a day I'll never get back

...but all told I was lucky.

This morning I broke a molar on a crust of very nice rye bread toast. It just came out, rather a huge piece of tooth if you ask me but I am biased. It was about 7.15. The next hour plus was fraught because even though it didn't really hurt, I was worried that the pain would suddenly kick in. Anyway while I was really annoyed about the whole thing I was of course very grateful and pleased that this didn't happen in a diner in Forest Hills Gardens two weeks ago, in fact it was really quite convenient that it happened this morning.

So the next couple of hours were fraught because I had to find a dentist who'd be able to see me at short notice, in the area, but of course they're not at their tools at 7 am, the bastards. I called one person who was advertised as an emergency dentist but he was in fact only a denturist, and his advice to me for dentists in the area was 'get one out of the phone book, they're all pretty good'. Thanks mate. Anyway I ended up going to Christine in Bundoora and she was actually pretty good.

What had happened was a tooth with quite a deep filling, from the 80s, had split. Christine replaced it with what she called a filling but this was really something I wouldn't call a filling per se, because it is actually a whole new created tooth surface. It feels so weird in my mouth, just like a new block of flats on the street would. I spent the rest of the day with a swollen face and of course it was numb for most of the day. The numbness was annoying and touching the numb part was like touching a dead person (guessing) but when the numbness wore off about an hour ago the pain was even more 'annoying'. Still, it's pain I seem to be able to keep at bay with Herron (TM). So hopefully by tomorrow I will have forgotten all of this ever happened.

Thanks for Mia for driving me to Bundoora, to Christine and her unnamed assistant for the grunt work (I think I did more grunting though) and to the animals for being entertainment/consolation during the day.

glenorchy market, wtf?

I missed out on Salamanca Market and South Hobart Market because I was working yesterday morning, so I made sure to hit the Glenorchy Market this morning, and while it would be an exaggeration to say I was disappointed, I wasn't particularly appointed either. There was - you won't believe it - a lot of crap being sold, at least it wasn't for lots of money. I did a dumb thing, because I already have stuff to take on the plane anyway, but I bought a couple of LPs, which was stupid, and had one of those dumbarse lectures from the vendor regarding how valuable and unavailable they now were (no doubt vintage toilet paper collectors have the same raves). I absent-mindedly asked him how much the LPs were, and first of all he feigned ignorance of the term 'LP', then I got the rarity spiel, then he got the ones I was looking at, a double reissue of the first two Alice Cooper albums, and a Col Joye greatest hits, and he made great show of examining the Alice records, and now I realise that he actually noted that one of them was the wrong record anyway - when I said I was looking at them, I hadn't got as far as looking at them. Anyway one is not Alice Cooper but Spirit, a band I had always intended to get around to thinking about listening to, and now I can cut out the middle man in that equation.

The only other great thing at Glenorchy Market was a knitted teddy I picked up - this one reminds me of Leunig's take on cuddly Kevin07 crossed with, I don't know, a teddy bear - and although the plastic meerkats were on display for 50c, there were no meerkats left and I was the third person today to ask for one mate. Oh, and an immense half-giraffe, half-spider totally-jumping castle seemingly contemplating its own overleggedness philosophically as Eeyore might.


I saw great bands last night, which was really exciting, but I'll tell you about that later, when I put up the night-time pictures from election night and everything else I was always meant to do.

wannabe, starting something

I had a sit-down coffee this morning before coming into the office (which much to my surprise had its door wide open, because much to my surprise a tech person was at my desk, I thought it was a porn bust, obviously requiring the planting of porn onto my hard drive, but in fact I'd logged a computer problem last Wednesday then completely forgottenabouddit), and I made a list of the publications I'd promised the world this year. Including all variations: co-writes, conference papers which won't technically be publications (the 2 conference papers I'm doing that aren't intended to see print are the outcome of research that will eventually make it to a book in a couple of years, touch wood), etc, and a co-edited book, there are 16. Sixteen! Completed to date? Well, there are two that have definitely been accepted, and two more that are at least in the 'system' and, touch wood again (there is no wood in this office, unless this desk top is wood, it's hard to tell) will eventually be published in some shape or form. The rest is all in my oversize head, bar a few unreferenced intros and abstracts. I really must...zzzzzzzzz