Getting a rise

The lift stopped working in our building this morning. It hasn't broken down since Christmas, so that's a pretty good period of reliability for it. It broke at the same time as the water supply for the building. So we couldn't use the lift or flush the toilet. Perhaps these two events aren't unrelated. But what kind of idiot installs a steam-powered lift?

Actually, that's unfair. It may not be a steam powered lift. Perhaps the electricity for our building is normally supplied by toilet-flush activated waterwheels in the basement. That makes a certain sort of sense: after all, if people aren't busy flushing their toilets, they may be asleep or outside, and thus in no need of light and power.

Luckily, by the time I got home at 5pm, the lift had started working again, although I'm not sure if that was because Mrs Wong on the fifteenth floor had been flushing her toilet all day to help. And I'm not going to ask a hypothetical Chinese lady about her bowel movements - that's not the kind of guy I am.

This evening I had comedy, and with all the excitement of walking down stairs in the morning, I'd completely forgotten that I was hosting, so I went from calm and unruffled to panicked and confused in short order. I really do need to get a bit more practice in: having hardly performed since the start of the month is making me a bit rusty when I get back on stage.

Still, we had a really good audience who roared with laughter most of the time. It's a bit galling to be the guy who is in between, when you really want to be the person everyone laughs at the most, but the important thing is that everyone has a good time. And I had a strong opening set, although I found myself with nothing to say later on, standing with my mind blank and an expectant audience staring at me. Some more sleep and some more rehearsal would do me a lot of favours.

Speaking of sleep, I'm shattered and I'm up early biking tomorrow, so I fled the after-show party and headed to bed. I'm such a party animal.