As if I didn’t have enough to worry about already, my luck took a turn for the worse last weekend, precipitating a series of events that I’m only beginning to recover from. It all began right before my trip to New York for my talk, when my laptop decided to die for the second time in 2 weeks. After bringing it back to the bozos who claimed to have fixed it last week, I flew down hoping to spend some relaxing time with my folks back home. Upon arriving, we headed out for lunch, but just when I sat down at the table, I realized my wallet was MISSING! I knew I had it in the car, so it was only a matter of minutes between leaving the car with the valet and walking into the restaurant that I lost it. I spent the afternoon canceling all my credit/ATM cards, and even filed a police report. Incidentally, this happened to be my first experience inside a police station, and it was nothing I’ve ever imagined. Looking around, I saw officers sitting at old wooden desks like those from a public high school. On one side were stashes of various paper forms and a typewriter (no, not a computer keyboard … a MANUAL typewriter). And on the other side, a lady was staring at a MONOCHROME computer monitor! Not exactly like the stuff on CSI. Fortunately, the talk itself went well, and I got to rub elbows with some Neuro bigwigs. Without any IDs and with a fraud alert all over my accounts, it almost feels like I’m the fugitive. I even missed my return flight amidst all the drama, and had to resort to the Chinatown death-mobile to come back home, just in time to pick up a nasty stomach flu. I guess if there’s a silver lining, it’s that I survived such a whirlwind of a week. Let’s hope that I’ve depleted all my bad karma for a long time to come.