Les Bonnes Choses

I'm back from Psychonomics 2010, which was much different from conferences of yore: Many of the usual suspects were conspicuously absent; I was unable to find a store within walking distance (liberally defined) that sold shirts; and I gave my first big conference talk. It was nice to visit with the old chums, however, and dinner with Albert at the House of Meat the night before my talk showed me I could slip into the role of a professional academic.

As for the talk itself, it went quite well. In usual fashion, I was calm up until about 90 seconds before I was to step up to the podium, but my heart stopped racing after the first slide, and the rest proceeded without difficulty. I was a little disappointed that hardly anyone in the crowd threw their underwear on to the stage, but was later reassured by a veteran speaker that it is not customary to do so.

So I am now halfway through a very abbreviated work week, and am just now getting to taking care of a number of matters that I have been putting off forever. Since September, the television has been on for about 6 hours, cumulatively, and I have been meaning to cancel the cable to save a bit of money for most of that time. I encountered little resistance when I called, but didn't believe the customer service representative when she said she had "never hear *that* one before" when I told her it was because I didn't watch TV. Even if it weren't true, it seems that would be the excuse I would make up if I wanted to cancel the cable. I took care of some other business, but decided that writing about it would probably expose me to some sort of fraud. So instead, I'll just talk about how it's very curious that the last 4 digits of my social security number, 858-43-2020, relate in numerology to my mother's maiden name, Lipschitz.