Well, no, don't scratch it. All what I said there is true. But above all, I'm happy, and that's what I'm the most thankful for. So there.

I had planned to write a long and detailed text about being thankful for my lab and the sweet, sweet research I am doing in there; for my family which, despite being quite a poorly little dysfunctional thing, is made of people I love and who make me proud of them more often than not; for my body, which has been quite worse than it is right now, and still allows me to walk to places and dance the night away.

But I realized that, foremost and above all, it is for my friends that I am the most thankful. For someone who used to be the ugly duckling during her childhood, I am amazed at how well I can get along with people now. Only a few chosen ones, of course, are the intimate friends I share my darker secrets and deeper frustrations with. Many others, however, brighten my mood whenever I have the chance to chat with them.

I am thankful for the lasting friendships with the faraway friends I have known for years and who, in spite of the distance, are always around somewhere in the background, wanting to know when they will see me next and ready to exchange a few words by IM if we so happen to be online at the same time.

I am thankful as well for the strong bonds I have formed with some of my fellow grads (or ex-grads), the people with whom I am sharing so much of my daily life and habits, from the lunches to the talks we attend together and the parties we would never have without inviting one another. Later today, I will share a meal with some of them, and I will make sure to have a very special thought for the people who have entered my life the most recently and already impacted it in unsuspected way.

Here's to my new roommate and her ever so uplifting new-yorker, theater person craziness.

Here's to my witty French-speaking, feminist, anti-marriage, European, leftist, tango-dancing girlfriend.

Here's to my swing partner, with whom I've shared not only inside turns, outside turns, hammerlocks, cuddles, free spins, fishhooks, Lindy circles, swing-outs, swivels, reverse, shadows, what's-this-move-called-agains, and does-this-even-have-a-names, but also laughs and research stories and a rhino-pharyngitis.

And, last but not least, here's to the commentators of this little corner of the InterWebs, whether we've ever met face to face or not, whether we've already spent hours on end chatting on IM or not, for not only reading my babble but reacting to it. You make it so much more meaningful.