It’s Read Free Fortnight at The Diary.
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Monday, May 31
Almost interesting while counting the cash drawers tonight WAS yours truly solving the perplexing mystery of how to save the cash drawer spreadsheet…The past few nights I’d tired and couldn’t.
I’d downloaded the one Tammy had sent me because the old ones were lost in the tech refresh and the past couple of nights I’d failed in attempts to save it to my desktop, which is where it was stored…I needed an Admin’s permission or some such nonsense…This really wasn’t that big a deal, but Tammy’s sheet was dated for earlier this month and time-stamped for 0900, meaning the AM box was checked…This meant not only was ol’ Sparrow obliged to change the date – which he would have to, anyway – but to change the time and check the PM box every time, because the previous entries weren’t saved, thereby taking up valuable seconds of time and presenting a man-sized nuisance for someone as on the go as a nite auditor is.
Tonight tho, Mr Technology here brilliantly tried to save it to Documents and not the Desktop and BOOM there it was, a saved cash drawer spreadsheet.
Another mystery is whether the WiFi code is switching on the first of the month…Usually it does, a series of five numbers, but earlier this month there was some sort of problem and the code was changed after a week or so to five letters.
This is good to know because it affects whether or not ol’ Sparrow makes new key packets or not because he puts stickers that have the current code in the packets and if the code is changing there is no reason to make more because they’ll end up being tossed out, which would be a waste of key packets…On the other hand, if the code is staying the same, there’s no reason not to make fresh packets, but no one seems to know.
It is still taking me until 0100 to complete the nite audit and return from walking the hotel…Part of the reason is I take very leisurely meal breaks, refusing to work while enjoying Spinach a la Sparrow…I usually start it while the nite audit is running and the spinach takes six minutes to microwave and I enjoy it at leisure and the whole process usually takes upwards of 20 minutes.
I had some time to kill after knocking off the hotel so, among other things I go the car wash at the gas station near the retailer…I’d sworn I never would again years ago, but they’ve redone it and I thought what the hell, try it out but evidently “completely remodeled” means “still blows chunks” because it was still a below-average car wash because a touchless car wash can never get a truly dirty car even decently clean, it can only do so much because there’s nothing scrubbing the stuff that’s been there for two months…Still tho, the worst is off and so is most of the rest, so it looks better.
Silas was at the post for the pre-ceremony muster…He’s a kid who got out of the Navy a couple of years ago and was in his dress blues, complete with two rows of three ribbons and a seventh ribbon on the third (top) row, some pretty good fruit salad for one enlistment…He greeted me by calling me “the submariner” in a funny, scornful manner (he was sentenced to serve on an aircraft carrier aka “skimmer” aka “target”’).
Well, it’s on, as he well-intended, because fucking with fellow sailors is as fun as it is time-honored and he noted that while I was wearing the enlisted submarine insignia (known as dolphins), ol’ Sparrow otherwise was not displaying wearing any medals or ribbons because outside of a unit commendation, ol’ Sparrow is not authorized any ribbons or medals.
– No, Skimmer Puke, they didn’t pass them out with the rations when I was in.
– They had medals in the Civil War, didn’t they???
This was pretty funny, tho I ignored it and started inspecting his fruit salad, which included the enlisted surface warfare badge…I’d say it was the skimmer equivalent of dolphins, but nothing is the equivalent of dolphins…Either you’re qualified submarines or you’re a fucking skimmer and, more to the point, either you qualified smoke boats or you’re a fucking nuke…Anyway, I recognized some of them, including the Marksmanship Ribbon and the National Defense Ribbon.
Wow, lookie here, you can hit the side of a barn with a .22 and you got out of boot camp.
(The Marksmanship Ribbon wasn’t issued when I was in, at least to us, and service in my era didn’t qualify you for the National Defense Ribbon, which is now awarded after successfully shining your shoes in boot camp.)
This one was issued in a solemn ceremony after successfully beating off in the can prior to watch and your Surface Warfare Badge shows you can wave a fire extinguisher at the base of a Class C fire…
Don’t fuck with Sparrow…Few dish it out like he does.
Our Memorial Day ceremony was good…It didn’t include a riderless horse or the presenting of the national colors to widows or even yours truly in uniform for the changing of the guard ceremony, but reading biographies of the three who are local Legion and VFW posts are named for is nothing to sneeze at, and there were other patriotic flourishes, too…The crowd, tho, wasn’t what we’ve had in past years, but you get passes this year because it is still the Virus Era.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 1530 Monday until 2130 Monday…6.0 hours for the day and 14.0 hours for the week, a figure regular readers of the crap know is a pretty good total for Monday.
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.
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