The Diary of a Nobody/March 19

Cheapskates, you made it…It’s Read Free Sunday (RFS) at The Diary. 

It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…

Saturday, March 19
It was noted last week that the downside to not relieving Amy anymore is that ol’ Sparrow is now obliged to make his own coffee and get his own water…Not only that, ol’ Sparrow is fussy enuff to prefer coffee be made a few minutes before relieving the watch and to that end, he’s been trying to leave The Shire a bit earlier than the usual quarter after…It wasn’t successful tonite, so coffee wasn’t ready until after yours truly had taken control of matters.

Right as I walked in the front doors I almost trip over this drunk staggering to his room…He had just left the bar and Assistant Front Desk Manager Q took note of it and immediately sashayed to the bar to discuss why this guy continued to be served despite the fact walking presented difficulties…It’s a valid question because bartenders don’t care; once a drunk’s out the door they’re not their problem anymore.

Recall yours truly had emailed GM Andy on this topic after my assault last month by a drunk who should’ve also been cut off…I didn’t follow up on it tho because either he did or he didn’t do it…If he did, great, the matter has been addressed if not, perhaps, resolved; if he didn’t, that’s OK, too; there’s no reason to pester him about it.  

(By the by, in Sin City everyone working a casino, even those not directly involved in the serving of booze, is required to take a course on recognizing the various levels of drunkenness…As I recall, it was fairly useful, with solid info on how booze affects the nervous system and how many drinks an average person can have over the course of an evening before they become completely obliterated…Of course, they made an acronym out of it: TEAM – Techniques for Effective Alcohol Management…And the training was easy enuff for even the dimmest of wits: drunks were graded like a stoplight: red meant no more, yellow meant, OK, a little more but we’re watching you, and green meant belly up, shall we make it a double?) 

Q was obliged to wait almost an hour for his taxi home, and I asked him what the deal was regarding the new schedule and he said Amy was having her usual family problems…Recall last year her sister took her kids sledding or something and the next thing anybody knows they’re stuck in a snowdrift and one kid dies and another loses a foot…Now, there are problems with a nephew, the son of her brother…This, of course, doesn’t necessarily explain why Amy changed shifts, but Q appeared to have considerable information on the matter, tho yours truly declined to query him for further information. 

At about 0330 a tall kid rings the bell, so yours truly trots out and he asks if we have a banana or an apple he could have…This isn’t a normal request and I ask if he’s OK and he says no, he has a migraine and needs something to eat and pizza or a Choco-Taco won’t do the trick…Well, heck, the restaurant generally has fresh fruit, so I go back and look and BOOM, there are boxes of bananas…I bring two of them out and the kid looks really grateful. 

The big news in the small-town real estate racket is two-fold: 1) according to a real estate site, the value of The Shire is now, barely, above 300K, and, 2) there is nothing for sale in our small town…There is a ranch out on what we call The Cog, but that’s it, nothing in town.  

300K for a small, 60-year-old log cabin on a fifth of an acre in a blue-collar small town is an insane figure if you ask me…Evidently being located right next door to a weed store is considered valuable by some…Recall The Ex and I paid all of 98 and change for it in 2014, so it’s more than tripled in value since then…This is good for morale, of course, tho since ol’ Sparrow and the cat will both probably end up dying here it’s more academic than anything.  

Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 1330 Saturday until 2130 Saturday…8.0 hours for the day, and 52.5 hours for the week. 

I don’t know why it took so long to fall asleep any more than you do, but it’s the first 50-hour sleep week of the month and we’ll take that.

———

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. 

 Gaylon’s books can also be found at The Reading Salon.

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