It’s Read Free Sunday (RFS) so, please, enjoy today’s entry with Sparrow’s compliments.
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Saturday, March 26
Shortly after taking over a workingman calls looking for rates for Monday nite…Well, the system has a variety to choose from $190, plus tax, for losers who are not rewards club members to $166 for members, to $29.99 for hot babes…The guy sounds like a regular guy, so I offer $165, plus tax, for a room with one king bed…He considers the matter and it’s plain he doesn’t think it’s too bad…He asks what kind of availability there was because there are still some details to work out and I say availability’s pretty solid…From his standpoint; we have a couple of dozen rooms available.
So I walk in and it’s $165???
Oh, God no…Regular readers of this crap know rates – at least those quotes by yours truly – are whatever I say they are and what I offer you this morning can bear absolutely no resemblance to what Assistant Front Desk Manager Q or Amy or Chris may offer you on Monday afternoon…I told the guy, look, the system is offering a variety of rates and $165 is merely what I chose to offer you right now…You walk in and some zany desk clerk could offer a higher rate or, as likely as not, a lower one.
But we’re in the ballpark, tho???
That’s not an unreasonable way to put it, told him so, and said when you’re sure of your plans, call and reserve, just to be safe.
Around 0100 there’s someone at the front desk, some chick who says “hey” very softly before deciding to ring the bell…I go out and you could tell, immediately, that neither one of us liked the other…It was one of those classic hate-at-first-sight deals…One, she had the nerve to be anorexically thin and nowhere near ol’ Sparrow’s wheelhouse…Plus, she had the generally tedious bearing you’d expect from someone who does not ring the bell first:
I’m sorry to wake you…
More instant spite…I do not sleep at work and do NOT like it when idiots presume I do…It’s not that I’m above sleeping on the job – Lord knows that’s not the case – but do not make presumptions about me, thank you in advance…Still tho, I asked how I could best be of service, and that turned out to be selling her a candy bar.
The snow is starting to melt and for the past day or two ol’ Sparrow’s noticed a box on the front lawn at The Shire and this morning the timing felt right to go see what it was…I doubted it was for me and figured someone had discarded something from a car…I get close tho, and you can see “GNC” on the box and then BOOM, sudden clarity…They send me a supplement every month (auto-shipped, both for some modest savings and to ensure a continuous supply in case, when, ol’ Sparrow forgets to reorder) and the December shipment never showed up…Evidently, the dumbass delivery guy either 1) set in on the lawn and the covered it with snow, or 2) set it on the porch for the front door, which is never used, and the wind blew it away…Number two is the most likely scenario because this month’s shipment was also on the front porch…I have some zero clue why this is because everything has always been delivered to the carport’s kitchen door porch.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 0900 Saturday until 2130 Saturday…12.5 hours for the day and 50.5 hours for the week…Regular readers of this crap know there was a time when 50-hour sleep weeks were rare but now, of course, they’re the norm.
Yours truly would like to proclaim himself completely recovered from having been up for 42 strait hours earlier in the week, but he’s not…I was yawning within a few minutes of getting up and this continued until getting some coffee consumed…Still tho, 12 hours down is 12 hours down and is a huge step forward in getting back to normal.
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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.
It was inspired by the 19th-century British novel of the same name.
Gaylon’s books can also be found at The Reading Salon.
