Wednesday
It was Sam's birthday. He's now a certified teenager. Scary. That same evening, we drove to Sheffield to hear Jamie take part in a school singing-fest. Zillions of 9- and 10-yr old children (well, around 4000 of them) at one end of Sheffield Arena, and parents everywhere else (around 6000 of them). I was dreading it, but actually it was fun. Except for the drive - that was a nightmare. The highlights were managing to spot Jamie amongst the mass of children even though he was about half a mile away on the opposite side of the arena from us, and hearing the UK champion something or other who could, just with a microphone and his mouth, sound like a complete rock band. He could actually sing and provide his own backing music at the same time - I'm only a little ashamed to admit that it's the kind of thing I secretly wish I could do...

Thursday
A mole started to tear up the garden. There are no expletives that can possibly convey my feelings about this.

Friday
I only managed to process 14 papers this week, and today felt guilty that I just worked on making editorial decisions and did not catch up with about 3 weeks' worth of accumulated emails. I"ll have to sacrifice that paper I'm trying to finish before Xmas so as to work through those emails over the next couple of weeks. And just for the record, it's 8.15pm on a Friday night, and I feel guilty that I'm watching rubbish tv with my kids, while writing this, instead of working on the journal. But experience tells me that a glass of wine will soon wash away the guilt...

Success: Not mine, but it was grading night last night at Karate, and Silvia graded to Brown belt (3rd Kyu). So we're now a family of Brown belts (one at 3rd Kyu, one - me - at 2nd Kyu, and two - Sam and Jamie - at 1st Kyu). I didn't grade because I've missed almost two months' worth of training since the last grading 4 months ago. So I just didn't feel confident enough. But it was great to watch. One of the really nice things about our club is that when it's grading night, even those not grading come along to support the others. There's a real sense of 'family'. Even though we spend a lot of our time trying to hit one another...

Guilt: I only sent out 10 action letters today... and spent too much time staring out the window wanting to go outside and rake up all the leaves. For a moment, but just a moment, those leaves seemed so much more attractive than the journal...

Snow: Yes, it snowed today - the first snow of the winter. It didn't snow much, a quick light flurry for a minute or two. And it was cold. Very cold. Which may explain why those leaves never got raked...

... I'm just back, from almost 4 days of conferencing in California, sitting in a Starbucks near King's Cross, London, waiting for my train to York. The conference was good - managed to speak to way too many people... and went out a couple of times with some old (and some new) friends. But there's one thing I hate about conferences (well... I'm sure I can think of some other things too, but just one comes to mind right now). Soon after first coming to York, something happened (I don't know what) that left me almost incapable of remembering someone's face or their name. This means that from one day to the next I may fail to recognize someone I've been talking to the previous day. Or, I recognize them, but I cannot retrieve their name. And even with people I've known for what seems like forever, I will occasionally be unable to retrieve their name quickly enough to be able to introduce them to someone else. So at conferences, imagine the nightmare of so many people I see, whom I fail to recognize, and who must think I'm really rude for not saying hello to them. Of course, now I go to great lengths to tell people about this problem, so some of them come up to me and say hello and, seeing that I don't recognize them, explain that we've met etc. etc. I really appreciate that.

HIghlights of the conference (in no particular order):

• An excellent Latino restaurant.
• An excellent Italian restaurant.
• A fantastic filet of beef at another restaurant (accompanied by a surprisingly nice red wine - I say 'surprisingly' because the wine was American - there, I've just revealed my prejudices about Californian wine).
• A plentiful supply of caffeine.
• An equally plentiful supply of largely interesting 15 min. talks (15 minutes is brief enough that you don't get bogged down in detail, or fall asleep).
• A plentiful supply of shark (at the neighboring aquarium).
• My publisher, who, contrary to widespread belief, is not The Devil.
• A bunch of people whom I spent time with and whom I feel privileged to know.
• The pharmaceutical company without whom I would not have slept on the plane.

Lowlights (what is the opposite of a highlight?)

• The inconsistent quality of the coffee that accompanied the plentiful supply of caffeine (you can't fault Starbucks when it comes to the consistency of their coffee)
• The speed of the internet service at my hotel for which I paid $25 (I couldn't read half my email because it would timeout). This said, nothing is as slow as the internet on a GNER train.
• The quality of my room at the Hilton which, for the price I paid, should have been luxurious beyond imagination (I only stayed there because (a) it was a conference-recommended hotel, and (b) there was nowhere else - you think I would subsidize Paris Hilton by choice?)
• The overly-abundant number of Apple iPhones being flaunted at me. (Yes, I want one, but not with the rubbish coverage provided by O2 in the UK - That said, if my publisher wanted to buy me one, and pay the monthly contract, I wouldn't complain....).
• The 16 new manuscripts that have landed on my virtual desk at the journal

Things to look forward to now that I'm (almost) back

• Zillions more manuscripts to process.
• The challenge of buying a PSP for my soon-to-be (next week) 13 yr-old.
• The challenge of buying a Nintendo Wii for Xmas, for both my 13 yr-old and my 10-yr old (don't ask me why I'm caving in to this perverse desire of theirs). If anyone knows where I can get one without selling my soul, you know how to contact me.
• Seeing a bunch of people whom I spend most of my time with and whom I feel privileged to know (yes, that does include my two kids!)
• Getting home.

Stand back and gasp... I've been bought out of my university teaching and admin for three years, starting October 2008. I'm gasping, believe me, I'm gasping....

That and the following journal-related statistics: A bit of context - I was away all of August, and then ill some of September, and then away again (and away again next week, at a conference taking place at the West Coast of America's largest shipping port - who but a super-nerd would go to a convention centre located somewhere like that?) - the point is, it's been a real struggle to keep the queues manageable at the journal, and for a long time (well, since I got back early September), I've felt like I've been shoveling water with my hands (nothing to do with my pond, which, by the way, is fantastically leak-free, in case you were wondering). But as of now, the queues are back down to normal (a week's worth of papers). The Associate Editors handle, between them, around half the submissions to the journal, and I handle the other half. Which means that since the end of July, I myself have made 155 editorial decisions, and sent what felt like zillions of papers to review. The point is: Stand back and gasp!

I'm actually somewhere over the Atlantic as I type this. United Airlines have, evidently, been following the posts on this blog - during my last flight, I pointed out (as I wrote an entry for this blog) the stupidity of metal forks but plastic knives - someone took note and I can report that the knives are now also metal. I guess they realized, probably after watching a Jet Li film that I can no longer recall the name of, that metal cutlery are way less lethal than chopsticks...

I should add that United are, as of today, my even more favouritest airline than they were before. Two things are responsible for this newfound love in my life: First, the close to 30 minutes it took someone, working very hard at ticketing, to upgrade my ticket (the wrong fare code had been applied to my ticket - meaning that unless it was changed, I couldn't use my miles to upgrade). Second, the extreme attentiveness of the cabin attendants. One of them spotted I was working hard on my laptop as lunch was about to be served, and asked if I wanted everything to be served, and then cleared, as quickly as possible. As if by magic, the other two attendants who subsequently served lunch knew to bring me my meal first, and then clear it away before they'd even finished serving the others (I'm a fast eater!). What really impressed me about this was the way the first cabin attendant alerted the others to what I wanted (hey - they offered - I never asked!). If only I could get my research colleagues to read my mind, and discuss amongst themselves ways of making my life even more comfortable. Jelena, Xierong, Chris - are you reading this? Take note!!

Sometime ago (over the summer), I bought a new eye-tracker. It takes a 'snapshot' of your eye up to 1000 times a second and works out where you're looking. If you have a really fast computer screen, you can do really clever things, like change what's showing at some position on the screen as you move your eye towards that position (never mind why we'd want to do that!). I had one of those, but I wanted another for the new tracker. But I'd forgotten that we're all into widescreen flat-panel LCD screens these days, and that no one makes CRT screens anymore. And those LCD screens are even slower than the train I'm currently on (well... not quite as slow as the train, which is stationary). So what's a scientist to do? Use today's technology that is worse than yesterday's? Nope... all he has to do is search on eBay, and buy two super-fast computer monitors from the same person who, coincidentally, lives just down the road. How good is that? Thank you eBay, and thank you to the nice chap who does the stage animations for IQ and who had the good sense to replace his CRT monitors with space-saving LCDs...

Speaking of which, perhaps eBay ought to do the eBay equivalent of Google Scholar, and have a site for academics where they can post details of their surplus equipment - there's always some poor person out there who's got a use for an old Sinclair Spectrum...

It's been a quiet time on this blog, which has given me time to reflect on why I do it (by 'it', I mean post parts of my life on it). There are so many blogs out there that are really very much more interesting than this one. Mostly, reading these blogs, you learn what it is that their authors think. But what you won't learn, necessarily, is about the daily grind of their lives, and the trials and tribulations they have to endure (not that I actually know what a tribulation is). Or about the impediments they suffer to a healthy life/work balance, and which lead to chronic frustration/depression/insomnia. So this is why I write this - to give some sense to the future me, when I have the time to go back and read these posts, of what my life was like at this point in my history. So this isn't meant to be about what I think, but about what I do. Or most often, don't manage to do. (And I hope a future me does read this, as that would mean that I had survived into the future..) So I guess this blog ought to be dedicated to those authors brandishing their pitchforks and flaming torches whose inexorable march towards Cognition (the journal I edit) keeps me from having any kind of life/work balance, let alone a healthy one.

That was the first time in my entire life I have ever produced the word inexorable. Amazing. And liberating too...

Something to look forward to: my next post, which will be so incredibly positive that even I will stand back and gasp...