Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Monday, January 6
The Christmas tree is still up in the hotel lobby and the Christmas music is still playing…I don’t know why, either…Maybe they’re waiting for the three wise men to come and take it down…I don’t know…Today is Epiphany…Or maybe the home office wants us to leave it all up until Easter…No guests have mentioned it, tho.
One thing I didn’t do was alert anyone to this fact…I learned that lesson years ago…You open your yap and say hey, why’s the Christmas tree still up and then someone says wow, ol’ Sparrow isn’t all that busy overnights while we’re slammed, so let’s have him get started on taking the tree down…Boo to that…One, I’ll screw it up because I can never get anything back in their boxes in an orderly fashion, and besides, I don’t want to do it anyway.
One time in the Bachelor Days I left my tree up for a couple of months…This was a bad idea because it was a real tree and all the needles fell off, meaning ol’ Sparrow had to go and scrounge up a vacuum cleaner from the landlord and we were probably lucky the entire apartment complex didn’t catch fire.
The hotel wasn’t completely out of hand, but you could tell we were busy with some rowdies in house…There were some trash bags out by doors, plus some room service trays and one guy even left a single beer can outside his door…Like you, I applauded his obvious commitment to cleanliness but I was wondering why he placed one beer can outside???…Was that all they drank was one can???…Were there other cans left in the room and this one was tossed out because it caused offense???
There were three room service trays, so I went and got a luggage cart for them…There’s no reason for me to try and balance all three at once because I’ll wake up the entire wing when I drop them…And get this: I not only take the cart to the restaurant entrance, but I open the door and take the cart all the way into the scullery because I’ve learned that sometimes restaurant floors are slippery.
There were no less than two large pizzas in the back office, presumably left by a thoughtful guest, tho Assistant Front Desk Manager Devani didn’t say…They’re from a place downtown that usually doesn’t get out to the other end of town, but maybe the delivery guy got stiffed and left it…Who cares, it’s pizza for Sparrow…Devani took one home for her and her man and left the other one for me…It was actually a large, plus two extra slices and I had some and I am pleased to report it did not spike my blood sugar…You have no idea how good for morale that is, especially after realizing that booze keeps me awake for hours on end.
About the time the bars closed I had a couple of phone calls for guests requesting shuttle service from downtown and neither caller was particularly pleased to hear we didn’t offer one…Some do and they even have their own stop downtown and maybe they heard it about and thought we offered one, too…We don’t…The free city bus was still running, of course, but one guy muttered something about not wanting to do that while another didn’t even bother muttering and hung up on me.
Slow at the VSO today…The was an email from the VA trumpeting something or other and a job board sent me their latest openings…The local drug store and the TSA out at the airport seem to always be hiring, and I post them on my VSO website, but those generally aren’t the best fits for older vets.
I did get a call from a counselor at the junior college that has a branch up here…The counselor is actually at a campus south of here and there’s a vet going to school up here who will need some help researching her VA education benefits and could I help…Well, of course I can…I know squat about VA educational benefits, mainly because most of my clients are older than me, but I can always learn.
Late in the morning, I did make a couple of appointments…Finally…It’s been dead slow for a couple-three weeks, so it’s good be drumming up some trade…I also took care of the December report for the state detailing the services I provided…It was a dead slow month and while I am respectful of the sanctity due an official state form – who isn’t? – I may have padded some numbers a bit.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 1530 Monday until 2130 Monday…6.0 hours, not too bad for Monday, tho a bit less than normal.
Boy, the cat was all over me for a canned yummy ration…She would not stop meowing and towards the end you’d’ve thought she hadn’t eaten for weeks…I was strong, tho…Canned yummies are issued in the morning, either after I get up or after I get home from the hotel…They are not issued before I leave for the hotel…The cat, of course, realizes this, and favored me with a couple of tummy rubs before heading out.
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.
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