Hate your job? Feel like everyone in the office secretly considers you a nutcase? Diana Saez did, so she quit. And now she gets paid for being a nutcase.

These days, she actually likes her co-workers — probably because they appreciate her nutcaseyness. After two years of futzing around in the Washington stand-up scene, Saez and two other locals, John McBride and Jeffrey Adrian, kick-started Lucky Cat Comedy — a fresh group of entrepreneurial stand-up artists holding three shows a month at Cleveland Park’s Aroma and open mic nights at Adams Morgan’s Rendezvous every Wednesday.

Which means your night could use a rendezvous with Rendezvous. Don’t act like you have something better to do on a Wednesday night. Take some advice from Lucky Cat’s MySpace page and embrace “the soothing, womb-like atmosphere” of the hallway-sized upstairs space at the 18th Street bar. Though she’s not trying to give Washington a big ego as a comedy hot-spot, she will fight to the death if you think this city is just an uptight, first-button-buttoned conservative bore. Over the last few years, comedy outlets have cropped up throughout Washington, with DC Standup — who claims to be “Sucka Free since 2003” — leading the pack, and recently adding four new open mic venues, including Café Nema on U Street.

Bet you didn’t realize so many free open mic nights ruled stages after dark — DC Standup hosts seven sessions on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday alone. And you might assume our only claim-to-fame funny men are Dave Chappelle and Lewis Black — both hail from Silver Spring — who have gone onto bigger and better. But you’d be only half right.