groggy

Let me think of the most annoying possible thing that can happen at 4:40 a.m. No, it's not someone getting hurt or needing a hospital, because then I could feel like waking up had a purpose. No, it's not going out to a pit latrine, although I've done that, too, but at least afterwards your bladder feels much better. No, it's not noise in the hallway, because that you can at least fume about from the warmth of your own bed. It is, in fact, someone pulling the fire alarm FOR NO REASON in a building that is not, in fact, a college dorm, where such things might be funny, and having to get up and pull on your glasses and a sweatshirt and a coat and stumble down the stairs with all the people holding small, terrified animals, and stand out in the misty cold morning in your Christmas-themed flannel pajama bottoms with snowboarding moose all over them (oh, the indignity) while one single fire truck AMBLES over without even bothering to turn on its siren and three or four firemen MEANDER into the building and look around, and then finally being allowed back in to tromp up the stairs with all the other people who are not willing to wait for the disabling of the fire alarm to permit the elevators to work again, and then not being able to go to sleep, so you end up reading books about war for an hour and then never even hearing the alarm clock in the morning, although it appears to have been on.