why doesn't insomnia make you more productive?

money changer and his wife - master copy
saint krystle
half past five in the morning and here i am up blogging - the things i do to keep the masses entertained (OK, myself entertained - insomnia strikes again...) i just finished reading margaret forster's family memoir 'hidden lives' and it was totally disappointing: she starts off with a bang, the fact that her grandmother had a twentyone year period of her life which she flat out refused to discuss (age two to 23, a fairly significant chunk, most would argue) and that after her grandmother's death it was discovered that she had had an illegitimate daughter BUT then you never find out what her grandmother _did_ during those 21 years, and there is no more information about the daughter except for she got married and then died in the 50's in a mental institution, and the entire rest of the book is a not very interesting recollection of the author's own childhood. she went to school, she argued with her parents, she went to university, she got married to a faceless bland nice guy, she had kids, she became an (apparently successful) writer, she continued to argue with her parents, her mother died, dad still alive at cantankerous age 94, end of story. i feel CHEATED. a whole three hours of my life, gone, just like that, when i could have been sleeping. oh well, next time i will know better. on the upside, however, most of the book takes place in carlisle, in the english lake district, and they go on holiday to some familiar places (keswick, pooley bridge(!), etc.) which is kind of fun. (they complain about pooley bridge the whole time: none of the coffee shops have proper toilets, it's raining, the pubs are full of noisy people smoking, there's nothing to do... love it. pooley bridge clearly hasn't changed in 80 years).

notable events: finished master copy yesterday WOOHOOOO far from perfect, but it meets the minimum standard of my painting, which is that there is paint over the entire canvas = good enough. will post photo, god and L's computer willing, as well as a pic of the drawring i did as a going away present for krystle, in her saintly pose.

went for a run yesterday evening in the dark, and was a bit nervous coming back along a dark deserted stretch of road, as there was a dark figure running along on the other side of the road from me and for about three minutes was convinced i was about to be raped/mugged/murdered, until the dark figure turned out to be T (equally convinced that she was about to be raped/mugged/murdered by my dark figure) and we had a nice companionable jog together.

okay, now let's see if this photo thing works...