It’s Read Free Sunday (RFS) at The Diary.
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Saturday, November 5
Mr W was at the door when we reported for duty…Recall he’s the one who a while back got drunk here tho he wasn’t staying here and left his wallet and keys in the lobby and later his boss called wondering why he hadn’t come to work and we later saw him crawling out of the window of his car.
Anyway, he follows me in and he’s looking for Amy but Amy is on the phone and then she’s got stuff to tell me so we’ll be prepared for our nite’s labor(s) and all the while Mr W is hanging around the lobby like a puppy waiting for attention, presumably from Amy because we’re pretty sure he didn’t want it from me and when Amy insisted on finishing her nite rather than pay attention to his half-drunk ass, he rather petulantly up and left, which was kind of funny.
About midnite 262 calls to whine about their heater not working…Crap, because we are sold out and there’s no place to put anybody and there is little chance this turns out well…He accepts my offer to come look at it and on arrival we see the thermostat doesn’t have any power…Double crap…We would’ve gone triple crap but then we remembered there are portable heaters around here somewhere and we went off to find one.
It didn’t look good at first…First, we checked the housekeeping room behind guest laundry with no luck, and then the housekeeping office and laundry room didn’t produce one, either, and neither did the storeroom next to 102…Triple crap because now we’re running out of options, but we managed to find one upstairs, in the storeroom next to 201…Whew, because there is no way you can song and dance your way out of this puppy: you are going to have to deliver bad news and it’s going to cost the hotel some money, at least half the room rate and probably more…The guests – two guys, probably father/son – seemed to take it for granted ol’ Sparrow would be able to crap a heater.
There were a couple of laffs with Javier the Porter…He’s in at 0500 and was in the New Front Desk Area (NFDA) cleaning and, as usual, he asks if there was a lot of work (mucho trabajo) for me overnite and if we were tired (cansado) and today I told him that yeah, he happened pretty tired and then in Spanglish told him there really wasn’t that much work tonite but it’s fun to whine anyway.
It was plain Javier didn’t know what whine met and it would, rather hilariously, turn out that he thought I’d meant wine…So I did some research into translating “whine” into Espanol – clearly ol’ Sparrow’s Spanglish was no help here – and came up with quejarse and then proceeded to put fists in front of my eyes and move them as if we were weeping, which Javier found pretty funny…Ol’ Sparrow then attempted to conjugate the verb, evidently without success to judge by further Javier laughter.
We were up and in the gym earlier than usual for Saturday (see Sleep Log below) and despite a bit less sleep than expected, we were a tad stronger than Friday morning…Recall we only moved 35 lb bicep hammer curls and the 50 lbs (total) on the squat machine eight times when ten is the standard for the final set, but we met the standard today, ten reps for each one…Shoulders were 27.5 on the last set and we benched 180 ten times, too.
The big news was on triceps, where some ding dong was not doing anybody any good on the cable machine…He was staying on the machine between sets and he had this self-satisfied look that said “look at me, I’m doing triceps” and I wanted to smack him…Instead, we did the old tricep pulldowns, tho we didn’t do max weight because, recall, this specific workout causes some discomfort in our left elbow…Still tho, the triceps got some love…The gym was packed and we dispensed with cardio and a soak.
Going in this early wasn’t ideal because it means we have to drive into town twice when usually on Saturdays we’re in the gym later and kill the couple of hours before the hotel at work, which we’re not really complaining about because put the time to good use…It occurred to us, tho, that we could work out at the old high school in our town, which has been turned into a nice community center…We’ll keep this in mind for next time…It costs $5 to drop in, but that’s about what a trip into town costs in gas, so it all evens out…Plus you don’t spend a half-hour each way on the road, you spend one minute each way…The only fly in the ointment is they close at 1700 on Saturday but if we’ve slept that long, we’re heading into town anyway.
The big question is does the community center have a squat machine???…Recall Ryan sold all his equipment from the old gym to the small town, but we can’t remember if he had a squat machine or not because we weren’t squatting back then…Even if they don’t, tho, it’s OK…They do have a Smith machine and you can do squats on that.
Even with going into town, it was a great nite…We were home by 1800 which gave us 3.5 hours to kill before heading into the hotel and it was spent constructively, doing some project work.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 0830 Saturday until 1400 Saturday…5.5 hours for the day and 47.0 hours for the week, a dismal total but we woke up feeling rested, preferring to head into the gym rather than execute a patented Sparrow RollOver (SRO).
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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.
Coming soon! Gaylon’s books in actual book form!
