Good morning, campers! It’s a bright and crispy morning in Manhattan and the leaves are changing to all kinds of festive colors. You can almost feel the holiday gridlock in the air. The stores are festooning. The stack of party invitations grows daily. There’s so much to be thankful for. I’m gonna keep this cheese ball rolling.

Today I am grateful that many of you agreed with me about the nature of “Thank you for your patience,” finding it to be a thinly veiled threat to mental equalibrium. Also, quite a few of you saw the new Bing video on this subject that was posted yesterday on Fortune.com and may even still be up for all I know. I am also thankful that the management of this blog is expanding its video capability to provide poor, working blogsters such as myself with a new platform and potential big bucks in the new media sector. Just kidding, management dudes! It’s not about the money! Honest!

I am extremely appreciative of the fact that it is Friday. These days I spend a fair amount of Saturday simply staring into space and eating every two to three hours. I am looking forward to doing that again tomorrow, and maybe even part of Sunday before I start obsessively chewing the inside of my lip again.

I am thankful, as always, for the fact that I do not have a fish tank. I tried to maintain one for a long time and all it did was drive home the inevitability of decay and death. Now that I do not have a fish tank, I don’t have to think about that kind of stuff ever. What a relief!

I am grateful that 2007 is almost over. I can’t say this has been an easy year. For proof of that fact, I direct you to everything I have written since this blog started last spring. It hasn’t been a bad year. Just difficult. I’m thinking 2008 is going to be somewhat better in that regard. No inflation, as we had feared in ‘07. No deflation. No stagflation. No recession. No depression. Just good hearty times and an ever-expanding market. And hey — let’s add a couple of inches to the polar ice caps, huh? Won’t our endangered species be happy about that!

I’m still thankful for clone monkeys. In fact, I’m thinking of hiring a few. It would be an improvement to the social environment around here, particularly in Finance.

I am thankful, in large part because of your comments, for my health insurance. A lot of you scolded me for complaining about it, and you’re right. For the record, I underestimated its cost in a prior posting here. I forgot I’m charged twice a month for my contribution, meaning that my payroll deductions on an annual basis come to about $10,000 per year. But I’m still grateful! Really!

And of course I’m thankful for all you guys. Hey. Ah loves ya.

Have a nice weekend. And y’all come back on Monday, you hear?

I was thinking this morning that I complain about too much. Like, I was going to sound off right here about one of my recent powerful pet peeves — when airline personnel say “Thank you for your patience.” I hate that. I hate being thanked for my patience when I’m all out of it. I don’t really think it’s a genuine thank-you anyhow. I think it’s more like, “Thanks for not getting into our face about the fact that we’ve been on the tarmac for two hours and will probably be on it for another two before we take off” or just “Shut up if you feel like complaining.” Last week I was thanked for my patience so many times before take-off, and then again upon landing, that I thought I was going to pop an aneurism.

But I’m not going to complain about that this morning. Because I woke up a few hours ago and realized that it had arrived. That Holiday spirit. I can feel it bubbling up in my heart and suffusing my entire body. And it feels good.

First up is Thanksgiving, one of my favorite holidays, because it centers around food and doesn’t have too much religious baggage. I like the menu a lot. And I generally enjoy the feeling of being thankful, don’t you? So let’s all take a minute in this runup to what feels like an early turkey-day and consider what we feel grateful for right now.

I feel grateful this morning, for example, that the front page of the New York Times has a story about clone monkeys. The content of the story is important, of course, but just the headline made me feel glad to be alive. Clone monkeys. What a great world we live in.

I’m thankful that all the banks that have declared write-downs are still doing okay. At least they look okay. Nobody’s jumping out of windows there, at least. And I went to the bank yesterday and they still seemed to have plenty of money they were giving out to people who wanted it. That’s a good thing.

I’m thankful for the fact that we’re not at war with Iran yet. I don’t really think going to war with another nation is an altogether good thing, at least, you know, not right now. So I feel positive that those who seem to want a war with Iran don’t appear to be getting much traction yet.

That’s just the short list right now. I’m going to keep on being thankful for about a week or so, before I guess it all collapses and I start whining and grouching around again. I’m not promising there won’t be interruptions in my mood, of course. But I’m going to try to sustain this.

Can you help?