Nice report there Paul! Here's a sweet galaxy pair I accidentally stumbled upon a fantastic pair: IC 5250A/B in Tucana. Try this one, it is an excellent pair, very compact pair, but both members bright with high surface brightness. Excellent in a 12" scope and superior to many better known NGC galaxies out there.
Another favourite of mine is Hickson 90 in Pisces Austrinus, this one's a ripper, 3 bright galaxies in an extremely compact group, all high surface brightness so makes for a pretty sight. A bright interacting pair (resolvable with 12") is complemented by a HSB elliptical 1' NW, and a 4th fainter member lies 6' N of the group.
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Lovely report Paul. 1532 + 1 are favourites of mine the small one diving into the heart of the larger. Great to hear that you're finding the Argo Navis so useful. I like your description of M2 also -e specially the 3-d sense.
When you talk about your favourite ep for galaxies, it reminds me of a post by Les Dalrymple in which he said that the optimum exit pupil for galaxes is 2. Your 12 mm would give 2.4 - abetter fit with this rule than your 17mm. Your 9 mm could be even better if this rule is all that applies.
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I find high magnification superior to low ones when observing small faint galaxies. It really brings them out. In my scope the 8mm LVW gives about 2mm exit pupil @ 166x, but I find it of limited usefullness when observing small faint galaxies, I find myself reaching for the 5 and 3.5mm which give exit pupils of 1.1 and 0.8mm and much better contrast with tiny faint objects, to me atleast
