Red Letter Day II

I got some nice mail this morning, one email telling me that my paper has been accepted (yesssss!!) and an envelope containing a current copy of a journal in which another paper of mine has been published (ooooo pretty in print).

A bit of nice mail makes a change, I'll say! Of course it didn't stop it coming in amongst a whole pile of the usual suspects, including

1. forms you have to fill in, urgently of course
2. entreaties from the head of department asking you to turn up at the next open day / comment on some d(r)aft strategy paper / dig out some information that should have been written months ago (delete as applicable)
3. a textbook from a book publisher, who is hoping that you will comment on it and find it suitable for your next course, even though the book covers a topic you don't teach and they send round spies every few months or so to find out what topics you do teach
4. a plea to review a paper "It's right up your street, you'd be really interested in it", which turns out to be 40 pages long and full of dense terminology and you've only got a couple of weeks to review it in
5. an invite to be on the programme committee of a conference (they won't tell you how many papers that means to review until you say yes)