Oh, I give up. My sleep state is now officially Unpredictable. Night before last, slept seven hours instead of the eight I'd hoped for, felt grotty and lethargic all day at work. Last night, slept six hours, woke up bright and breezy at 7ish which was too early even to fill in the time by going for a run, and now feel alert and even semi-intelligent. It may be time to start treating my sleep patterns like the weather (pack umbrella and sunblock, cross your fingers and hope for the best) rather than trying to work with it on any kind of rational basis.

Finished ‘King Rat’ this morning (China Mieville's first novel, not the James Clavell of the same name). I know everyone says Perdido Street Station was his masterpiece, but I'm not sure I didn't enjoy King Rat at least as much. Very Gaimanesque somehow: put me in mind of both Neverwhere and American Gods, but with a definite Mieville slant as well. Put like that, what's not to like?

And last night I watched Pirates of the Caribbean. Phrases like ‘very silly’, ‘great fun’ and ‘Arrrr!’ had abounded in other people's reviews of this, and indeed they all seemed entirely justified. lark_ascending seems to have had one or two misgivings about the degree of self-reference, and I suppose that's a fair point, but I think that basically any film in which someone performs a handbrake turn in a ship under full sail gets my vote. :-)

I appear to have psychic dinner guests.

I've recently been going through a spate of inviting people round to dinner, since this actually motivates me to cook interesting food (spending a lot of effort cooking for myself makes me feel as if I'm wasting a lot of my valuable time, but spending a lot of effort cooking for someone else makes me feel as if I'm working to make a friend happy).

Occasionally, something unexpected comes up and a guest is unfortunately forced to cancel. Bummer, but these things happen.

Occasionally, I commit one or more unexpected acts of complete incompetence in the kitchen and the meal comes out only barely edible.

So far, my dinner guests' cancellations have matched up 100% with me completely botching up the meal I'd intended to cook for them, so as yet I have never been forced to inflict the results of a miscook on a guest of mine. I'm a little disturbed by this…