My sister, at her wonderful blog Mama:Monk, continues a tradition she began while a bright-eyed college student. She calls it “Thankful Tuesday,” and she views it as a chance to practice “organized thankfulness.” So every Tuesday, on her blog, she lists the things for which she has been thankful in the preceding days.

This being a week during which everyone (in theory) will be practicing some form of gratitude, I’m going to do my own Thankful Tuesday thing and then sign off the blog until next week.

• I am thankful that my knee injury from April has finally (mostly) healed up. I can run again. In fact, I’m participating in a semi-organized “Turkey Trot” 5K tonight with friends. That doesn’t make up for having missed triathlon season, but it’s great to be back in action.

• I am thankful I stopped watching “Undercovers” after the first episode and so then I wasn’t disappointed when they pulled it off the air.

• I am thankful for Roger Ebert’s Twitter feed and my other favorites Tweets of Old and BibleStdntsSay.

• I am thankful that I’ll get to play ping-pong with my 89-year-old granddad again this Thanksgiving. And I’m also thankful that he’s still such a great competitor. He’ll beat me in half of our matches, and I am not kidding.

• I am thankful that we’ll get to enjoy the holiday with my other grandfather, the ex-POW. He’s not quite up to any ping-pong, but he’s still kicking. Three weeks ago, due to a bout with double pneumonia and congestive heart failure, we weren’t sure he’d be around much longer. This week, we’ll have to fight him for the second piece of pie.

• I am thankful for a close family, most of whom live nearby, and whom I get to hang out with on a regular basis. Also: grandparents make excellent babysitters, and I am thankful that our kids love spending time with them so much.

• I am thankful for coffee, dark chocolate, my wife’s chocolate-chip cookies, and no-bake chocolate/peanut butter fudge cookies from Wal-Mart.

• I am thankful for a long weekend to play Monopoly, Settlers of Catan, Sorry! Sliders, and indoor living-room H-O-R-S-E trying to toss an inflatable beach ball (printed like a globe) into my son’s laundry basket. Which is exactly what the pilgrims envisioned when they came up with Thanksgiving.

• I am thankful for good health and safety. We’ve spent the last three weeks alongside close friends in the hospital after the dad had a horrific car accident. He’s slowly recovering after a bunch of different complications, and just this week moved out of ICU. It only takes a few seconds for everything to change.

• I am thankful to live in a part of the country that has four distinct seasons and offers equal time to each. And I’m thankful for wide-open horizons to watch the sun rise and set. If you ever wonder what the Texas Panhandle looks like, watch an episode of “Storm Chasers” on the Discovery Channel. It looks just like that, but with spectacular storms between April and July.

• I am thankful for a wife who doesn’t mind me spending an hour or two every night at the computer after the kids go to bed, so I can write books.

• I am thankful for all the great writers and thinkers and friends who have participated in the “Voices of Doubt” series on this blog. I love those posts and am excited to have Friday guests lined up into January.

• I am thankful for all the blog readers, book readers, Twitter followers, and other friends who encourage me to keep writing. Thank you to those of you who are regular readers of this blog. Thank you to those of you who have purchased, read, and recommended O Me of Little Faith. Thank you to those of you who have shared your honest stories of doubt and faith with me. These things mean so much to me, and if I am not thankful for them on a daily basis, then I’m doing something wrong.

Have a great Thanksgiving. I’ll be back on Monday.

In the meantime, beat the Thanksgiving rush and observe your own Thankful Tuesday here. What are you thankful for today?