The other week at dinner with friends, we got to talking about being a spokesdude. Michael was describing his experiences doing media on behalf of an organisation, as I just sat there nodding in sympathy.

He was describing being rung up by 3AW at half-past-six in the morning, to be quizzed on his particular expertise, trying to sound authoritative to however-many hundreds of thousands of people were listening when in fact he was half-asleep, in a hotel somewhere in Sydney, sitting on the edge of the bed in his underwear.

And he said that he couldn’t listen to morning radio now without realising that every talking head they speak to is likely to be in much the same position. I had to agree — I know I’ve heard myself and noted the slurring in my voice, and I hear it in others’ voices at that time of the morning too.

I’ve taken a punt on Cup Day, even though I’ll be flying back from Adelaide about the time the race is on.

The hot tip is that the Reserve Bank will decide to up interest rates on that day. In fact, the doom-and-gloom merchants at ANZ are predicting up to three rises in the next year, and some of the banks are considering raising their rates on top of that. So I’ve done what I probably should have done before the last couple of rises: rung up the bank and arranged to switch to a fixed rate.

I’m currently on 7.62%. They said they could give me 7.80% for 1-3 years, or 7.85% for 4-5 years, for a $350 switching fee. I’m actually thinking I’ll plump for the latter. It’ll leave me paying about $60 a month more (very manageable) but mean some certainty for a while, allowing me to be free from obsessing over interest rates.

Okay, so theoretically the rate could go lower, but somehow I doubt that’ll happen anytime soon. So hopefully it’s a safe bet.

After all that neighbourly togetherness on Saturday, it was almost a moment of footpath rage yesterday.

One of my pet hates is cars parked across footpaths. So when I saw one such a car while we were walking down to the library, I made a point of walking around it by going via the offending house’s driveway, while silently fuming.

Half-an-hour later on the way back, it was still there. A lady was on the porch, so I called out that they should move it; that if a parking inspector came past (very unlikely!) they’d get fined. She said it wasn’t her car. I said it was a pretty dumb place to park.

I shouldn’t have said that, particularly with the kids present. There are nicer ways to express it, and I don’t want to teach them to be automatically agro in such situations. It’s not always healthy.

I pondered if they’d plan some kind of revenge on me for that, before realising I’d been watching too much Sopranos recently, as well as reading in the paper about road rage incidents.

My goodness it’s neighbourly out there today. All I did was go for a walk to the supermarket, and on the way back had a chat with the bloke next door, taking his young kids for a short walk, who thanked me for last night letting him know his car lights were left on; the bloke across the street, sweeping the leaves from the gutter; and we both got a wave from the people next to him, driving off somewhere.

Maybe we’re all in a good mood today because real estate prices have continued to rise ridiculously high — the latest REIV figures show the median price up about 50% since I bought here. (My house is on the small side; I paid a fair bit less than the median, thankfully.)

• 4/7/2007: How about instead triggering gentrification in some of the cheaper suburbs, so the demand is spread around? You can’t move places to be closer to the CBD, but you can level the playing field a bit.

Apparently the mainstream media (and I guess the public) like nothing better than the tale of a flawed footballer. At one stage yesterday afternoon, the top three stories on The Age website were about Gary Ablett Snr’s car crash, Ben Cousins on the way to rehab, and Alan Didak’s acquaintance.

And it’s not even football season.

My sister and I recently bought our dad a microwave. Dad’s not a big technology fan. He’s at home with a typewriter and a telephone and a television, but that’s about all he needs and perhaps all he can handle.

Jeff Atwood has illustrated perfectly the problems of microwave ovens: most modern models have a heap of different buttons. People who can’t handle technology find this bewildering, and almost everybody else just ignores most of the buttons and presses the Start/30 second button.

We (okay, my sister) ended up shopping around to find one with a knob, rather than the myriad of buttons. It took a bit of hunting, and the only one around was a cheapie brand (Tiffany, which to my mind means cheapie hair-dryers in Target) and not very big. Hopefully it works reliably and is big enough.

The water bill arrived, and gives me the first chance to see the difference the efficient shower-head I installed in July makes.

Water consumption is down 20% compared to the same period last year, down from about 250 to 200 litres per day. And according to the little charts, we’re apparently using less water than a two-person household with no garden. I think it might be high-fives all round.

Mind you, in terms of person-nights spent at home, I count it up to be typically 13 per week at my house, whereas the theoretical two-person household would be 14. And although we have a garden, we only put greywater on it, so perhaps it’s not so surprising.

Also interesting was that the gas bill arrived, and Origin Energy are advertising a deal of a solar hot water service for $2395 including installation. Intriguingly I picked up a brochure the next day out of Marita’s junk mail that had another even cheaper offer from them: $1995, about double the cost of a conventional gas hot water service.

It sounded like a good deal, until I realised the catch is it’s in addition to your current service, which in my case is a gas system estimated to be 12 years old, thus perhaps reaching the end of its life (and may not be solar-ready). A new gas-boosted system will cost up to $1500 more, taking it up to close to $4000.

But I’m going to look into solar options a bit further, since I do have plenty of roof space that’s north-facing.

Passed the scene of a scaffolding collapse on Thursday afternoon on Collins Street. Apparently nobody was hurt. But it all fell onto a 4WD. See what you get for driving your Toorak Tractor into the city?*

On Friday morning I found this giant Christmas tree being assembled by Santa’s helpers disguised as construction workers… seems Christmas really is coming.

PS. *Okay, okay, shouldn’t make assumptions. For all I know, it might be owned by a farmer who spends 364 days a year driving through mud and drove in because he had a load of stuff to deliver.