If you have actual work to do (grading, writing papers for deadlines, remembering to prepare food, etc) I wouldn’t recommend reading the rest of this post. For the braver among you.

After reading “this story”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,,1485890,00.html in the Guardian I lost a lot of time yesterday playing “Sudoku”:http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=Sudoku&btnG=Search. It’s basically a magic squares game from Japan, that seems like it should be easy, but is in practice surprisingly hard. And surprisingly addictive. I didn’t get to the point where I’d stop watching a Red Sox game in order to keep playing, but I did manage to procrastinate on some grading in order to keep playing. (I guess that doesn’t really tell you much about the addictive effects.) Anyway, if you want to get no work done the next month, follow either of those links and you’ll have plenty of ways to avoid doing anything else.