It is two a.m. TWO! as I am writing this. Lately it has been hubby who is the insomniac, but just when I was getting cocky that my old nemesis sleeplessness had fled me...boom, here it is. This is the kind too where I feel like I shouldn't even bother going back into bed since I am so wide awake, but should simply stay up all night tinkering on projects and sleep when the sun rises. Still, why am I awake? It couldn't have been the one cup of black tea I drank at dinner...I can drink coffee and still sleep, usually. My family (mom) threw a little "surprise" dinner for my birthday (two days early) at a local restaurant with some friends. It was fun, and I felt rather blessed to have such wonderful friends and glad that the crisis which recently erupted in my family has calmed to a simmer so that we could have a nice dinner. Having a head cold, though, which I fought to stave off for a week and a half, is not fun. No sir.

Mostly this insomnia is of the sort where all the good and exciting things in my head are racing around like excited little monkeys, with a pinch of anxiety about forthcoming projects that fall more weighty on my shoulders because they are new sources with whom I have no track record. Why must I, at midnight, begin writing new story ledes in my head; try to place Idea A with publication B; and figure out the new plot of my new novel idea? Why? What kind of dumb gray matter sits in my head after all? Nighttime is for Sleeping, silly brain. Turn off!

E. and I are reading 1 chapter of the new Harry Potter to each other every night. We're up to chapter 18. Is it just me, or does this book seem slower, with less conflict so far? Either she's going to throw one doozy of a whizbang action chapter later on or she just kind of lost her knack for conflict. Her new life of luxury has perhaps softened her to the hardships of the orphan child who made her so rich. She's too well-fed and manicured to care about bloodloss and battle scenes. Maybe she's having the change of life and her hormones are interfering. I'd much rather see some dark magic Voldemort action than Ron and Hermione hassling over the fact that they both want to get into each other's pants but can't admit it. Shit,I lived THAT story. Adolescent sexual tension is about as exciting as watching flies lay eggs, and about as sexy too.

Anyway, I want so much to blog about my in-person interview with a certain head of a certain well-endowed arts organization, but that would just not be right. Nor would it be right to blog about the other folks in attendance, and the details that led to my lower middle-class epiphany about how unschooled I am in the world of money, shmoozing and networking. But I can't. So you'll just have to start your imagination firing here.

So...you'd think that the muses would deliver something extraordinary at two a.m. but they have only given you more dreck, I'm afraid, just long enough to hopefully make me tired enough to sleep.

Nighty Night. I hope.
J