Planning is key to 2AM risotto. The rice will take 20 to 30 minutes to cook, but you'll need about 10 to 15 minutes of prep to saute onions and get your stock up to temperature. Start your 2AM risotto at about 1:15 AM.
First, put about a tablespoon of olive oil in a sauce pan over medium-medium low heat (on a 1 to 9 burner, this is about 4). Chop a 1/2 onion into small pieces, what you would do for a mirepoix. Put a tbsp of butter into the olive oil, wait for the butter to foam, add the onion. Perhaps some garlic, if that is your game. It is not mine. But it would be good to add it now so the flavor mellows a little.
Whilst doing this, bring 3 cups of stock up to a nice temperature. The quick way is to microwave it for about 4 minutes.
When the onions have become translucent, add 1/2 cup of arborio rice. Coat with oil and notice that there's a white spot in the middle of the rice. This will take about 2 minutes. Add 1/2 cup to 2/3 cup of stock. Stir constantly. The liquid should come to a very slight bubble. Adjust the heat accordingly. Repat the add liquid/stir combination every 5 minutes or so, when the level of liquid has been reduced enough.
After 20 minutes of cooking, test the rice. If it's almost done, judge how soupy you want the final product to be and adjust your liquid addition accordingly. Also, add some hard cheeses, like asiago, parmesan or romano. When the consistency you want has been reached, place it in in a cereal bowl. Salt and pepper to taste, though you won't want to add a lot of salt, since the stock and cheeses already have plenty of this. Eat while you watch "Fatal Attraction" starring Michael Douglas and Glenn Close and think to yourself, "I wish someone felt that way about me."
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A marathon, from your apartment where you are tired and drinking a glass of "Dr. Bold", looks very strange. For example, the walking portion starts earlier. And there will be people walking on the sidewalk with their own places to be. My favorite was the man smoking, which seemed like a lovely, silent protest against fitness. Perhaps it is Camel's guerrila marketers at work, literalizing walking miles for Camels. Maybe they hijack a lot of marathons around the world. Or perhaps it's absurdist theater. Also, the motorcycle cop and car that clear the way for the runners seems to make fun of the running, a sort of last resort mode of transportation.
P.S. For dissonance's sake, I was looking for places where I could buy European higher fat butter while the the runners went by. While doing this, I found out that sweet cream butter has a pH of about 6, while cultured butter has a pH of 4.8 to 5.6. Buttermilk is around 4.5, about as acidic as a tomato. It's good to think about these things in baking, since you depend on the acid/alkaline balance to get a nice rise out of a cake-like thing, like a cake. Also good important in general foodcookery, since concentrating too much acidity can cause stuff to curdle or break, like a sauce.
