It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Saturday, July 19
The Assistant Front Desk Manager (AFDM) was at the hotel when we reported for duty…Before if I could even ask about the bear that made its way in last nite, he asked if we’d heard about it…He was surprised when we said we had because, recall, we had heard about at the hospital.
The AFDM admirably filled in the details…The bear had come in the front door…Actually doors, because there is the outside door and the inside door and some wizard – there are no suspects – had placed the trash can that was outside the front door in the area between the doors!!!
I am not making that up…This is the dumbest decision in the history of trash…The theory, perhaps, was good: outside, the bears regularly attacked it, spreading trash all over the place, and there has been no instance of a bear setting off the automatic door…But good gravy, placing what is, in essence, a small dumpster inside is stupid, if for no other reason than the smell is atrocious.
So, the bear saw the trash can’s new location and was able to open the automatic door…The automatic interior door was activated too, and he wandered in to see what’s up…Romeo, working nite audit, called the Front Desk Supervisor, who told him to yell at the bear and make noise.
Romeo advised he was not going to do that.
The AFDM then said the bear apparently – and I am not making this up – turned right, went to the first hallway and then turned left, toward the GM’s office…He lost interest in that, tho, and returned to the lobby, went to the sundry stand, took a jar of honey and a candy bar, and left without paying for them.
Sigh…This could be a real problem one day, if you get a bear that can make its way inside and isn’t altogether happy with matters…This problem would be greatly mitigated – and perhaps solved – with bear-proof trash cans, but the hotel has never shown an interest in buying these because if they were, they would have them already.
Then 142 called needing some new bed sheets, which generally means some kid got sick or crapped on the current ones…The AFDM caught the squeal and after delivering them returned to the front desk and said they had already stacked the old, dirty sheets outside the door…He announced we would not be touching them.
Yay and Boo: Yay for sanitation…Who the hell knows what’s on those sheets, and besides, we have professional housekeepers who deal with soiled linens daily…Boo, tho, because we’re sort of classy joint and you can’t have linens – soiled or otherwise – in the hall…One, it’s unsightly for guests, and, two, they might smell, too.
So we picked them up while walking the hotel…It really wasn’t that big a deal because most people take care to roll the messy parts up in the middle, and it was a simple matter to get a big tub and wheel it to the room and carefully put everything in.
We are making progress with one of our forms in the gym…It involves keeping your hands in front of you, palms out, and twisting your entire body left and right as far as you can behind you…We picked up this exercise from one of those ubiquitous videos we are shown and the petit Asian woman who was demonstrating it was able to place both of her palms on the wall behind her…Hell, she was so flexible we’re surprised she didn’t a complete 360…So we tried it and we could barely get the edge of our leading hand to touch the wall, but we’re getting better and after a week or two of doing this we can almost get one palm on the wall, which is pretty good progress, tho we’re hardly Mr Tai Chi.
Both our shoulders continue to show mixed results…While we’ve some improvement with the shoulder therapy we’ve been doing, we seem to have plateaued, so we changed it up a bit today…We are still doing those deals where you put one hand the wall, pivot forward, and rotate the other arm like you’re waving our cleaning a window…To that we added new weight work, taking a 2-lb weight and doing a side lateral raise that goes all the way up…Usually they’re done till your arm is parallel, but we’re determined to find something that will eliminate our discomfort…Then we added holding the weight directly in front of you and then bringing it back until you can’t bring it back anymore…We did two sets of ten, and both shoulders felt good, tho a tad tired.
Today is our one-year anniversary with Bandit…Recall we got him two weeks to the day after having to put the cat down…We had been scoping out cats at both shelters for a few days, and there were a lot of options…So we let these muddy waters stand undisturbed for awhile and the day before everything crystalized….First off, Bandit was the senior kitty at the shelter in the next county, over four months…He had been left there after his previous owner died, and while the family’s other cat and dog had long since been adopted, Bandit remained, perhaps because his profile said he would probably do better as a solo pet…Well, hell, that’s right up our alley because ol’ Sparrow does better as a solo guy.
Tho we had emailed with the shelter once or twice, they had no idea we were coming in and were consequently surprised when we said we were here to adopt Bandit…A tech went to the cat room and put everyone but Bandit in their cage and when we entered the room Bandit walked immediately toward me and let me pick him up and we were both hooked…It took him three days to decompress and start eating and taking craps, but we soon fell into a routine.
Bandit is the complete opposite of the cat, too…He loves the cuddles the cat only tolerated, he knows the meaning of the word no – the cat used it as motivation – and he has zero interest in our food, content with his dry food and treats…We should probably get him to the vet for a check-up here, too.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 1030 Saturday until 1730 Saturday…7.0 hours for the day, and 53.5 hours for the week, a solid finale and a very good weekly total.
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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 19th-century British novel of the same name.
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