My plans include walking aimlessly in the streets, seeing friends and family, staying up late, laughing until my abs hurt, not letting Christmas drive me nuts, drinking hot chocolate, giving a research talk, taking pictures of Notre-Dame and the Christmas store windows, getting started on my dissertation.

I'll be back on January 2nd and I should go finish packing.

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.

Thanksgiving is upon us. This afternoon, I will gather with some of my dearest Californian friends (in which "Californian" is intended to mean "met in California" and not "born in California", as none of them is) to share what will no doubt be a delicious dinner (all I say is there will be a bird, and green beans, and mashed potatoes, and yams, and cornbread, and two cranberry sauces, and sangria, and mulled wine, and sparkling wine, and pumpkin pie, and apple pie, and cranberry cheesecake, and probably some other things as well) and many, many laughters. According to our tradition, we will all have a cup of champaign before desert and toast to all what we are thankful for.

However corny that might sound, it is an ideal time, what with the grumpiness the cold season brings upon us, to reflect on all our blessings. I tend to complain a lot — mostly because it makes for more interesting stories —, but now is the time to think about all what I am grateful for.

In all seriousness, I should be writing a deep, emotional text about blues dancing. I took a fifteen minutes class in the little room above my favorite dance club and that's all I needed to fall in love.

With blues dancing, that is, not my partner.

Although he does have amazingly soft hands and a swell sense of rhythm.

(Yes, my life revolves around research and dancing. I could imagine much worse even if I can understand that it bores you to tears.)

Or I could write about the responsibility of being taken, together with a good friend of mine, as roles models by a much younger girl. But I'm so confused with my own thoughts about this topic that I am going to avoid it for now.

So all you're left with are these short conversation excerpts. Disclaimer: not always the same "Him".

He let me do it again. I did not even ask, he ran to me when I had no partner and told me to keep leading. In class, where the dance teacher was very impressed that a man who was just taking this little class (as opposed to aspiring to becoming a professional) would let a girl lead him and other people witness it. "Good follows make good leads", he told the both of us appreciatively.

Me? I'm waiting for him to ask another guy to lead him to be impressed.

Now I'll let you ponder why, at least in occidental cultures, guys are so afraid of touching each other even in a situation that's all about acting and performing, unless it involves fighting.

Although right now I am suffering from the well known Sunday evening syndrome, the consequence of having exchanged about ten face to face sentences with a real person for the entire day, being sleep deprived, not having accomplished as much as I wanted, and the sun setting at a completely unreasonable hour.

There has been dancing, good dancing at that, despite the old creeper earlier described. Dancing was continued on Saturday, when I got to work on the new moves learned the night before, practice my leading, and the sweetest of all, leading a guy. I'm still a worthless lead but he is a terrible follow and I suspect we were looking like two drunken college kids — I was too busy telling him on which foot to be to pay attention to the mirrors, and that was probably a good thing. I don't think he'll ever let me do it again, but at least we had a good laugh and I'm pretty sure he'll stop complaining that I mess up my footwork when switching between lead and follow.

I love my swing dance club. You know I do. The prices are reasonable, they have student discount, and the music is awesome (although, sure, it's not a live band, but did you see how much you paid to enter?). Most importantly, people there are here to have fun, not to show off (although some of them are very, very, very good), so they don't despise you if you're a beginner. They might even compliment your hat.

Hat tip to the hat, young lady.

I was there yesterday and I had a blast. We decided to be prodigal and attend the class that is offered before the dance, and I learned an awful lot for such a short forty minutes. We stayed for an hour and a half after that and I danced almost every song.

On one of the few songs I did not dance, I was leaning against a wall, watching the good dancers and making faces at the people I knew (a very dear occupation of mine), when this guy came up to me. He must have been in his seventies. He introduced himself and started talking.

He said it was the first time he came here, and did I come here often, and he was new to the area, and he heard it was a good place to meet people, and oh that's a pretty ring, are you married or engaged?

Seriously? To a woman who's a third of your age? To a woman who's a third of your age, clearly not your typical Orange County trophy wife wannabe (about which, excuse me if I digress, but eww, eww, eww!), and to whom you've already given the exact same speech about it being your first time here and you being new to the area nine months earlier?

I don't think so.

I am so happy I found my recipe for this sangria (while looking for the one for lemongrass chicken, which remains lost — I strongly suspect I never wrote down how I do it and I'll just have to play it by ear) that I have to share it with you. It's obviously dead simple (I mean, hello, it's a sangria, not a Black Forest cake), but it was very appreciated last Thanksgiving.

Talking about Thanksgiving, I have no idea what I'll be doing this year, except that I am not going to visit wineries with my friends because I, essentially, chickened out.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Real French Maid:

I had so much fun with that costume.

Today is October 31st. That is to say, Halloween. Google is dressed up accordingly, and has a little surprise for you if you click several times on their banner. And clicking on their banner gives you the top results for the search "Halloween 2009".

Yeah, I was wondering, too. Also what about Christmas and New Year? And for 2012? Why will they not tell us when Halloween falls in 2012? Don't we know when Halloween falls in 2012? Is it a government conspiracy?