It certainly wasn’t going to hit 33 °C today — so much for the forecast. On the other hand, there were no more excuses, it was finally time to perform a vigorous house-cleaning. After a mere half-hour, the carpet was located beneath a thick layer of read, unread, and partially-read newspapers, numerous unwashed and discarded clothes were returned to their respective stores, and a couple of kilos of toast crumbs removed from the kitchen floor…

Uh oh! We’ve nearly bought a television. After nearly ten years without one, I think the temptation to own a TV is getting to me… a few too many documentaries are looking appealing, and it is getting embarrassing to have DVDs and no way of watching them other than on my (work’s) laptop. Dick Smith have a 66cm wide-screen TEAC that seems to be about what we’re after — so long as we can find somewhere to put it, without having to rearrange our whole lives around the damn thing.

Speaking of rearranging things; we nearly had the front of the car rearranged by the usual idiot — yes, a P-plater in a WRX, screaming past a tram at a tram stop, passengers leapt left and right out of the way, somehow he didn’t hit anyone, then slid to a halt in the middle of the intersection, heading straight at us. A big laugh from the driver and his mate, back into gear, and off he goes. Hopefully he’ll put it into a large concrete barrier soon and remove himself from the gene pool.

And to think that we actually went out shopping for a CD rack — an object that seems to be missing from every shop we visit. You can find any number of cheap plastic ones that’ll hold forty or so disks, or ornate stylish numbers taking up twice the space and holding half as many — but try to find a simple shelf for two hundred or so, not a chance…

Mr Curly, the duck, Vasco Pyjama… Michael Leunig’s famous cartoon characters brought to life in a series of short animations. They’ve been screening in-between TV shows on SBS, tonight at the Astor there was a full length show of some of the 50 short films, an interview and chat with the artist, and a documentary of the making of the animations. His cartoon “Sunset is one of the defining Leunig items to me — a single panel showing the inside of a room in a house, a man proudly showing his son a magnificent sunset on the television, outside the window the exact same sunset is playing in real life…. Around ten years ago I was camping in a caravan park on the NSW South coast and felt that I was living in that frame — sitting by the fire as the sun went down in magnificent colour over the lakes, not a soul was outside, and every window of every caravan was flickering in time, as they all watched the same news program on television….