It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Saturday, April 17
I managed to get some laundry done this morning…Yesterday before retiring I called the loser at the front desk and verified they had laundry facilities and was told it cost $1.50 a load (not too bad) and there was a detergent vending machine there and it was a dollar a box…I was also told there would be someone at the front desk all night, so I didn’t need to go get change right now.
Armed with that knowledge (and up early, see Sleep Log below) I reported to the front desk and got some change and for some reason the young lady working nite audit didn’t know the laundry room sold detergent…She was curious and went to look and I went back to my room and got my dirty clothes bag and when I saw her next she reported there wasn’t detergent for sale in the laundry room.
Uh-oh…I had clean clothes for today, but that was it and while I could do laundry later right now was a real convenient time to wash clothes, so I went and investigated for myself because something didn’t seem quite right…The guy I’d talked to – who turned out to be the manager – was very clear: there was detergent for sale, for a dollar, in the laundry room and upon arrival in the laundry room I notice a vending machine that appears to have detergent for sale…So I put in four quarters and push the doohickey in and BOOM out pops a box of detergent…I don’t know what the girl’s problem was but as yours truly has shown from time to time, it can be surprising what a nite auditor doesn’t know about their hotel.
It was a relentless day on vacation…Ray came by and picked me up about 0800 and we went and had breakfast with his friend Jim and then Jim fled and we went and picked up Pastor Greg and went to the stadium to watch the latest crop of Iowa Hawkeyes practice football and then hold a scrimmage.
There had to be at least ten thousand people there!!!...I am not making that up…Ten thousand Iowans had nothing better to do on a gorgeous Saturday morning than go to football practice, but people who do not live in college towns cannot understand the fervor that compels people to get dressed up like it’s game day and go watch a scrimmage…God bless them…Not only that, we had primo parking too, and I do mean primo because Pastor Greg is recovering – somewhat nicely and only after much effort – from a stroke and he’d had the foresight to bring his parking placard and we were able to park right next to the south entrance…This despite the fact this specific parking lot appeared to be closed…Ray didn’t bother, accessing it via a sidewalk that sort of, if you squinted, looked like a driveway despite the presence of big, round barriers that appeared designed to prevent vehicular access.
(For the record Pastor Greg uses a cane and says walking and maintaining balance right now is like “being drunk without the benefit of booze”, a pretty good line that would be a Line of the Year candidate had I issued it.)
After that, we went back to Tipton and picked up Wendy and went to Davenport for dinner…There’s a franchise in this part of the country called Maid-Rite which specializes in what they call loose-meat sandwiches, which is more or less a sloppy joe without the sauce and, like its cousin the burger, you can get it a variety of ways…The ubiquitous crinkle fries were offered but I forked over the couple of extra bucks for the onion ring upgrade…They were not as good as the onion rings in Omaha that were created by Providence on the seventh day, but they did possess a moderate-to-high level of merit.
When we were back in Tipton we stopped at the retailer there…Like Mr Sam did in the old days, he set up shop on the outskirts of town (its store number is 841 and for those of you keeping score at home, the retailer yours truly used to work at is #1808) and Tipton hasn’t grown too much over the years and it is still on the northern outskirts of town…It is very small, perhaps a tad smaller than 1808, which means it is one of the smallest retailers in the country, something we discussed at more length than the subject probably deserved.
Ol’ Sparrow is starting to finalize the itinerary to Red Wing, Minnesota…Incredibly, there isn’t an Interstate directly connecting the two cities/towns and most of the way will be on two-lane roads, about four hours of driving…My friend Jeffrey, who lives in Wisconsin and will be there, too, has reported he has sufficient female Lutheran cousins coming down from the Twin Cities for a nice spades tournament.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 2030 Saturday until 0500 Sunday…8.5 hours for the night, a great start to the sleep week.
Proof that ol’ Sparrow will whine about absolutely anything – as if further proof were required – can be found in the fact yours truly initially whined when he saw the clock because it completely screwed up treasured early morning routine, but there was still plenty of time to get the morning’s project work in.
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 19th-century British novel of the same name.
Go Gaylon! Follow him on Facebook.
