insomnia

Yeah, it's 3:57 in the morning. Blogging does not much resemble sleep.

What's up? Had to pee, and one of the cats (Sylvia) decided it was a good time for getting attention. Stress; conference stuff is on my mind, and it's schedule compression time as we are on the deadline for selecting sessions and putting together the conference schedule. A bit of indigestion; we had an Indian dinner last night at a wonderful southern Indian (Hyderabadi) restaurant just around the corner from home. The Malai Kafta, no doubt; heavy cream sauce, lots of spices. (A side effect of aging seems to be that I can't handle spices like I used to, but I'm mostly still in denial.) If you're local in the Raleigh area, go try the restaurant, Suchi. It's a treat.

And it's time for Marvin (the first NASA Mars rover) to roll off its lander platform. Exciting stuff, even at this absurd hour.

OK, blogging has been light lately. It's been busy, and the news has been interesting.

Slate is running a great discussion on the war in Iraq this week. A bunch of liberal hawks are discussing their positions on the war, a year after they advocated going to war. Great stuff, and well worth reading no matter what your position is. And such things do matter, even at 4:12 in the morning.

I've been meaning to write a blog entry on becoming a Pointy Haired Boss. Maybe this weekend I'll get to it.

I'm having a week of being frustrated and obsessed by jewelry. (Isn't everyone?) I managed to irritate one of my earring holes enough that it's abcessed; I'm having it drained on Friday, but it means even more time for healing and then probably having the ear re-pierced. Earrings have been my major vanity for years, and all my nice earrings have been sitting neglected for weeks now, and will continue to be neglected for another couple of months. Makes me think of the scene in Mulholland Drive where the director takes revenge on his girlfriend by ruining her earrings. (Good David Lynch movie; see it.)

Also, I've started beading, and over the past couple of weeks have picked up a shitload of great beads--but with work and the conference, I have to keep ignoring them. I may have to take time to make something from them this weekend. One of the downsides of having a creative personality is that you have to create once in a while, or your whole life starts feeing stuffed up like a bad head cold. I'm pretty much there.

Time to post this, and see if the Ambien still has enough influence to get me back to sleep. Hope so.

Diane