I'm with you; I used to do 2K - 3K oil changes as that used to be commonplace. And it was necessary with the poor combustion and rich mixtures of the cars of yesteryear as the oil got dirty very quickly. But not so with today's vehicles.
Now I go 4-5K miles between changes. Longer in the summer, since short-trip winter driving contaminates the oil much faster. You can go longer if you tend to do mostly long trips; even longer if you also use synthetic oil. If I was doing mostly highway driving and using synthetic, I wouldn't be afraid to do 8-10K mile intervals.
If you really want to know when it's time to change your oil, based upon your own driving habits, it's easy to do oil analysis. You take a sample and mail it into a lab, such as Blackstone Labs, and they will tell you how much life it has left (there are a number of items monitored, one of the telling ones is the amount of wear metals in the oil). You can then do periodic samples and tests at increasing mileage intervals in order to determine when it's "time" to change the oil. Once you have determined this, you don't need to keep doing the testing, you just keep changing at that interval, assuming that your driving style/cycle is similar.
On the oil life monitor on my 2001 Lesabre, I usually end up changing it when the monitor indicates 30-40% life left (I don't use that to determine when to change, but do note what it says, and then reset it).
Do you realize that in Europe they often go 25K miles between oil changes, and this is on diesel cars (using synthetic oil)?
The oil industry and quick-lube places make billions of dollars a year from oil changes, so it's in their best interest to convince you to change it often.
That's my $.02.
