The Diary of a Nobody/September 30

Sure, Read Free Sunday (RFS) is a thing today.

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

Saturday, September 30
The big news is there was a new name on the computer log-in screen in the hotel’s back office…We have some zero clue who it is, either…It could be the new nite audit talent that’s allowing ol’ Sparrow to go to four ten-hour shifts a week or it could be someone from the home office…We tried to check the schedule but there wasn’t one up and Tammy wasn’t entirely certain who it was, either. 

We actually declined to rent a room to a guy tonite…First, he had that general look of someone trying to put something over…Then the ID produced caused us to raise an eyebrow…It had the usual stuff you see on ID cards: the photo matched and there was a birthday and whatnot and it was in Spanish and “Venezuela” was mentioned (or whatever they call Venezuela in Venezuela) but when we’ve seen a lot of IDs over the years and this one was immediately suspicious because plainly it was not issued by a government agency…First, it was laminated like a college ID card and no one has done that for ages…Two, it was not of a standard size, it was bigger than the usual credit card ID…But even issuing the good folks of Venezuela the benefit of the doubt that they still issue laminated, non-standard-sized IDs (some research showed they do, actually) there wasn’t a government seal or a jurisdiction anywhere on it…It was not an ID that would’ve gotten him into the country, that’s for sure, but that’s hardly our lookout. 

Still tho, a buck’s a buck and we were going to accept the ID but he couldn’t produce a credit card and who the hell travels internationally without a credit card???…He had his wallet open and it was plain he had sufficient cash to stay for a week if he wanted to but we told him no…Now, those keeping score at home know we routinely accept cash without a credit card but officially we’re not supposed to, so we were on terra firma in turning him away. 

This wasn’t the last foreign ID we saw tonite, either…A bit later two Mexican guys come in looking for a room and I quote them $200, plus tax…They live in the next county and work in town and instead of going right home after work they stayed in town to have some fun and had the good sense not to drive home and the ID the guy produced was a Mexican voter ID card…Well, we’ve seen lots of these over the years and “Identifacacion de Votar” is pretty plain even if you don’t have the Spanglish street cred we have…El Senor was very impressed with my Spanglish, too, asking where we picked it up and we said we used to have a novia that lived in Mexico and actually used to be a lot more fluent than we are now…This, of course, is relative and if he got the impression we used to be Don Juan and crap, well, we can’t help that. 

There was good strength in the gym tonite…Barely, tho, as the gorgefest that started Wednesday and didn’t end until a trip to the fast food joint this morning took its toll…As usual, the warm-up sets the tone, as these required a tad more effort than they should have for a regular workout…In fact, three exercises weren’t regular workouts at all: shoulder side lateral raises and bicep hammer curls were a barbell lower because reps nine and ten at the higher weights were barely meeting the standard in the first place and tricep cable pulldowns were halted after eight reps on the last set because of a pain in the right elbow…It was similar to one we’ve had in the past and at our age – any age, really – you take stuff like this seriously…There is no reason to force anything…We’ll see if it sticks around and obliges us to try a different tricep exercise. 

We had the gym to ourselves, too…Snow’s not too far away so maybe people were out having some of that “fun” we keep hearing so much about…Whatever…We had to get home to write this and besides, there was some rain coming in. 

Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 0900 Saturday until 1730 Saturday…8.5 hours for the day and 52.5 hours for the week, both satisfactory totals.

This was an excellent rest, tho those motorcycle gangster dreams we used to have popped up again…We have some zero clue why; I mean, we haven’t watched those shows in a couple-three months…And the dream seemed familiar, as if we’d dreamt it before, which seemed odd, but we’re not Freud, so what do we know???

———

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. 

Coming soon! Gaylon’s books in actual book form!

Share Gaylon! Go!
Share
This entry was posted in 2023. Bookmark the permalink.
Share