Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…

Tuesday, April 24
All right, the robins have been paying some attention to their nest just outside the kitchen door…I noticed it when I got home from Hotel B this morning…Recall I had noted a long twig with some grass was hanging from the nest and the porch is being used as a staging area for other twigs, grasses and whatnot…I’m surprised they haven’t commandeered the wheelbarrow from the shed.

Anyway, the long twig/grass deal has been moved, shoved to the side so it drapes over the electric meter the nest is built above…I still haven’t seen blueprints or schematics or anything, so I am not entirely sure what their ultimate plans are, but it looks like the robins will be back for another season of reproductions.

A month or so ago I bought a new shirt for wearing around the house…It’s a little brick red, crew neck number with small white dots I picked up at the retailer…It was love at first sight, as it often is for ol’ Sparrow in matters like this…I mean, I knew – knew! – it would be comfy and be great for the spring/summer farting around the house season…And I was right, too, naturally…Of course, it’s a six dollar retailer shirt so I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing it outside, well, maybe under the overalls for a quick trip to the diner, but otherwise no, it’s for around the house.

I check regularly and the retailer does not appear to be moving too many of these, frankly, tho I did see a guy wearing one at the service desk tonight…It was too tight for him, but maybe he preferred that because he had to have known we would have exchanged it for him…Heck, I personally would have supervised his exchange, but he was merely transferring some money, not exchanging his shirt.

Later, this guy comes up with a pair of work boots…It led to a pretty funny line from ol’ Sparrow…Maybe not a Line of the Year candidate, but still a pretty line…He puts the boots on the counter and announces they are actually two shoes for the left foot…I pick them up and look at them…Indeed they are…They don’t even match…One is a slightly darker color than the other…The line from ol’ Sparrow:

And???…

Of course, this indicated I was wondering what the problem was…He laughed…As he should have…It was a pretty good line.

Took the annual company survey today, too…They say it’s anonymous but I don’t see how: you log into a company computer under your company-assigned log-in so if they don’t know who’s taking their survey their IT department is manned by dolts because I think my cat could probably figure it out…They’re all multiple choice questions so you can’t make too many waves, but I found myself not Completely Disagreeing with anything, though I only Completely Agreed with the question about the store doing a good job of working the schedule so you have a satisfactory work/life balance…It should be noted I only give them availability for certain times and they only schedule me during those times, but still, I do get the 20-25 hours I want every week, so I can’t complain.

Media companies are starting to contact Sparrow For Congress…I am still getting more information from both of them, though both appear to be trying to sell me video services to reach voters…Well, I have $150 in contributions so far and I can’t really do too much with that, but I’ll see what they’re about…You never know, any spoke might lead to the hub.

Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 9am Tuesday until just before 3pm Tuesday…Six hours…More or less…The start time is reckoned…I started reading about 8:15 or so then started nodding off a bit later, then read again because I needed more entertainment before shutting it down…The only problem is I am not entirely certain what shutdown time was so we are going to call it 9am because I like round numbers…I know you do, too.

The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Anything else is a coincidence.

The Diary of a Nobody was inspired by the 19th century British novel of the same name.

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Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…

Monday, April 23
There doesn’t seem to have been much movement on the robin’s nest front the past day or so…There are still twigs and stuff being staged on the side porch, and there is a long twig/grass thingy now hanging down from last year’s nest, but not much else and certainly not a robin sighting…Well, we see them flying around, of course, but we haven’t seen one fly out of the nest when we open the kitchen door…Maybe they’re consulting with a designer and still deciding whether to tear down the old nest and rebuild or remodel the current nest.

The lights were on in the abandoned coffee shop next door!!!…I am not making that up!!!

I saw them when I pulled out for work tonight and it is plain there is something going on inside…We’re not entirely certain what it is…Car Rental Place – based on the Dollar Rent-A-Car sign we saw in the back of a truck last week – remains the best guess, of course, and it is logical, based on the fact the airport is nearby…There wasn’t any actual work going on, of course, but the lights on means someone cared enough to turn the power on and they don’t want anyone snooping around inside after dark.

There are signs things are changing, too…The extended covered parking shelter is coming down and moderately interesting is what their plans are for the abandoned house on the property because I saw its front door open a couple of days ago…I suppose I could go hang out with Ken at the post office or make a pest of myself at the diner and find out, but I can’t be bothered to do that…Besides, it’s more fun to piece it together this way.

We were about one-third full at Hotel B last night and I didn’t see a guest from the time I arrived till the first couple of folks started trickling in for breakfast just after 6am…Please note there is no danger of me spilling scrambled eggs at Hotel B like I did at Hotel A Sunday morning because I don’t actually cook anything at Hotel B…At 5am I start setting up for breakfast, but I just put the bagels and muffins and whatnot out, plus dig the cereal dispenser out of the closet and make sure the waffle irons are turned on…In the winter, when we’re packed and people are tracking their muck everywhere, I’ll mop the hallway and breakfast room, too.

Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 8:30am Monday to 3:30pm Monday…Seven hours…Thought it might be more because with all-you-can-get sleep today I took a PM tablet, which can usually be counted on to keep me from having to get up and use the can after four hours…What’s almost interesting is I woke up feeling really good thinking it had to be mid-afternoon or, at least, early afternoon or maybe even early-mid afternoon – certainly not late afternoon, though – but I rolled over to look at the clock and it wasn’t even 10:30am yet!!!…I am not making that up!!!

The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Anything else is a coincidence.

The Diary of a Nobody was inspired by the 19th century British novel of the same name.

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Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…

Sunday, April 22
I think I’m going to ride the snow tires for a while…Past Diary entries show this is more or less the time when you switch back to the summer tires…Sure, it still snows this time of the year – you learn to not be too shocked when it snows anytime between Labor and Memorial days up here – but it’s warm enough where it never sticks…However, this is fourth season for the current crop of snow tires and that is about all you can expect, actually, it’s one more season than we got out of the last ones, and if we are going to have to replace them next season we might as well keep them on because there is still some good tread on them…Plus, and I don’t remember exactly, but I might need new regular tires, too…I can never remember crap like this.

A slow night this morning at Hotel A, at least until I spilled some scrambled eggs all over the goddamned place…Don’t kid yourself, ol’ Sparrow doesn’t spend any time sweating over a hot stove to prepare your complimentary breakfast…Everything hot is microwaved, including your scrambled eggs, which are either nuked for four minutes in a sack or lovingly microwaved for a scientifically proven 24 minutes in a plastic bowl after being poured out of a half-gallon cardboard container, like milk comes in…So I take the sack out of the microwave, cut it open and put it in the serving dish, which I place on a small refrigerator in the former business center that serves as the Meal Prep room…Then I take some sausage out of yet another small frig and put some in a large plastic bowl which I had placed on top of the container holding the freshly scrambled eggs, an act which itself probably not in the strictest accordance with the latest county Health Department guidelines.

Needless to say, the egg container slopped and most the eggs spilled on the floor…It’s carpeted, too, so when I went to sweep into a dustpan some of it, you know, got pushed further into the carpeting, necessitating ol’ Sparrow getting a wet towel to clean the remainder up…Regular readers of this crap know I have few cleaning skills but I gave it a good effort and I think I did OK.

Reported for duty at Hotel B about a quarter till eleven and I opened the door to the front desk and was, not the for the first time recently, greeted by someone I’d never seen before…He’s in his 30’s, with a full head of curly red hair and seemed like a friendly sort I stopped dead in my tracks, looked at him and said:

Who the hell are you???

He laughed, confirming my initial impression of him…His name is David and he started a week or so ago…He said we were about a third full, not too bad for the slow season, frankly, and that all reservations had checked in for the night.

Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 8:30am Sunday to 2pm Sunday…Looking at the records, this is the lowest Sunday sleep total of the month, but recall I’d slept well Saturday and I woke up on my own feeling good, so 5.5 hours was enough.

The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Anything else is a coincidence.

The Diary of a Nobody was inspired by the 19th century British novel of the same name.

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Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…

Saturday, April 21
The robins appear to be back!!!

Last year a robin family built a nest on the kitchen door porch, just to the door’s left as you’re facing it, above some meter…I don’t know – nor do I particularly care – whether it’s a gas or power meter but I’m only the homeowner so pipe down, but they put a pretty sturdy nest on top and in the end four baby robins were hatched.

Typically, I didn’t know what was happening at first…We initially noticed something was up when the robins used the porch as a staging area, storing some twigs and grass and other supplies on the porch itself…At first, I thought it was some detritus the wind blew in and I may actually have kicked it to the side, but then it was replaced by more stuff and while I wasn’t smart enough to think ‘bird’s nest’ I was smart enough to let it be…The Wife’s daughter was staying with us at the time  so perhaps it was a love offering from one her boys and The Wife soon informed me some birds were starting a nest.

The whole evolution was a lot of fun to watch…From the nest taking shape to the first appearance of the eggs to hatching to fleeing the nest, we had a front row seat to everything…At least until Mommy Robin got protective…Then we got dive-bombed once or twice, after which we started the using the front door, a door which we seldom use because the kitchen door is right off the carport…If I recall correctly – and I may not – I think it was all over in six weeks and after some discussion, The Wife and I decided to leave the nest up, and it still appears sturdy and I’m not entirely sure if the robins will use the old nest or tear it down and build another one.

Slow night at the retailer…The ski mountain closed last weekend, so this is hardly a bulletin…I spent most of the night at Aisle 5 because while we’ve got service desk people out the wazoo we are desperately short of checkers…I did have a solid Bachelor Purchase of the Night, tho…This guy, probably late 20’s, clothes clean and relatively new, came thru with some frozen pizza, bread, cold cuts and whatnot, plus a Marie Callender’s chicken pot pie, which rules because they have crust on the bottom and then there were two Banquet pot pies!!!…I am not making that up: he cross-branded chicken pot pies…I’m sure this wasn’t a first in human history but it’s something I would certainly never do and I quizzed him on it, mentioning it casually and he grunted or said yeah, but otherwise didn’t accept my invitation to discuss the matter further.

Got my eval at the retailer this week, too…I was ranked Solid in everything, which I whined about, telling Connie I am entitled to whatever the hell their highest ranking in customer service was because ol’ Sparrow has demonstrated experience issuing the best service to everyone from the homeless to US Ambassadors – not to mention the wizards that find their way to the retailer’s service desk – and she tapped some keys on the tablet and I think she changed it, tho I didn’t care enough to find out.

Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 8am Saturday morning until 3pm Sunday afternoon…There might be some fudge factor in the 8am down time, tho…I was home very early from work, 7:40am or so, gave the cat her yummy ration then went straight to bed…Read for a bit then turned out the light, so actual sleep time might really be a bit before 8am, but I like round numbers…This gives us a weekly total of 46.16666 hours over six sleep sessions, plus Wednesday morning’s nap, down from last week’s monthly high of 48.5 hours, but well above Week 1’s mere 40 hours.

The monthly figures should be interesting…I know you’re as anxious to see them as I am. 

The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Anything else is a coincidence.

The Diary of a Nobody was inspired by the 19th century British novel of the same name.

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Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…

Friday, April 20
Debuted my new shirt for working at the retailer today…You have to wear either a navy or a white top and I usually wear a navy Under Armour dri-fit shirt I’ve had for at least ten years…Connie the personnel manager whines about it because it’s a pretty dark navy blue but I went above her head last year to Carrie the Store Manager…I compared the shirt to a black shirt and Carrie could see it was navy and gave me dispensation to wear it…Anyway, I grew tired of wearing my own shirt at the retailer so I bought a house brand dri-fit polo in a shade of navy Connie will adore…It cost $10, which is about what I want to spend for a work shirt for the retailer…It’s OK quality…Like other retailer house brand clothes, I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing it off work…It won’t last close to ten years, of course, and it will probably start falling apart in late summer.

Sir Thomas called off his shift as service desk supervisor today, leaving Daniel as the only supervisor for the morning and part of the afternoon…Daniel said Sir Thomas had said he was taking a mental health day, no doubt to recover from his day off Thursday and to better prepare for his day off Saturday, giving him a three-dayer…We gave Thomas shit all day despite the fact he wasn’t there to hear it and we agreed the next time we were at the service desk with Sir Thomas we’d mention mental health from time to time,  though not specifically referencing his mental health call off…I also told Daniel that when I was his age and you tried to call off with mental health day as your excuse your boss was likely to make a fist and say “I’ve got your mental health day…”

Calling off here is pretty easy, actually and is a misnomer to boot because you don’t actually call anybody…You can do it all online so you never have to talk to a disgruntled supervisor.

Had two dolts come to my register back to back this afternoon…Good gravy, each had me worrying about the future of the human race and hoping against hope they would never reproduce.

The first guy had a fan he wanted to return…OK…He didn’t have the receipt and asked if he could get store credit for it…Sure, I said…In theory, we don’t take returns without a receipt but in practice we usually do…Actually, he has a second fan with him that he wants to exchange the old one for and I process this transaction, announce the new fan is less than the first one and he is entitled to a $6.30 refund, on the gift card he specified…He gets snitty and says he doesn’t want this and this is where I started getting confused and he got annoying…He said he didn’t want the gift card…He wanted, well, I don’t really remember what he wanted…I told him the transaction was already processed so I gave him the gift card…Then he started speaking in tongues trying to explain what he had really wanted…He asked, in a reasonable tone, if I understood this and I said of course not and stood there dumbly with my mouth open…I really had no clue what he had wanted to do…It was as if he had been talking about how the Federal Reserve operates…I still had some zero idea and he advised me it wasn’t that hard I apologized for not being smart enough for him…In the end, I game him a cash refund for the second fan so he could go and buy it again at another register, paying for it, in part, with the gift card he didn’t  wanted in the first place.

Right after him another wizard sashays up…He wants to send money…OK, where I ask?…Jamaica…No, wait…He consults his phone…Mississippi…That’s OK, too…We can wire money pretty much everywhere, even the Deep South…I ask him for his phone number…He gives it to me and it turns out he is not in the system…He insists he is, he practically sends money here every hour on the hour…I assure him he isn’t and it isn’t that big a deal…He isn’t happy…Then I ask him how much money he wants to send…He says “five hundred and something…”…I am not making that up!!!…He declared he wanted to send five hundred and something dollars!!!

Christ, I thought…Should I tell him he has to be more specific???…Should I fill it in myself???…For the second time in three minutes there I stood with my mouth open looking like an idiot, completely confused…In the end, I said well, you know, feel free to narrow that down for me…So he consults his phone for literally three or four minutes and then announces he is sending $804, a pretty specific figure, to Mississippi…Very well…Then I issue him a slip of paper and ask him to write the name of the recipient…He screws this up, misspelling the name…I know this because he is on the phone with the recipient and the spelling does not match the pronunciation…The name is not common, either, so the spelling could be anything…I ask him to double check and he writes another letter in there and he put it in the wrong place!!!…There is no way any name in any language in any place – even Mississippi – is spelled like this…It looks like something out of the Cyrillic Bible and right now I am ready to go and deliver the money to Mississippi myself and ultimately, I ask him, nicely, to write out the full name once more, on a fresh slip of paper…He does this and I manage to complete the transaction without having a stroke.   

One of life’s great tragedies occurred tonight: somebody had pizza for me at work and I was not hungry!!!…Here’s what happened…I reported for duty at Hotel A at 9pm…We are very shorthanded and Nicole had scammed her first night off since she started and Becky was working a double and would be relieving me in the morning and I like to be helpful…I had clocked out of the retailer at 8pm then visited The Wife where she’s house sitting…She had dinner ready for me, some ravioli that was really good, so I had just eaten…For lunch at the retailer I had bought a package of frozen burritos and didn’t have just one so ol’ Sparrow was pretty stuffed when he got to the hotel…Becky noted she had pizza and made inquiries into my interest into consuming same and I said no, thank you, but right then her daughter Kathy came out – remember, they live in the apartment behind the front desk – and placed the box in front of me, leaving no choice…I told her I wasn’t all that hungry, even for me, and made no guarantees I would eat it. 

Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 1am Friday morning until 7am Friday morning…What’s funny was how my dream started to peter out as I started to wake up…I was in a room with some people I didn’t know and I forget what was going on but the dream was proceeding apace until I started to wake up, then we started doing less and less until the very end, right before I woke up, when we weren’t doing anything except farting around waiting for ol’ Sparrow to wake up.

The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Anything else is a coincidence.

The Diary of a Nobody was inspired by the 19th century British novel of the same name.

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Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…

Thursday, April 19
I would not mind getting the lawn mowed sometime soon…We’ve had a lot of rain and snow and the grass is starting to get taller than ol’ Sparrow likes to look at…We try to keep a nice yard – The Shire is right on the left as you enter town – and it’s good for morale for drivers to have a nice yard – complete with The Wife’s flowers – to look at and a lousy lawn get’s your journey thru town off to a lousy start. 

The problem is it hasn’t stayed dry for an extended period and the lawn is still damp and in some places downright wet…It’s scheduled to snow the next couple of day, too, so good luck getting it mowed in the next few days.

We went thru this our first spring here at The Shire…It rained and rained and rained and here’s ol’ Sparrow a new homeowner with a brand new mower he was just dying to break in…But it continued to snow and rain just often enough to foil me and as I recall the first mowing didn’t happen until early May when you needed a machete to lop off the first couple of feet of grass. 

The Wife was at The Shire when I got home from work…She had a roast in the crockpot and I was grateful for the home cooked meal…Recall one day last week not all the coffee got in the pot and some spilled on top of the dryer, onto a towel kept there for that purpose….Also recall I left the towel there, neglecting to put it in the washer.

The Wife, of course, noticed and quizzed me on it…I couldn’t bring myself to blame the cat so, of course, I fessed up and, following The Wife’s instructions, cleared everything off and threw the towel in the wash.

Spent a full day at the retailer…In the afternoon a scruffy looking family came up looking to cash an old, beat up money order…They looked like they could use the money, too…I think it was a mom, her son and grandkid, but the son wasn’t a whole lot younger than me and they could’ve been man and wife tho if there was there was May/December action going on…Either way, I couldn’t be bothered to ask, even tho I was kinda curious.

Anyway, the edges of the money order were frayed, a lot, and i doubted whether it would make it thru the check reader when Mary came by and said she’s seen this before and put some tape on the edges…I was surprised it worked and the money order went thru…Usually they don’t…Usually, the folks are instructed to call an 800 number, but I was glad it did, especially when I saw the family outside and the hood of their not-too-new car was up.

One of the lessons I’ve learned is not to toss around my Spanish to people who do not speak Spanish…I had this lesson reinforced today when I spoke Spanish to someone from Uzbekistan…He was sending money to his native country and his English wasn’t all that good so throughout the process I found myself saying issuing instructions in Spanish from time to time…Force of habit…Spanish is, of course, the go-to backup language for me and I might as well have been speaking Greek for all he understood…This has happened before, too…Last week I was clocking out at 10pm and one guy on the graveyard crew was having trouble clocking in and I started to yap in Espanol and one of the Senegal guys behind me – who was also no help – said I could only help him if I spoke Ukrainian, or whatever they speak in Ukrania.

Look, I can’t I keep up with what languages people do and do not speak…I try, but you gotta meet me halfway and know at least a little Spanish.

Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 6pm Wednesday to 6:30am Thursday…In the Navy, on the old diesel submarine I was on, we used to call long sleeps like this equalizers, which was a term having to do with battery charges but don’t ask me to expound on that because I can’t, and I usually get equalizers in on Wednesday nights…In the Dark Ages before the Wednesday Morning Nap (WMN) I might stay up all day Wednesday and sleep as long as 15 hours, which really caused problems getting to sleep Thursday night, but the WMN appears to have taken care of that issue.  

The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Anything else is a coincidence.

The Diary of a Nobody was inspired by the 19th century British novel of the same name.

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Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…

Wednesday, April 18
There was an actually an issue at Hotel B this morning…I am not making that up!!!

I really wasn’t doing anything when it happened, so I was able to give it my complete nad undivided attention…It was 5:45 am and by that time all the work is done and I am too tired to anything of substance, like write, so I was killing time watching MST3K on youtube when an alarm goes off…The alarm panel is at the front desk so I mosey in from the back room and the display says it’s a supervisory alarm and that the air pressure is low in the sprinkler system…Exactly why there is air in the goddamned sprinkler system in the first place I have some zero clue, but evidently, there is and there wasn’t enough of it right now.

My only real talent in this situation is standing with my hands on my hips looking crossly at the alarm panel and hoping it shuts off and I’m doing that when the phone rings…It’s a girl from the alarm company informing me an alarm is going off…I told her she was gracious and she further advised there was low air pressure in the sprinkler system and I asked her if this was one of those deals that had to be dealt with right now???…She said more or less and asked if we had maintenance on site and I said not at this hour…So I tried to call Jimmy the Maintenance Guy but business phones nowadays are so confusing…Do you press 9 do you not press 9???…Do you include the area code because our area code is awfully big and maybe it’s a mobile from another area…After two unsuccessful attempts with the landline I used my mobile and Jimmy can’t be bothered to answer so I leave a message…It would be nice to notify someone else in case all the sprinklers go off later but the new GM Adam won’t know what to do and Hadeesh, the temporary GM, is in house but I don’t want to bother him because he won’t know what to do either and rumor has it Hadeesh likes his sleep almost as much as ol’ Sparrow does anyway.

So I take charge and sit and monitor developments until Jess comes in at 7am…Nothing happens…I silenced the alarm, of course, but it is still active when I leave.  

Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 9am Wednesday until 1pm Wednesday…My usual Wednesday nap when I don’t have the retailer, which I sometimes do…I used to stay up all day Wednesday, but I’m dead by mid-afternoon and I don’t get anything done besides…The nap rules…Four hours is enough to be productive the rest of the afternoon but not too much that you can’t get to sleep at night because I do not have the hotel on Wednesday and Thursday nights.

I nap in bed…Others do it differently, and I respect that, but one, I’ve never liked napping on the couch or in a chair…I have too much respect for sleep to do that…Two, there’s laundry on the couch and I would have been too lazy to move it…Also, I set the alarm so I don’t end up sleeping all day.

As it was, I treated myself to lunch at the Mexican joint in the next county and my nap ensured I arrived late enough to miss the lunch crowd…The only problem there was a new cook…This is always bothersome for those of us that get the same things at the same place because you really got in a comfort zone with the old cook…I still have to fret over whether this change is permanent or not, but I can worry about that later.

Recall with The Wife off house sitting the sandwich – eaten either at my desk or over the sink – has been the staple of my diet the past couple of weeks so lunch out, even at a dive Mexican joint, seemed like 5-star dining by comparison…I probably should have asked for a horchata pairing with my meal. 

The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Anything else is a coincidence.

The Diary of a Nobody was inspired by the 18th century British novel of the same name.

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Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…

Tuesday, April 17
I went to the retailer after work this morning, to see The Wife and to pick up a few things…I bought some bread and some of those frozen chicken fried steak patties I love dearly and which The Wife would never buy because they’re not gluten/GMO/taste free but she’s still house sitting so what the hell…I also bought some new mouthwash…I went with the house brand, not the Leading National Brand (LNB) because I read the label and the ingredients were identical…Not similar, identical so, me being me, I decided to save three bucks even though I generally prefer LNBs for stuff like this…I also got some Vitamin C, chewables, too…Long-time readers of this crap may – or they may not – recall I almost choked to death once, while The Wife looked on and asked me how I was doing, and it’s tough to choke on chewables. 

I forgot to get dish soap, though…We are almost all out but this is academic right now because with The Wife house sitting all I eat are mostly sandwiches – some enjoyed standing at the sink – so there aren’t all that many dishes and even if there were I wouldn’t be washing them anyway.

Even the doing of laundry has reverted back to bachelor tendencies…I threw some clothes in this afternoon because I was desperate enough for clean clothes to take last week’s load out of the dryer…Needless to say, the bed is never made…The trash, however, made it to the curb in time.

There’s a new general manager at Hotel B…His name is Adam and he stumbled into the office right as I was getting ready to head out this morning…Kathy had actually mentioned the new GM would be starting today when she had walked in a few minutes before and we’ve needed a GM for a month or two – and an assistant GM and a front desk manager – for a while now so it wasn’t a complete bulletin, but this more proof nobody tells ol’ Sparrow squat…Adam seems both competent and sober – two qualities that have not exactly been givens amongst recent hires at either hotel lately – so maybe he’ll last more than a couple of weeks.

Not only is activity continuing on the presumed car rental place at the abandoned coffee shop next door, but rumor has it a new restaurant will be opening in our small town…It’s a chain breakfast place that’s pretty good and they’ll be occupying an abandoned restaurant on the other side of town, across from the post office.

This would be the fourth restaurant to occupy the site…The first was a steakhouse and then a BBQ joint then it was a Mexican restaurant and now this…I don’t know…The problem is the site itself, it looks rundown and, worse, there is not an entrance facing the street so you’re always looking at the building’s backside which is not all that appealing and even when it was occupied and open the windows are tinted so whatever restaurant was there always looked like it was closed…On the plus side, breakfast joints are open for breakfast and the local diner isn’t.

I don’t approve of all this activity – the next thing you know they’ll be putting in a stop light somewhere – but no one consulted me even though I’m running for Congress.

Sparrow Sleep Log: 9am Tuesday morning until 2:30pm Tuesday afternoon…As usual, I would’ve thought I’d sleep longer, but yesterday’s eight hours must have caught me up…The weekly total, starting on Sunday, is at 20 hours.

The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Anything else is a coincidence.

The Diary of a Nobody was inspired by the 18th century British novel of the same name.

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Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…

Monday, April 16
Filled out new W4 forms at both jobs recently…The Wife did, too, at the retailer because we are really taking it in the shorts at tax time, always owing money because not enough was taken out of our checks…This really frustrates The Wife because we’re homeowners and she thinks all homeowners get millions of dollars back every year, but long-time readers of this crap will recall we got a sweet deal on The Shire and our mortgage and its interest isn’t all that high.

It was pretty easy to do at the retailer, I did it online, with help from Connie, in a couple of minutes, but at the hotels, which are under the same owner, it took a week or so…I emailed the owners kid, who seems to be our contact for stuff like this, and she ended up emailing their controller who emailed Hotel A with a W4 attached and Becky printed it out and gave it to her daughter Kathy for delivery to ol’ Sparrow when Kathy reported for duty at Hotel B one morning last week…Of course, I couldn’t be bothered to fill it out then and I couldn’t find it today, obliging me to go to Hotel A this morning, print it out, fill it in and then scan and email to the controller.

Kathy always asks me if my night went smoothly when she comes in…She always sounds suspicious, too, as if she is secretly dreading problems that she would have to attend to being brought to her attention.

As it was, there was a folio was a complete fiasco, tho I had taken care of it…What happened the guest in 207 came to check out and instead of merely hitting the checkout button the new guy Jess did a lot of other entries…Evidently, the guest had a complaint or two because there were refunds and adjustments and reversals – the usual stuff you get when a new guy doesn’t really know what in the hell is going on – and his folio showed him a couple hundred dollars, which we didn’t…It was in such disarray even I couldn’t figure it out and I’m not a complete idiot in these matters so I called tech support and they told me how to take care of it…Some taxes needed some minute adjustments and we moved all the crap to another folio so there was only his payment and the room charges on the main folio and when it was all said and done we had to refund is credit card $5.

My current read is The Chinese by Alan Peyrefitte, which is translated from the original French…I’ve always found China and the Chinese intriguing and while the book is old – Chairman Mao is still alive – it has the insights into our human experience that make reading so much fun.

What was really interesting to read was the section on acupuncture, particularly when used as an anesthetic in surgery…The author actually viewed an operation or two where acupuncture is used and, like a lot of things in life, success in acupuncture seems to involve having a positive approach to the matter…Doctor and patient discuss the matter at length beforehand and they continue to chat during the operation because you are still conscious and if you’re chatting up a storm while your gallbladder is being removed your mind is occupied and less likely to focus on the pain of an organ being removed from inside you…This seems to be theory physiologically, too…They stick needles into you at strategic points and there is some discomfort, which immediately grabs the attention of your nervous system, which then distracts it from the discomfort of the operation.

Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 9-ish Monday morning until 5 Monday afternoon…Unlimited sleep today since I didn’t have the retailer and there wasn’t an alarm clock and I gotta be honest, I took a sleep aid, a gelcap designed for the purpose…9-ish the official go-to-sleep time but who knows???…Some who work graveyards stay up for a while and go to bed later in the morning, but I’ve worked graveyard a lot over my working life and I’ve always turned in as soon as I got home…I do some reading first and am usually nodding off in short order and sometimes I look at the clock to note the time and sometimes I don’t…Apologies are issued.

Either way, the cat was up on the bed as soon as I stirred, her usual campaign for her canned yummies officially underway which I resisted because there had been a yummy ration issued when I got home…Look, we can’t give the cat canned yummies whenever the hell she wants them…She’s spoiled enough, what with not having to go and earn and living and whatnot – we don’t charge her room or board – and I only give her yummies once a day.

The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Anything else is a coincidence.

It was inspired by the 18th century British novel of the same name.

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