How do I enumerate properties of jquery objects?

How do I enumerate properties of jquery objects?

I have a menu that is made from a ul element (with li children). 
Here is an example:

<

ul id ="menu" >

<

li >< a href ="#divEntire2"> Home Page </ a ></ li >

<

li >< a href ="#divAboutUs"> About Us </ a ></ li >

<

li >< a href ="#divLogin"> Log in </ a ></ li >

</

ul >

I use CSS to make the ul elements look like a menu.  This behaves OK when you click on the words, but nothing happens when you click on the background under the words.  (there is a background image that repeats that creates the illusion of a bar under the menu with a moving element)
I can detect when the user clicks on either the words or the background bar with the following:
/*  $(
"ul#menu li" ).click( function () {   */
But even though its detected, the 'href' property is missing when I click on the background bar (its not missing when I click on the text).
(more specifically, I look for the href property of $(this).children("a")     ).
So I want to enumerate the properties in the element passed to this function, and see what is happening.
So I grabbed a code snippet from the internet:
/*function
myEnumerator(source) {
var property, propCollection = "" ;
for (property in source) {
if (source.hasOwnProperty(property))
{
propCollection += (property + ": " + source[property] + "\n" );
}
}
alert( 'propertycollection is ' + propCollection);
} */
But oddly enough, whether I click on menu text, or on menu background, I get the same results, which are:
O: [objectHTMLIEElement]
In other words, I can't find out what the properties are of $(this).
Any help is appreciated
-- Gid
P.S.   The following might help:  when I get href below, its 'undefined' when I click on the bar
$( "ul#menu li" ).click( function () {
var href = $( this ).children( "a" ).attr( "href" );
However, if I do something like $(this).css('background-color','maroon'), the text and a section of bar under it does turn maroon.   This happens even I just click on the bar.