Knackered

Today I got up at 6am, struggling both to get out of bed and to believe I'd set the alarm so early. Still, I should have run 5 miles yesterday and running three miles today, so tired I was practically falling asleep as I went, was not really making up for this earlier lassitude.

Despite this early start, I didn't actually feel that bad today. After yesterday's hellish wheel-spinning at work, I made progress on what I'd set out to do, and spotted a problem that nobody had seen before, which made me feel like a pioneer of sorts. Plus I finished work at a reasonable hour, allowing me to get home and rehearse, and this time all my words made sense rather than coming out in a horrific jumble of nonsense bereft of humanity or hope.

I'm incredibly nervous about the comedy competition this year; last year I was quite calm (resigned to it, perhaps?) whereas this year all I have to do is think about it and I've got butterflies swarming in my stomach, my heart beating doubletime, my mind wandering. And this is just for the qualifying round. I assume if I do get through to the finals, steam will whistle from my ears, my eyes will burst from my face and one of my feet will spontaneously combust.

That would be rather a cheap laugh, but I'm not above such cheap tricks when they're available.

Since it isn't my round tonight, we went out for a calm and relaxing dinner at our favourite vegetarian restaurant, although by the time we got there, there was hardly anything left on the menu to order, but that was fine because all I wanted was an enormous portabello mushroom to squirt juice across my bearded face, and then to toddle off home and play a game of scrabble where I seemed to only get 1-point letters and my wife crowed at me as I failed to see easy high-pointers like "qis". That's how I fight off stress, anyhow.