ha! True enough:P
Here's my reason for Happy -
The examiners are recommending my thesis for a pass with minor (editorial) corrections
(technically it doesn't count as a pass til the exam board passes it but they never go against the examiners' recommendations)
Which means I have 4 weeks to make the changes and assuming they all check out (which of course they will) it is a pass
*does the happy dance*
They really liked it. The first thing they said when I went in was that they liked it, thought it was a very good piece of work, and I should relax because they didn't consider that I needed to 'defend' my thesis.
Instead we had a chat about it - they offered some constructive criticism and advice about what changes might be good if I was looking to get it published (mostly stuff that's fairly typical of a phd thesis) - the intro was a little lopsided and the historiographical context could have been more thorough - a few places where I could have stated my findings more forcefully and made the implications clearer, conclusion could do with broadening out a little (again very typical PhD thesis conclusion) and a slight shift in periodisation might make it more appealing as a published work - but none of which would be required for the thesis to be accepted.
They talked about some of the stuff they liked and asked me to expand on some of it - asked a few questions about my methodology and choice of periodisation and so on.
They made suggestions as to what might be drawn out for shorter articles - they suggested the two chapters that I had already identified as the strongest and most original analysis.
The editorial changes are really very basic - errant commas/typos/formatting errors. Only two changes were content related and they were literally the addition of single sentences to contextualise the figures (e.g troop numbers serving in a particular location at that time).
They were very nice, very complimentary and most of what they said gelled with my own view of the work having read it back.
I have to say, it is something of a boost when someone whose work I've read and who is respected in my field tells me he enjoyed reading my thesis and learned some things from it.