Oh God. Sat through the worst dental appointment I've ever had yesterday - 1 1/2 hours, starting with a session of raw nerve-poking. After about the 6th hit on my poor nerve, and me hitting the ceiling and yelping for the 6th time, my lovely dentist decided that the humane thing to do would be to anaesthetise me, even though he usually doesn't have to for this stage of a root canal. Guess I'm just a wuss.

Woke up this morning with half my face still numb, which he says is probably just super-sensitive me still reacting to the horrors of yesterday. Lord, I hope so. Really frigging uncomfortable, unable to move half the face without tingling and little nerve-shootings which Panadeine is only half able to cover up.

If anyone's actually reading this, please cross everything that it stops soon! Tempted to cancel the Grand Tour on the grounds that perhaps all this is a sign that I shouldn't go and maybe if I cancel everything the pain will stop... strange logic, I know, but there could be something in it. Haven't entirely given up hope yet though - and my friend in Kuala Lumpur tells me it's Chinese New Year next week, which would be marvellous to see.

Anyway, keeping my mind off things in the meantime with liberal doses of Buffy. Doctors of all sorts really ought to be made aware of the morale-boosting powers of a good few hours of Buffy the Vampire Slayer - one of those secret remedies, I guess!

Working on my contingency plan anyway, in case I have to cancel. To take the words of Lucy Honeychurch from A Room with a View out of context: "I must go somewhere - anywhere!". So Tasmania is a possible replacement for Europe - or maybe Christchurch/Dunedin for a week or two, or possibly even just Malaysia. Maybe will even buy myself a new computer, so I can run the Adobe Creative Suite on the same machine as everything else and won't need to jump between computers when I need to use it.

Hmm. Time to stop babbling now and make an appearance at work.