Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…

Saturday, April 14
Screwed up morning coffee this afternoon, neglecting to put the pot all the way in…This resulted in the thingy on top overflowing, spilling on the top of the dryer, where the coffee pot is kept…Fortunately, we keep a towel on top of the dryer, insurance against Sparrow doing exactly this, and it sopped it all up.

Now, here is where The Wife being off house sitting causes problems: if she is not house sitting, if she is around The Shire regularly, I clean up and toss the towel in the wash…She’s not tho, so I left it as it, not wanting to interfere with the natural order.

Also, with The Wife gone, clean laundry tends to be stowed on the kitchen table.

At the retailer, I spent most of the time working a register…I was at #3 with nothing to do because we were very slow when this rather tedious looking woman summons me over to the service desk, where she is doing something or another with Customer Service Sam, who had gone off in search of a manager to deal with her crap…I get there and it turns out she is cashing a check…Or trying to, Customer Service Sam initially saying no because her ID is expired…Evidently, since I am white and Customer Service Sam is black – not to mention from Senegal so he talks funny – I’d have the good sense to authorize this transaction…Well, I told her, no I won’t…You must have a valid ID to cash a check here…What I wanted to tell her was you should probably take better care of your identification papers and stop trying to finagle your way around the rules…Or get a checking account. 

There’s a rather amiable older gentleman we see every day…I was working my beloved Aisle 5 when he stopped by with some stuff in a cart and asked me if we had fig newtons…Crap, I thought, you’d think so…They’re pretty common and it’s probably in the bylaws somewhere that we have to have them so I go and look and we had them but not the Leading National Brand (LNB), we had the house brand which the gentleman turned his nose up at which was surprising because when he came thru Aisle 5 a few minutes later he had four packages of the house brand oatmeal cookies…Hell, I think I’d rather eat some old carpeting than that…I asked him if these were snacks or a meal plan and he said snacks…Five a day plus some milk are keys to his good health.

      – You’re a maniac.
– I know. 

Towards the end of the shift, a young woman came by the service desk looking for her lost wallet…She was completely stoned, too, you could see it in her eyes…Her wallet was long and “sparkly” with “turds” on it…I am not making that up!!!…A girl lost a wallet with turd designs on it…Christ, I thought my generation had taken the gene pool down a notch letting our boxer shorts hang below our cutoffs but this took it to a whole ‘nother level…Good gravy…Crap designs on personal accessories…Anyway, I checked and told her no, no wallets with turds on them had been turned in.

Then Shawna, who works clothing, which is near the service desk came by to report the girl was “a piece of work”…I nodded, adding girls like that made me glad I never reproduced cause I’d probably be a drunk right now…Shawna said the girl, who’s 18 or so, had tried to date her son who is four years younger which didn’t go over well with Shawna at all.

“But I let her hang out for a while, at the house tho,” she said. “So my son could see what a loser she was. If you tell him you can’t see her he’s going to see her anyway.”

Did it work?

“Yeah, he stopped asking her over…Plus me hissing at her probably gave her a clue, too.”

Reporting for duty at Hotel A tonight Nicole said she is still all set to start moving into her new house Sunday…She said the rent is paid in her current place through the end of the month and that could have caused some money issues but one of her new roommates said the rent was paid on the new place till the end of the month so the rent karma worked out…One problem is Nicole doesn’t have a car and that will make moving difficult…Ol’ Sparrow would have offered to help but I sleep days and have the retailer and whatnot…The big thing is she is relieved not to have to worry about having her deodorant stolen anymore.

Later I gave Nicole some glass cleaner training…She had spent part of her shift cleaning windows – the pool is adjacent to the lobby and there are lots of windows – and she was out of window cleaner…Well, most hotels have dispensers for stuff like this so they don’t have to buy it by the bottle and I took Nicole to the maid’s room where they a dispenser for this…Select the cleaner you need, press the button and add water because it’s concentrated…Nicole fretted that it wouldn’t clean very good but we went back to the lobby and tried a test window and it earned Nicole’s seal of approval.

Sparrow Sleep Log: 8:30am Saturday morning until 2:30pm Saturday afternoon…Officially, I’m “surprised” I don’t sleep longer on Saturdays…I mean, when I went down this morning I’d been up for 26 hours, normal for Saturday morning, but so is waking up mid-afternoon, too….I think it’s because I’d had 24 hours of sleep since I got off work Wednesday morning, a nap and two nine-hour sessions, so it was hardly as if I was deprived.

Slept well, too, so well there wasn’t any waking up to use the can around noon or so, as there sometimes is, and I dreamt pleasantly tho don’t ask me what about because I seldom remember.

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…

Friday, April 13
One of the nice things about living up here is people give you processed wild game left and right…A while ago our friend Patty, from the retailer, gave us a pound of mountain lion, which she had shot, and processed herself…Now, I don’t really favor shooting mountain lions, they’re cats after all and cats are cute, but the cat was preying on some of Patty’s animals and in that case I probably would have shot it, too…The Wife made some mountain lion burgers and they were pretty good.

This week someone gave The Wife a buttload of elk…I even fried some up today for lunch before heading in for a shift at the retailer…In what has to be considered an upset, I managed to fry up an elk patty without setting off the smoke alarm, a claim The Wife, an expert cook, can’t always make…Given the choice, I think I’d prefer mountain lion, but elk is really good, too, especially when someone gives you ten pounds of it.

DO NOT OPEN FOOD IN LINE!!!…Good gravy, wait until you are, at least, outside the door before you start eating…We’ve discussed this before…Usually, the culprits are kids whose parents let them do whatever the hell they want at the retailer, but today it was a group of alleged adults that had a veritable buffet going in the self-checkout line…Chips, cookies, soda and just once I’d like to see their credit card declined so I can ask them exactly how they intended to pay for the crap they are eating.

Other winners who stopped by the retailer today were these two guys with BO you could smell five feet away…Ingrained BO, too, the type that heralds a lot of time outdoors…I was working my beloved Aisle 5 when the waddled up…The first guy was buying a birthday card and something else, some cream or salve or balm…He wanted to know how much the card was so I price checked it and told him $1.97…Wow, he said, that’s all and I said yeah and he said wow again and announced he was going to go find a nicer, more expensive card…His buddy, who also reeked from here to Leadville, also left because he forgot to buy coffee along with his dog food…The guys come back later and the wizard had upgraded to a card that cost almost $8 and combined with his cream/salve/balm he didn’t have sufficient cash to pay for it!!!…I am not making that up!!!…He had to borrow three bucks from his buddy, who barely had that in his wallet!!!

Early on I rang up this guy buying toilet paper…This is a pretty dull transaction even for this crap, but I include it because it reminded me that we were down to our last roll at The Shire…Immediately after the guy left the desk I hustled to the paper section and bought some toilet paper because I am at the age now where I forget things I don’t act on immediately…Then I ran out to put it in the car so I wouldn’t forget it in the store or breakroom…Usually The Wife takes care of this, but recall she is off house sitting so it is up to me to do things like this…I am also cleaning the cat box regularly instead of every now and then like I used to.

Lacey really let a great belch go in the break room today…She is sitting right next to me, too, in the row comfortable chairs to the right was you walk in…She had a table pulled up and I’m next to her watching MST3K on my phone when BOOM! out of nowhere a belch that probably set a Richter scale or two off…I mean, I spent four years on an old diesel submarine and even I was impressed…For her part, Lacy credited the soda she was drinking, but she drinks soda all the time and this was her first belch that I could remember.

This led me to note that I could belch on command and when no one commanded me to belch I mentioned it again, and again until Lacy commanded me to belch which I did because I’ve been able to belch on command since I was a boy…It wasn’t Belch of the Year, certainly not on par with Lacy’s, but it made her smile and seemed to impress her.

Sold several bikes today..Kiddie bikes are priced to move right now at $25 out front and the first sale was a fiasco because they are locked up and nobody knew the combination to the lock…This is hardly a surprise but I saved the day by going out front, noticing it was a combination lock and trying, just for funsies, our four digit store number as the combination and voila that was it!!!…I ask only to serve.

Nicole was at Hotel A when I got there after my shift at the retailer…Recall last week her big news was she was scoping out a new place to live and she was pleased to report they picked her…She said she and the gal who was coordinating the new roommate search hit it off so well they ended up at a bar before even going to the house…Nicole’s big concern, of course, is that nobody break in and steal her deodorant and she reported her new roommate guaranteed that wouldn’t be a problem.

Nicole’s a good kid…Originally from Wisconsin, she could relate to the story I told her about the time I saw a concert on the lawn of the state capitol in Madison (actually I’ve done that twice with different women but don’t tell anybody)…She has also lasted longer than the last couple of desk clerk wizards we’ve hired and hopefully, she’ll stick around for a while.

Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 9pm Thursday night (more or less) till 6am Friday morning…6am is a bit earlier than I wanted to wake up because I will be up till 8am or so Saturday morning, but I slept a lot and I slept well so I will be OK…I put some coffee on and immediately settled in for a productive morning working on a couple of writing projects.

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…

Thursday, April 12
Got the first yard work of the season in today…I started by raking some sticks and small tree branches from the front but soon enough The Wife pulled me for duty in the back garden…This was tuff work at time because my job was to use the four-pronged thingy to turn over the soil, both in the garden and in the strip between the garden and the fence and there are rocks a few inches down (we think there was a rock bed many years ago) and some of the roots were tuff to dig up…Also, I kept stepping on the rhubarb plant, which bravely survived the winter though my beloved artichokes did not.

The artichokes were a treat last year…If your only frame of reference for artichokes is eating the leafy green part you are missing out because when you let them bloom they turn a gorgeous purple and I’m hoping they come back this year…We had about a dozen blooming and they all bloom at different times, so we cut some down and entered four of them in the fair and they won the First Premium Ribbon, which hangs next to the Second Premium Ribbon The Wife won for her turnips two years ago.

After the garden was tilled The Wife went and got a sack of leaves from the side of the carport…I thought she was going to toss them in our trash bag but no, she spread them over the garden soil…I asked about this and she said the leaves had been aging for two years which made me laugh…Some people age scotch, my wife ages leaves.

The lawn will need to be mowed soon.

We suspect – strongly suspect – that the old coffee shop next door is going to be a car rental place, though our only clue is a sign in the back of the contractor’s pick-up saying “Dollar Rent-A-Car”…The edge of a small town might seem to be an odd place for a car rental shop, but the regional airport is, literally, three minutes away and it’s certainly close enough for shuttle service…We still haven’t seen anybody working there, though…The Wife and I were out mid-morning and we didn’t see anyone working there, despite the fact there is a large motorhome, the pick-up and the contractor’s trailer.

Did a full shift at the retailer today and not only was it slow, even worse it was boring…There were no bachelor purchases and I wasn’t even able to trot my trust line about scanning kids because they were half off this week.  

It looked the big excitement of the day was going to be the $2 bill I took in from someone paying cash for a money transfer to Honduras…We seldom see these and it didn’t last long because I soon issued it as change to someone else but then Anacinth ralphed right in the middle of Action Alley and that picked matters up a lot…I had just returned to the service desk from helping a customer find something and Anacinth was in the middle of a transaction when she looked at me and instructed me to take over…She looked terrible, too and she didn’t make it to the bathrooms which are located in the back of the store…We were denied the pleasure of hearing it, but then Anacinth popped her head around the freezer case and requested some towels and I took them and saw it.

I’ll tell you what, I dealt with ralph from time to time working casino security in Vegas…Usually, you’re OK seeing it but get a whiff of it and then it’s tough and I did everything I could not to even look at it….The days when barf is cool to look have long passed.

Then Mary gets in a thrilling conversation with a woman she knows (Mary knows everybody) and the woman is detailing every one of her illnesses and maladies and there is no shortage of them…Good gravy, this was tedious and I was only treated to bits and pieces of the conversation but evidently the lady was stretching known medical boundaries because her case has been referred to the CDC or the NIH or maybe the NCAA for all I know…Or care, really…I’ve never spent a day in the hospital and I have zero prescriptions but Mary likes chatting like this, but I got her out of it when I requested fives and ones for my drawer.

Sparrow Sleep Log: 10pm Wednesday to 7am Thursday morning…9 hours…I also snuck a four-hour nap in Wednesday morning and afternoon so I woke up pretty well rested and offhand I’m thinking we should top last week’s total by a couple-three 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…

Tuesday, April 10
Presided over my penultimate meeting of my Legion post tonight…I decided that four terms are enough and announced at the last meeting that ol’ Sparrow will not be running for yet another term as commander…When I was first elected commander pretty much anyone who wanted to be commander had been commander and the joke I was signing on for a life term, but I am pleased to report that is no longer the case…Our post has done a very good job of getting new members and Senior Vice Commander Natalie is ready to take over and while I could probably have the job as long as I wanted it, there is no reason to stifle future leaders. 

About 4pm or so Adjutant Jim gives me a call…I had just woken up and was sitting at my desk, with coffee, farting around online and Jim asks if I could get the post an hour or so early because he was having what he termed a “cow incident” at the ranch…While I preside over meetings Jim is responsible for the agenda and usually does most of the talking and he had some things for me in case he couldn’t make it…He said he was heading to the Post to drop them off while he waited for the vet to come out to the ranch…As it turned out, Jim made it right as the meeting started…Later he would say one of his cows was giving birth and the calf was coming out backwards…I know some pig farmers here and when that happens to them they reported they just reach right on up, grab some groceries, turn it around and wheel the little piggie out but evidently, you can’t do that with cows.

It was a fairly short meeting but we did get some work in on our Memorial Day ceremony at the cemetery…We do this very well – if you listen closely you can always here some weeping – and we are pretty well set on what we are going to do.

Some might recall that a couple of years ago we passed out flags to widows of veterans who died the previous year…I still remember me and VFW Commander Tony passing these out in a very moving ceremony…It was as useful a thing as I’ve ever done and I well remember it…Everything was in sharp focus, commonplace objects were significantly refined, a sensation that doesn’t come around all that often…Last year we had a riderless horse that more or less behaved and boy, that was moving, too.

This year we could find no reason not to do both…There are five veterans who have died recently and the riderless horse is available and we are even throwing in a drummer to drum out cadence for us.

I so enjoyed distributing flags I announced that because this will be my last Memorial Day as commander I will be part of the flag distribution regardless of whatever other duties I may have…Last year I was a sentry in the changing of the guard ceremony, mainly because I can still fit into my uniform and I also announced if I do that again provisions must be made to accommodate me issuing flags…I don’t normally treat the post to raw displays of my power like this, but I feel strongly about this. 

My final meeting as commander will be next month when I preside over elections…Our installation ceremony will be in June, so I guess I will preside over that, too, at least until the new commander is sworn in.

I know I declared winter over last week, but I am still wearing my quilted pants…It’s still below freezing at night and they’re pretty comfortable pants and I’ve seen no reason to change them yet…For things like this you gotta trust your instincts…Last week I wore a pair of the Dickies I wear when it warms up and while it’s not that cold it still felt funny so I only wore them that once…The quilted pants will let me know when it’s time to put them away for the season.

Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 8:30 Tuesday morning until 3:30 Tuesday afternoon…Seven hours, not too bad and it might even be a little more than that because I was home well before 8am and crawled right into bed and did a little reading but not too much so the exact total might be seven hours and 15 minutes but the official tally in the Sparrow Sleep Log Book (SSLB) is still going to be seven 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.

It was, and remains, 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 9
There was a new guy at Hotel B when I reported for graveyard duty Sunday night…His name’s Jess and because nobody tells the part-time night auditor squat I didn’t know about him.

Let me tell you something, you go to work and find someone there, you wonder if you’d been canned…There’s no reason for ol’ Sparrow to be canned – night auditors who show up every night and work on their personal writing projects religiously do not grow on trees – but you never know…He still didn’t know some things, like how to drop money a cash customer gives you…This happens a lot in this business…I’m sure he’d been trained on it, but he hadn’t done it for reals yet and it was a simple matter to show him…As it was, the guest had also checked out and Jess didn’t know how to handle this either…The correct thing to have done was nothing…Thank the guest for choosing us for getting his quickie in and I’ll take care of the rest…As it was, Jess meant well and tried to adjust his folio which ended up showing the guest owed us $600, but that was easy to take care of, too.

In other Hotel B news the scanner is running normally now, too…Kathy obtained some fairy dust and sprinkled it and we can now scan multiple documents at the same time, instead of having to them individually…Since I will whine about anything, I am lauding the fact this is saving me all of 15 minutes over the course of an eight hour night. 

There’s some evidence work is being on the lot next door to The Shire…Many years ago there was a coffee shop there…Based on the old, worn sign it was named GG’s…It was probably a pretty smart looking building in its heyday, there’s a windmill high above the front door and a long cover extending out for cars to park under, probably for bellhop service, which gives you an idea how old it is…Anyway, the GG’s sign has been taken down – tossed in a pile of other detritus – and though we have yet to see actual people working there it is plain something is being done. 

I went looking for some 5×8 cards at the retailer Sunday night…I keep some on my desk because I write crap and I’ve got a Congressional campaign to run and there are times when I need to write things down because I’m old and can’t remember squat anymore…The problem was they are completely redoing the stationery department – called flipping in the trade – and my treasured 5×8 cards were not in their usual place.

I was standing there staring at their usual spot weeping when Department Manager Carol came up and asked what was wrong…I told her and after she dried my tears with a tissue she said they hadn’t been out back out yet and were conveniently being stored in the back until the makeover was complete and she went and got me some…She did not have a logical answer to my query as to why there was such a pressing need to redo the stationery section, either.

The retailer does this crap all the time and it is common to take a customer to go find something and not find it where it was last time, especially with seasonal items…Or to find items in multiple places…For example, toilet brushes can be found in hardware (the really good ones), with the cleaning supplies and in the home furnishings section…There might even be some in the dairy case for all I know.

Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 9am Monday until 4:30pm Monday…Satisfactory…I could have gone longer but the cat woke me up, which is rare because she wanted her canned yummies…With The Wife housesitting and me keeping odd hours she’s been getting yummies pretty much whenever she whines for them and I don’t want to encourage this behavior so I didn’t give her yummies right off…I made coffee and generally enjoyed morning routine at leisure and eventually she dined on the dry food she always available.

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…

Sunday, April 8
Boy, the cat was really crying for her canned yummies before I was even in the door this morning…It was as if she’d never eaten before and I could hear her on the porch before I even opened the kitchen door because both The Wife and I had forgotten to issue the cat her nightly ration of canned yummies before both of us scooted out the door (recall she is housesitting in town) Saturday night…The cat was so pissed about the entire matter she knocked over the trash can in the kitchen, the usual sign we had been derelict in our duties…Recall she usually gets yummies at night, but mainly so she wouldn’t kill me when I slept, I immediately authorized a morning ration.

Got some solid Aisle 5 time tonight at the retailer…Back when I was a cashier I loved working Aisle 5 for some reason but I don’t work it too much now that I’m at the service desk but there we had few cashiers tonight but service desk clerks out the wazoo, so I spent virtually all my four hours shift there.

Had a decent bachelor purchase!!!…A guy in his 30’s come up with a box of Cheez-Itz, a couple of packages of the cheapest hot dogs we had and the obligatory packages of 88-cent buns because you can’t eat hot dogs with your bare hands…He also had a couple of boxes of shells and cheese, the leading national brand, too, which was heartening to see because there’s a big difference between the leading national brand and the house brand and it is worth it to fork over the extra buck or two…Plus it’s good for morale, knowing you’ve earned enough the past couple of weeks to get the good stuff…Long-time bachelors know cheap hot dogs are OK, but not cheap mac and cheese, unless you’re really broke.

Right as I reported for duty this punk kid struts up and announces he left his $20 cash back in one of the self-checkout registers…He said it just happened – like 15 seconds ago – so it was unlikely there was time for another customer to use the machine and his implication was one of the thieves masquerading as employees here had to have taken it…He shrugs his shoulders flippantly gives me this smarmy, privileged smile indicating I was put on this earth to make this right…I would have loved to have smacked him, but I turned it over to my supervisor, Sir Thomas…He went and checked the machine to make sure it hadn’t jammed and when it hadn’t all there was to do was tell the kid to take better care of his money because there was nothing we could do for him…We gave the kid credit for realizing a lost cause when he saw one…He turned and left, though he wasn’t happy and Sir Thomas and I both suspected he took his $20 and was trying to scam another $20, tho he didn’t care enough to go check video coverage.

Sergio is a pretty funny kid who is a stocker and I was walking past the lower level break room when I heard him talking about the Marine Corps as if he’d been it…So I sashay into the break room and ask and he said yes and I said I was in the Navy and we gave each other some shit because that’s what sailors and Marines do…Then I asked him if that earring he was wearing was issued by Chesty Puller – legendary Marine – and he said yes and invited me to perform a physical impossibility on myself.

Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 9:30 Sunday morning to the 3:30 Sunday afternoon alarm…Six solid hours, not even waking up to use the can…I am still not completely caught up, but I will take care of that tomorrow…Again, the going to sleep time is reckoned based on the time I stop reading and turn off the light and en educated guess on how long it takes me to get to sleep…Maybe I should get one of those FitBits The Wife has…It tells her to the minute how long she slept…I’m not entirely sure how it knows when The Wife starts sleeping…Maybe it can hear when she starts snoring.

Last week total was 40 hours over six sleep sessions, 6.66666666 hours per session, a bit less than we’re looking for frankly, but now we have a base figure to work from…I know you appreciate that as much as I do.

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…

Saturday, April 7
One of the benefits to working at Hotel A is my relief only has to walk a few feet to get to work…There is an apartment immediately behind the front desk – it also has outside and hallway access so the night auditor can’t tell what time, and who with, the GM gets in – but Dave left a couple of weeks ago and Becky and Kathy, who work the desk here and at Hotel B moved in with their men.

And Becky was still late today!!!…I am not making that up!!!…At about 7:05 she pops her head out and advises her alarm had been set for the wrong time and she’d be right out…All right…And, actually, getting relieved 15 minutes is pretty close to right on time considering a wizard named Austin was sometimes two hours late, which really annoyed me.

At the retailer tonight I was putting some stuff away in automotive when I made the mistake of asking a gentleman if he needed help finding anything…He said yes, and proceeded to ask me questions about what fluids to put in his motorcycles to keep water out of the gas tank and whatnot…Or something like that…Regular readers of this crap know what I don’t know about cars and, needless to say, motorcycles, would make a good tech manual…He repeats his question and then points out a couple of additives, leading national brands that even an idiot like me recognizes and suggests they just might be exactly what they are looking for…I was relieved because this meant he was merely looking for reinforcement for what he had probably already decided to do…So I picked one of them up and read the label (a leading technique here at the retailer when you don’t know what the deal is with something) and the label claimed to do exactly what he needed so I nodded knowingly and immediately gave it the Sparrow seal of approval and urged him to buy several bottles just to be on the safe side…He thanked me profusely and I asked him if there was anything else I could do for him and fortunately, he said no and I fled before he could change his mind.

I got some time on my treasured Aisle 5 today…Recall this where you go when you want to tobacco stuff and one of the things we sell is a really gross plug tobacco product called Days Work…Well, we don’t actually sell it because we haven’t sold one in 14 months, but we offer it for sale…I know it’s been 14 months because I sold the last one and stocked the new shipment a bit later, which resulted in a new box plus a loose plug on the shelf…They are still there and they are all stale and hard as a rock and I should probably notify someone they should be sent back.

In other Aisle 5 news from tonight, a co-worker who had the night off came thru with a friend of hers…They are both Jamaican, tall and sturdy and the co-worker has a bosom that requires a separate introduction…I mention this because they were buying these really dainty panties that were on sale for a dollar and since I had to scrounge around to find the barcodes it was hard not to notice the word CHEEKY on the label and I was wondering, you know, who they were for because they would not fit these ladies…I think they might be sending them back to family in Jamaica…None of my underwear has cheeky on the label. 

Since I had time to kill, I went to the hotel early…Tho ski season is still going, conditions aren’t all that great and we are not busy…Nicole left me a slice of pizza…God bless this girl…I get left food at both hotels fairly regularly and everyone who leaves me stuff has their spot in heaven secured…She said Becky had actually left her some and she ate three pieces and left one for me…Later, she put some corn dogs out of her backback and transferred them to a plastic bag…Christ, I told her, I have no idea how she stays trim – she is really fit – because I gain weight merely looking at food like that

Nicole also reported she has a new house prospect…Recall she’s mad at her roommates because they keep stealing her deodorant and tomorrow she is going to look at a four-bedroom house downtown currently occupied by three other girls…I wished her luck because the rent was doable on what we make, rare for here because this is a ski resort town and sometimes it can be downright impossible for working people to find an affordable place to live.

Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 11am Saturday morning until 2:30ish Saturday afternoon…These are completely unsatisfactory numbers…I had been up for over 24 hours when I hit the sack and for some reason I could not fall asleep…I have some zero clue why…When I did fall asleep I was up three hours later to use the can because I’m old now and use the can constantly and I was unable to fall asleep again despite the fact I still a couple of hours before I had to get 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 18th century British novel of the same name.

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Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…

Friday, April 6
This really happened:

I’m courageously manning the service desk at the retailer and a guy comes up and presents a torn up payroll check for cashing…I am not making that up!!!…Well, actually he took the pieces out of a plastic bag and asked if he had any options…He didn’t demand to exchange it for cash…Good thing, too, because I would have had to’ve said no…Apparently, his employer had torn it up in front of him for reasons which were neither explained nor asked for…I like to think I have concern for my fellow humans, but the boss didn’t tear the rip the check up because the guy had just been named Employee of the Month and I didn’t really care anyway. 

He was blabbing about this when his girlfriend stepped in, successfully warding off stroke…She said the bank told her if the routing number and account numbers could be made out they could do something…All right, I thought, go to the goddamned bank…I said well, that’s probably true, but we’re not able to that, we require the check to be in one piece so the scanner can read the routing and account numbers…Eventually, they went and bought some tape and the dude reported he called the bank again so he could verify what they’d already told him, and they were going to take it there.

Saw one of the three people on this planet I have some zero use for today…I saw him at the entrance and turned the other way hoping he was here to buy something and not bother me, but he made his way to the desk and I was the only one actually standing at the register and the best way to get him out of my hair quickly was to serve him…He wanted to return a box of light bulbs that were broken…All right…He then went to the light bulb section to get a replacement box and usually you wait for the person to come back but I did everything while he was gone, easy enough since he was getting an identical box…I scanned the broken light bulbs for the return, then scanned them again for the exchange because the barcode is identical and I even forged his signature and when he came back all I had to do was hand him his new receipt and tell him to have a good day even tho I didn’t really care if he had a good day or not…If, at the appropriate time, I was given a choice between heaven and hell I’d first ask where he was…The other two people I have no use for are lazy sports officials in another city.

Very early on in the shift, I bought a jar of peanuts for thru the day snacking in the breakroom…I had them at the service desk until I needed them and Mic asked if I was going to share them with him…I told him no, of course not, there were currently no plans to share my peanuts – dry roasted and salted – with him…We really shouldn’t be eating at the service desk, anyway, I told him and, besides, I didn’t really like him, which is untrue and made Mic laugh…Mic said he liked to eat peanuts, especially when they were dry roasted and salted, because they made him thirsty, which reminded him to drink his water…I told him with a straight face that I couldn’t really care less if he died of dehydration which was funny because, as noted, English is Mic’s seventh or eighth language and he may not have completely understood the dehydration concept.

I got recognized today too!!!…This is always good for morale…The service desk is right near the entrance and I happened to be facing it when this older gentleman walks in and grabs a cart, which a lot of people up here call a buggy…I said good morning and he did too, then he calls me by name and asks if I am running for office again this year!!!…I am not making that up!!!..Sparrow, recognized by the electorate!!!…I told him yes, that a couple weekends ago I’d earned the Minor Party nomination for Congress and he smiled and said that’s good…Few know this, however, because the papers in the district all ignored the media release I sent out on the matter the day I was nominated, in plenty of time for the next day’s papers. 

Got to Hotel A for the start of the week working graveyards 40 minutes early…Nicole was working and she is fun to talk with…She likes poetry and even does some writing…She also whined about her roommates, who are currently out of favor for a variety of reasons which don’t need to be sensationalized here. 

Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 10:30 Thursday night to 6:30 Friday morning…I needed more sleep, frankly…I fought the alarm, which went off at 6am, hitting the snooze button three times.

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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