Hm. Well, that was surprisingly painless.
Or perhaps not so surprisingly: after all, all areas of medicine keep developing and improving (something we know intellectually but which I occasionally have a problem remembering). I went in at 12.30, the anaesthetic took effect within seconds, the dentist (who to my absolute delight
doesn't feel the need to ask questions or even
talk at me when my mouth is full of vacuums and drills and odd assorted bits of metal. If I'd known I'd have asked for a female dentist
years ago!) was fast and efficient, and I was out again at 12.45 with the filling done (it was a small new filling, not a replacement, which would probably have taken longer). She says to keep an eye on the cap and she'll check again in six months - at the moment it's not causing me any problems and given the pain when it was first done I'm happy to wait...
Random Maunderings...
I got it wrong - Kai came second in the school for maths, not third.
We've been on a bit of an economy appraisal over the last few weeks, oddly enough sparked by a geezer from Scottish Power knocking on the door (as they do) to ask who supplied our power. As it happens we're with them for our gas supply (they're the most environmentally friendly of the lot), but have been with GoodEnergy (was Unite), the green electricity providers, for a year or so. More expensive, but they were the first guaranteed green power company. However, there's more choice now, and Scottish Power have a green tariff - and it's cheaper than Unite by about £100 a year for us. So we switched. Not that we wanted to, especially, but we really don't have a choice, because (thanks ultimately to
der fuehrer bush and his lackeys, though I'm not for one moment letting Bliar off the hook) our fuel bill is due to increase dramatically this year. Apparently the cost to the suppliers is going up by 300% by Yule: quite where that's going to leave us we don't yet know, though the letter we've had today advises us our fuel bill has already gone up by £60 a year, and is due to rise further (thus effectively wiping out any benefit to us of changing to Scottish Power. Well, not really, since no doubt Unite would also have raised their prices, so we may be better off, relatively speaking, even with the increase. If you see what I mean...) I'm just glad we had the insulation fitted, it really cuts down on the heating bill.
I also rang TeleWest and reduced our cable TV package from the 'supreme' to the 'essential' (the only channels we'll miss are Discovery Science (for Kai) and Discovery Civilisations (for Ken): I can happily live without the Horror Zone) and our broadband from 4 megs to 2. Our download speed for software always decreases to dial-up crawl anyway before we're halfway through, so we're unlikely to notice the difference; I don't download music or films (I make my own mp3s and as far as I'm concerned TVs are for watching films, I have more important things to do with my computer. Well, exceptions made for
Ai no Kusabi, that is. And
Gravitation). And we don't play games. We simply don't
need the faster connection. Overall that'll save us £120 a year, again, not a huge saving, but it all helps.
We've also rearranged the plugs so we can switch off everything except the black box (if that's switched off we lose the programming, and it's a nuisance to get it all downloaded again) in the lounge and Kai's reading lamp in his room: Ken tells me that about 10% of all home electricity usage dribbles away through the transformers that are in everything when they're left on standby. This leaves the difficulty of my setup, but I think with a bit of fineagling I can organise the plugs so that at least some of the peripherals can be fully off when not in use...
And I'm using the microwave more, instead of the cooker.
And we've discovered we can now buy small, screw-in low energy bulbs for the lamps and the light in my room (which takes three bulbs when fully utilised, although I often take out two of them and only use the one facing the computer). I've been
so impressed with these: the first one we ever bought cost £20 or thereabouts, if I remember rightly, and lasted us 18 years.
It's nice to be able to do
something, no matter how small or how late, to both save money and take a little more control of our impact on the environment.
It's been 33.8° here today. Walking up Talbot Hill to the dentist was no fun at all. But I enjoyed my shower when I got back (all 10 minutes of it. I now have the 'quick shower' down to a fine art!) Tomorrow is forecast to be even hotter - possibly as high as 36°. And it's Kai's Sports' Day. I can't say I'm looking forward to it.
And finally - warning for language - for anyone who might possibly still be under the impression that the US is a great country, take a look
here...
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Joules *Dances with Haddock* Taylor
pontificated this at 9:26 pm
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