Today is our last day of keeping Nielsen diaries, thank God. This is the second time in six months we’ve been selected to do this (something which was quite a surprise to the follow-up caller from the company; she said she’d never heard of the same family being chosen twice in such a short period), and it’s tiresome as hell. If you watch the same channel for longer than 15 minutes you have to log it; if there’s more than one person watching the same tv at the same time, you have to log that; if you have the thing on but no one is actively (?) watching it, you have to keep track of it. Not again, please!

In other cultural notes, last night I attended a presentation sponsored by my principal client, and it was a first for me; during the entire three-hour period with 30 people there not a single cell phone went off. And many of these people were doctors!