Read Free Fortnight continues!
Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Wednesday, October 31
Rather slow at Hotel C this morning…We had everything done by 0030 – I’m told 0130 is more normal – and after that Jessie and I settled in in the back office and I farted around doing some writing and she did some homework…She’s majoring in Sustainability Studies, or something like that, at the local college…I told her that as an old fart my idea of sustainability was turning off lights in the house – The Wife is notorious for leaving them on – and not wasting water and she chuckled and said that is actually pretty useful.
The front desk program they use is not difficult but neither is particularly intuitive, taking a couple-three or, in some cases, several more clicks to do something than the system Hotel B uses…For example, to check someone out you have to click Front Desk/In-House Guests/Search/Advanced Search then the room number then Options/Billing/Check Out…At Hotel B it takes two clicks and even that wastes time because you can also just punch in the room number, a really useful tool I’m surprised hasn’t been copied by every other hotel on the planet…The plus side is there isn’t a breakfast to set up for, tho I do have to make coffee for the lobby.
I went to the retailer after work to swap cars with The Wife so I could get her snow tires installed and I told her I was approved for the life insurance policy, and I told her the new amount, which double the old amount because I splurged, and that should I die too soon she would have more than enough to pay off The Shire and have enough left over to either blow or squirrel away for future use…The Wife actually began weeping when I told her this…She reminded me her mom had died homeless and that living on the streets, at times, was not completely out of the question in her first marriage and something she always feared…I told her this was no longer a worry, and this brought on the waterworks…Of course, this is as long as I die…Me living could result in something completely different.
The plan for the day was to walk the few blocks home after dropping the car off, nap, and then get the car in the afternoon…But the car was ready in an hour and I was still up when the shop called…I am always scared shitless when the shop calls before I’m expecting them, too.
Uh, Sparrow, we were swapping out your tires and we noticed your complete front end needs replacing…
But no, it was only Tommy the mechanic saying the car ready, tho he did notice we needed new wiper blades, but at their markup, I’d rather get them from the retailer and install them myself.
So the nap was put off until I got back with the car…The walks from and to the shop were really nice…A cold front moved in overnight and it was in the 20s this morning, so I put on the arctic coat and the watch cap and gloves and it was sunny and a gorgeous late autumn morning.
Of course, this is usually when I sleep, so I set the alarm for four hours later so I didn’t sleep all day and then my plan to go to the Mexican joint in the next county got mucked up because I was too lazy to leave the house…So I made a couple of hot dogs and there was some cheese lying around the refrigerator and I couldn’t remember the last grilled cheese sandwich I made so I made one of those, too.
Tho out of favor the past few years, grilled cheeses have a long history in the Sparrow family…My late brother and I made these all the time when we were kids and I made this one the way he liked them: slathered in butter and with his preferred three slices of cheese, which always annoyed Pa Sparrow who grew up in the Depression and while he hardly rationed cheese he thought three slices – with the third cut in half and put on the edges so you had Double Cheese Coverage (DCC) all around – was extravagant…For not having made one in years it came out wonderfully…Toasty, but still buttery moist, on the outside and nice and gooey on the inside…My brother would have liked it.
Then I ordered some snow tires for myself…Recall I never bothered to put the summer tires on this spring because last year’s winter tires, while not having another winter in them, did have enough left for the summer, tho now they are dangerously low…After no small amount of research I found a good set – defined as tires I would let The Wife drive on – for less than $350, a good deal…They’ll be here by the weekend and then I can have them put on and we will both be set.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 1000 Wednesday until 1400 Wednesday…A pretty good nap…In fact, I slept so well had I not set the alarm so I wouldn’t waste the whole day sleeping I would have wasted the whole day sleeping…With the nap we are at 24.5 hours for the week with a full night’s sleep coming up tonight.
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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