You're welcome. If it helps, you might think of it as "I only have to do this once. Just once, then never again!" Maybe this would help? Sometimes I find it a useful sort of...not reverse psychology, but the term I want is escaping me. Fooling myself, basically.

Another suggestion is hanging out in the department computer lab with geeky things up on the screen in hopes of spurring conversation, but I'm not sure how successful that would be.