Thursday: To Do

• Get up after less than 5 hours' sleep, knowing you will not go back to sleep and wondering why you have suddenly become insomniac: tick

• Finish current work novel (including over breakfast): tick

• Travel right across town to spend two minutes getting my fringe cut so I don't have to peer at the Governor-General through it in two weeks' time (nearly every weekday between now and then being taken up with 9-5 meetings) at the Admiralty House launch of this book, of which I am a contributing editor: tick

• Buy sheer anklets for trying on girlie shoes: tick

• Buy girlie shoes (see Admiralty House): FAIL

• Visit Papa Cat and be shouted at about the River Murray and the Rann Government for an hour and a half (Papa Cat is back in finer form than ever after his recent health whoopsie): tick

• Plan bulb planting (oops, typed 'blub planting'. That too): tick

• Plant bulbs: tick

• Sear lamb shanks, add onion, garlic, tomato and red wine, put in oven: tick

• Wash jumpers: tick

• Solve mystery of Amex card activation: tick

• Activate Amex card: tick

STILL TO DO

• Start next work novel

• Read 100 pages of PhD thesis to be examined, take notes

• Scan four book covers and attach them to emails

• Unpack, check, sort, label and put away four postbags of new books (approx 20-30)

• See if the one designer label (Peri Cutten) garment I own looks all right with the only dress I own that might conform to the vice-regal dress code. (It's an elegant black velvet jacket/coat thingy whose main claim to fame is that I once wore it to a dinner party where the partner of a very distinguished novelist was wearing the exact same garment except about four sizes smaller. We congratulated each other on our good taste, the only possible course of action in this situation.)

• Find the brooch made of black and pink pearls -- homage to Max Beerbohm's Zuleika Dobson -- and loops of silvery gauze ribbon that will liven up the Peri Cutten a little, and the matching earrings

• Try yet again to find said dress code online and check if black is acceptable (it might not be; they seem quite strict. For instance, apparently you can't carry a handbag with a shoulder strap; it's a clutch or nothing. The expression 'clutch shudder' took on a whole new meaning this afternoon when I looked at how much some of them cost)

• Write and send cheque (charity)

• Write and send invoice (work pay)

• Write and sent email about aircon servicing (aircon servicing)

And finally, and most importantly, fit all of this around the season finale of Grey's Anatomy. Priorities, people.