted to write a post about all the things I'm grateful for. But I didn't want this to devolve into a sappy, sentimenal mess of a post. Because of course I'm grateful for the usual suspects---Mr. Jane, family, friends, the continued healthy development of Baby Jane, life in a free society---and will spend lots of time tomorrow reflecting on that. So for this post, I am going to focus on the little things, the non-obvious, some would say the trivial things, for which I am thankful this holiday.

1. I am thankful that I got through the entire first trimester without once having to excuse myself from a meeting or (worse) a class to, er, throw up. (Let me just say that the nausea was pretty damn bad and was pretty much all the time. I consider this a major accomplishment.)

2. I am thankful for the new Sunday Night Football, for two reasons: (a) Jerome Bettis (I love that guy, and I'm not even a Steelers fan). (b) The new flexible schedule, where we now get to see good games between playoff-contending teams.

3. I am thankful for the eggnog-themed holiday drinks at coffee shops. Everyone seems to have one. Mmmmmm, eggnog!

4. I am thankful for colored, refillable gel pens. They have made my research notebook more colorful (and thus cheerful!) and have actually helped keep me more organized this year. Color-coding rocks!!

5. Ok, this last one's not as trivial as the rest: I am thankful for the existence of the Grace Hopper conference. Not only does this conference give all of us fabulous technical women a chance to get together and bond in a truly incredible environment, but it also gave me a great gift this year: a deeper friendship with the students I took with me this year. Since the conference, I have had many great, interesting conversations with these students, and they have felt completely comfortable coming to me and talking to me about all sorts of things that they never would have (or did) before. We are all learning a lot from each other. And for that, I am truly grateful.

What little things are you grateful for this thanksgiving?

4 comments:

um yeah said...

What a beautiful post.

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Chaser said...

Excellent! I love those gell pens, too, and eggnog, and Sunday night football!! Whooohoooo!!! And here's to not throwing up and retaining your taste for nog!

Anonymous said...

Happy pregnancy! (I missed commenting on your earlier post, hence the belated congratulations.) And a happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.