Am off, almost. To New York, then Washington. Then back to (old) York for 4 days and then to Stockholm. Two weeks later, Philadelphia. No time even for a quick nervous breakdown. But here is my achievement of the week:



This is the state of play at the journal - I’ve cleared the queues ... the Associate Editors may still have some manuscripts on their queues, but for now, as a flight beckons, I barely care! What matters is that for the first time in about 3 years I can take a plane trip without taking with me a zillion manuscripts to make decisions on. Not that I can relax and watch the inflight movies - I have a chapter for a Handbook of Eye Movements that I need to finish.

Traveling with me will be my latest gadget (as well as various not so recent gadgets): a LaCie iamaKey USB key. Only disadvantage - unlike my other USB key that I’ve just given away to one of my kids, I’m not yet sure that this one will survive a 50 deg. 90 min. cycle in the washing machine. But I bet it would!

I’m sure there’s more I could say, but it’s a sunny 20 degs. outside, and there’s more to life than sitting here, typing this. At least, that’s what the self-help books say. Not that I’d know ... because if I had any, I’d not have the time to read them. And if I did, I’d probably simply scribble “not acceptable without major revision” on the cover and move on to the next...

Have recently returned from two conferences, each at opposite extremes of the gastronomic experience:

The first was at the University of California at Davis. Davis is just down the road from Sacramento, famous for housing the Californian governor who is, of course, not Californian. The second was at the University of Lyon, which, unsurprisingly, is in Lyon (that’s France, just in case you needed a prompt). Culinary highlights included:

• Davis: beer, wine, margarita, martini, noodles. not unreasonable coffee.
• Lyon: beer, wine, steak, sweetbreads (thymus gland), kidneys, bone marrow, fish, duck, paté du fois gras, steak tartar (raw beef), rubbish coffee.

The soy sauce from the title of this entry accompanied a part of my journey on a train from Oxford back to York until I spilled it on my MacBook Air. I’m happy to say it licked up a treat. But seeing as I had only recently spilled my iPhone down a toilet, I’m worried that this is becoming a habit (the spilling, not the licking... the iPhone is definitely off-limits, now).

And finally, a confession to share: a friend recently complained that my emails were resembling this blog more and more. And yes, said friend had already heard about the food, the soy sauce, and the toilet before they just this moment graced this URL. So I admit it: Today’s entry has been recycled - my small but valiant attempt to make this a greener blog.