Trying to concentrate…
Well, I bought my copy of Harry Potter on Saturday morning, and as the book progesses I’ve been becoming more and more engrosed in it! So far I like it better than 5, and probably just below 4 (which is my favourite so far). But as the pace picks up, it’s starting to edge ahead as a winner 
What’s tough is that I have a hundred and one things I need to do this week, and I just “relaxed” for 10 minutes (=30 minutes) by reading “one” chapter (many chapters…). Highest priority is to submit a paper we’ve been working on. It was unfortunately rejected from the first journal we submitted it to (we had one positive review, one negative, and two ambivalent reviews, which translates to a rejection). I’ve got to make a few minor changes and then submit it this week. This will be my second first author paper (the authors on a paper are usually listed first by the person who actually wrote the paper, then in decreasing order of contribution, with the exception of the last author, which is usually the person in charge of the research group. In my case, that’s my supervisor, Ross McKenzie. For a sligthly more cynical (but surprisinly accurate!) description, check out PhDComics.)
I’m also working on a third paper, and I need to edit it into a form that will be suitable for publication. I’m not great at this yet (I still find writing introductions a killer!) but I’m getting better - I’m a lot more capable than I was 2 years ago when I started my PhD. And that’s nice to know!
Anyway, I should get back to working on these papers.
Apparently in maths it is more common to have alphabetical ordering, and there is a fairly continuous transition to get to the applied maths/physics ordering. I’ve heard about one guy whose department changed their ordering convention half-way through his PhD. His surname came late in the alphabet, so through the first half of his PhD, he was third or fourth author, and then towards the end of it, he was still third or fourth author.