Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Saturday, October 26
There was a pizza on the desk in the back office when I reported for duty…I suspect Brandon, who had left right as I pulled up, ordered it for himself and forgot about it, but maybe not…He may well have ordered it for his hard-working night auditor but there wasn’t a note IDing it as such, so I put it on top of the microwave, which is on top of the refrigerator…Perhaps someone will leave a note for me tonight with its ultimate disposition…It was a hell of a pizza: from the restaurant, with pepperoni and sausage, my favorite…Relatively fresh, too…Usually, this would result in no small amount of heartbreak, but all that melted cheese would give me gas and make it tuff getting to sleep in the morning, so I was happy as not to ignore it.
I was really moving product at the sundry stand this morning…A variety of stuff, too, not just the usual Choco-tacos…I moved those, sure, but also a variety of candy bars and our local potato chips, too, which aren’t too bad…There are only so many things you can do with potato chips, of course, but kettle cooking them is at the top of the list…I even sold some of that infernal iced lemon cake…It’s selling pretty well on day shift, but this is the first I’ve sold in a while.
As sometimes happens, I could’ve have moved some cold ones, too, had I had them…About 0145 147 calls…He is drunk and desirous of getting drunker and requests a bottle of red wine as if he were calling room service and not the front desk.
– Sir, I’m sorry, the bar’s closed…
He sounded surprised…Based on his tone, I could tell he was expecting compliance.
– Pity that…
– I know, sir…
– There was a time when you could get a bottle of wine delivered to your room…
He then dropped a couple of f-bombs…Usually, this annoys me and would result in a reproach from ol’ Sparrow, but it was actually pretty funny.
– How about beer???…You got beer???…Anything???
This made me laff…You gotta be careful here because you never know how a drunk is going take things…They might think you’re laughing at them and not their funny line, but he muttered something or other and hung up…Later he calls back:
– Look, where I come from you can drink all night…
– Where do you come from, sir???
He mentioned three countries, Canada and two in South America.
– Look, if you could sneak in and get me even some beer I’d be happy.
I apologized profusely and said I couldn’t do that…It’s a lie, of course…I have a master key to the restaurant and could have easily have gone in and brought him a couple of bottles, but I like this job and am in no mood to lose it…It was tho, another instance where ol’ Sparrow could have nicely supplemented his night’s wages if he’d’ve kept a cooler of brewskis handy for resale.
The Wife made a really good dinner tonight: some pork ribs, which she boiled and had some plum sauce added at some point, and a potato soup that was really good…She made a point of showing the recipe card she used because the running joke in the eleven or so years we’ve known each other is we never have anything twice because she never utilizes recipes, preferring to follow her inspiration…Like some things, this is neither entirely true nor entirely false…There are some things we will never have again, but this won’t be one of them…After waving the recipe card in front of my face she returned it to the file box.
We’re nearing that time when ol’ Sparrow doesn’t see a whole lot of sunlight…It will improve somewhat since I am at the Veterans Service Office three days a week, but it was dark when I left the hotel this morning and darn near dark when I woke up.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 0900 Saturday until 1800 Saturday…9.0 hours for the day and a triumphant 48.5 hours for the week.
I almost didn’t make nine hours today…The Wife was farting around the kitchen and the smoke alarm went off at 1445…She was frying some bacon, which would later garnish the soup she made…I woke up, of course, and I was actually feeling pretty good…I was about ready to stay up but instead I rolled over: if I was still awake after a half-hour I’d get up…If not, we’d see what the rest of the afternoon held and the next thing anybody knows it’s 1830.
The monthly numbers are in too, and they ain’t too bad: a 48.4 hour\week average, just 15 minutes below August and September’s average and the roll three-month average is a hearty 48.6 hours.
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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