I’ve been going to the same dental surgery for the last ten years or so, every 6-8 months. It should be every 6, but in practice I tend to wait until they ring me to make an appointment (what, like I’d WANT to go?), and so it usually ends up at about 8.

The actual dentists in attendance, however, have varied. Every few years they’ll switch around, and when I went along yesterday, the baton had been passed on again. Not to worry, the new guy seemed jovial enough, though after inspecting my teeth, he threatened to send me back to the gum specialist I saw a few years ago (the guy who looks like Uncle Arthur) if I didn’t improve my gum technique in the next six months.

Okay I admit it, I don’t floss as much as I should. Like, coupla times a month, when I remember. About once every two days just before visiting the dentist, of course. Not that I’d admit it, of course. And not that that fools them. I bet they see it all the time. They probably have the odds written out the back.

Flosses daily 20-1
Flosses twice a week 8-1
Flosses once a week 4-1
Flosses less than weekly, but all the time just before a dentist appointment 2-1

Re-reading what I said about Uncle Arthur and his scary equipment in 2001, I’ll be lifting my game. So, lots more flossing coming up.

I’ve got a couple of days off work… happy dance, happy dance, nyah nyah. Actually it’s not really smugworthy, given I’m going to the dentist this morning.

On Sunday I unexpectedly went on a consumer electronics buying spree. First, the VCR started misbehaving. Tape playback fuzzy. Same with a couple of other tapes. Found the occasionally used head-cleaner tape, but the liquid bottle was empty. Ahh.. okay. Better get this fixed, because if Doctor Who couldn’t be taped for Isaac on Monday, bad things would happen.

So I zipped over to Dick Smith (with Adrian in tow; having just arrived back from London with my sister, he wanted to figure out how to get a prepaid SIM into his phone so he’d have an Australian number). Wandered around looking for a new head cleaning cassette. It was well-hidden, had to ask, but yes, they still stock them. (Oh great, now two days later I discover they have cleaning fluid on its own for a fifth the price of a cleaning cassette.)

Ooh, what’s that? Cheapie Teac DVD/CD/MP3/etc players… $99… I had been looking out for something like that, to replace my aging and undeniably kaput CD player. It had lasted 15 years, but had finally died. This could be a suitable replacement. So I grabbed one of those too. (Lucky I’m only using it for CDs and MP3s… as it’s region-locked, and apparently not hackable.)

Took the cleaning tape home, figured out how to open the damn cleaning fluid bottle, put it on the tape and… the VCR wouldn’t take it. It wouldn’t go in. Struggle for a bit, then try a normal tape. It wouldn’t take that either. So this had actually made it worse. Dammit, and I like Panasonic products, too. It’s only about 4 years old, and they’ve never given me problems before. My faith in them is now shaken.

I pondered if this was just the excuse I was looking for to buy a DVD recorder. But what about my huge stockpile of legacy VHS tapes? And the fact that DVD recorder prices are currently in free-fall mode? Wait six months and they’ll be better and heaps cheaper. Now is precisely the wrong time to buy unless you’re determined to be an early-adopter. I won’t pretend I wasn’t tempted, it would have been nice to have a new toy. But my money priority right now is a house. So no, I decided it would be a cheapo VCR to tide me over until a DVD recorder in a year or two.

I checked the clock (about the only thing that was still working on the VCR, incidently.) 2:30pm Sunday. 27.5 hours until Doctor Who came on, and 2.5 hours until most shops closed. The clock was ticking. But rather than abandon the day completely, decided to hoon down to K-Mart later on. I’d have time after 6, and though the range wouldn’t be great, they’d at least have something.

So after some fun and frivolity at the park (and an icecream on the walk back, thank you very much Adrian), down to K-Mart we went. Meagre collection of stereo VCRs available. Teenage shop assistant knew nothing about the stock (it was K-Mart, after all). Second cheapest (I reckon never go for the cheapest if you can help it) was a Sanyo jobbie, $189. Not as cheap as I’d like, but still $500 less than a decent DVD recorder. Sold.

Got it home via dinner and supermarket shopping. Plugged it all in, tried it out. Man it’s an ugly, boxy beast. Designed by ex-East German car designers perhaps? And compared to the lovely Panasonic one, lacking in handy features like Index search. Sigh. Oh well, it’ll do the job.

Now I have to work out if I’ll try and get the Panasonic repaired, or just trash it. Maybe I’ll open it up and take a look.

Not quite in the usual vein of Sunday photos, here is possibly the strangest self-portrait I have ever taken.

It was at Altona beach this morning, and what you can’t see is the 50 gazillion flies that were zooming around my head (and indeed the heads of everybody else present at the time). Seriously, you’d wave your hand around and hit half a dozen of them. No wonder I didn’t look happy.

PS. 5:30pm Monday. You can get an idea of the number of flies around from this picture of Marita’s arm:

“Hello, Mr Bowen? … blah blah drive shaft blah blah grease boot split blah blah steering rack problem blah blah exhaust muffler leakage blah blah $560…”

I won’t even tell you what the eventual total cost of that service was, suffice to say that I may not be quite as extravagant with my Christmas gift-buying as originally planned.

Christmas shopping… uhh, about 50% done. A way to go. Hmm, as a last resort, I suppose I could join in the 24 hour shopping brawl at Chadstone next Thursday night. I could walk from here… quicker than driving and looking for a park, I suspect.

The Information Victoria shop on Collins Street has a spruiker. What’s all that about? Do they need someone with a microphone to promote their latest survey maps? “We’ve got some terrific bargains in here today!”

Went to buy a new fluorescent tube on Monday, to replace one in the kitchen. Brought it back home and discovered it was the wrong one. D’oh. Memo to self: check the markings on the old one first, before going out to buy a new one. Did so, and got the right one on Wednesday.

Myer in the city used to have directional signs at the end of each escalator, pointing you to the next escalator going in the same direction. They also had signs above the start of each escalator indicating which floor it went to. These have all gone, at least in the Lonsdale Street store. If they were upgrading them, would they do it during the Christmas rush? Or maybe they want people to become lost, on the off-chance they might buy more stuff while they find their way again. “Please, I’ll buy anything you want, just tell me where the exit is!”

6pm PS. Since post offices have been mentioned, I should say that twice this week I have walked past the post office near work, and the queue has been out the door. There’s no way I’m going in there unless I absolutely have to.

Was catching up with an old friend recently, it had been a few years since I’d seen him. He’s been slowly losing his hair since his mid-20s, whereas mine is simply going grey — genetics can be a cruel thing. When we met up, something looked different, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. A beer or two later, he asked “so, what do you think?” and pointed to the top of his head.

He told me about his wig, very realistic, real hair in fact, rigorously and regularly maintained to look real. Which it did. Good for him, I reckon, it’s like anything, if you think you’ll look and feel better, go for it, if it doesn’t involve surgery. That’s where I personally draw the line.

I couldn’t believe how real it looked. “It’s real hair” he told me, “real hair from some guy in India.”

“I don’t believe it!” I replied. “You’ve out-sourced your hair to India!”

A name is a proper noun. Under the rules of the English language, proper nouns are to be written with capital letters. Obviously this kind of rule can be ignored for stylistic reasons, such as for corporate logos. But in normal writing, such as you might find in a newspaper article, that’s a rule which should be pretty much followed, right?

So what makes K D Lang so special? It’s fine by me if she wants to put her name on her albums in all small letters, but why has this got into newspaper articles? Is it a name, or isn’t it?

Metlink, Amazon and Vodaphone have logos with all small letters. Doesn’t mean we write their names in small letters. Qantas uses a logo with all capital letters (why may be reasonable — it was originally an acronym after all). So do Australia Post, The Age, and a lot of other companies. Does this mean their names should be written in all caps?

Hell no!

(Actually, Australia Post do call themselves POST in their own literature. Doesn’t mean anybody else will though.)

Update 6pm. Just to clarify: I have no problem with her calling herself “kdlang” on her albums, in her publicity material, web site, etc etc. I just don’t see why the media and others have automatically adopted her convention, ignoring one of the basic rules of the English language. I reckon it’s kind of on a par with the media pronouncing Colin Powell’s name as Colon…

Here’s a poser for you: mysterious specks of something are appearing in the bathroom. They fall from somewhere above the bath, into the bath, around the side of the bath, and onto the window ledge up above the bath. I don’t know what they are. I don’t know where they come from. There is no obvious source for them. There’s been a few of these things in the past, but in the last week or two there’s been heaps.

Here’s what they look like in and around the bath:

And here’s a close-up taken on the window ledge:

Sometimes the window is open, sometimes it’s shut. They arrive anyway. In fact I’ve found some of them on the top of the window ledge. Above which, there is only the ceiling.

One more clue: one day last week a worm had also fallen from an unknown location into the bath.

I’m guessing something, somewhere, is getting inadequately cleaned… but what? Any ideas, anybody?