Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Wednesday, May 23
Long about 0515 or so Chef Sparrow is wrapping up breakfast preparations at Hotel B when the phone rings…It’s the lady in 225 reporting “the electrical socket isn’t working” and she can’t use any of her “appliances”…Exactly what “appliances” she brought with her wasn’t detailed, but I head on up in good spirits…I knocked and ID’d myself, but she had gotten my name wrong on the phone, thinking it was Sara and that I was a chick…I am not making that up and thru the door she advised she wasn’t comfortable having a man in her room…Fair enough, you run into this from time to time in the hotel racket, and I tell her I’ll have our head maid, Marie, contact her later in the morning…She frets about this, then decides I am not the last word in villains and opens the door…She’s middle-aged with longish brown hair with a pleasingly plain look about her…She then stands in the hall while I fart around with the electrical socket, which isn’t half as dangerous as it sounds…I press the reset button and everything is working again.
She then complains about some noise from last night, from the parking lot of the neighboring hotel…Tho a rather tedious sort, she realizes it’s not my fault, but is concerned nonetheless…Later, she called asking about breakfast, specifically if it “was all carbs” or whether we had some edible stuff, too…I told her, sure, there was the usual crap hotels trot out, but we also had oranges and apples and bananas and even yogurt…She gleefully announced the fruits were in favor but dismissed the yogurt because she “didn’t do dairy”.
I got home from work about 0745 or so and The Wife and I made immediate preparations to try the new restaurant in town…I put on the new pants, of course, and we get there and they’re closed!!!…I am not making that up…What kind of breakfast joint is closed at 0815 on Wednesday???…The Wife got out and looked at the CLOSED sign and reported they are closed on Wednesday – but open on the six days of the week I don’t really wanna go out for breakfast.
Later, The Wife left for another week at the retailer…I told her I would do my darndest to keep our really clean house clean…She was skeptical.
The new pants, which probably can’t be called new anymore, got quite the workout today…First, I went and got a haircut…There was a guy in the chair, but no one waiting and the guy in the chair, who I didn’t know, would not stop yapping…I was wondering how Manuel avoided slitting this guy’s throat because he was adding nothing to the sum total of human knowledge…Manuel is no fool, tho…He knows if the customer wants to blab his duty as barber is to blab right along with him and he does a good job of keeping quiet with customers that do not require blabbing.
My haircut was a tad shorter than I was looking for, but that was my fault because I didn’t specify ‘just a trim’ as usual, merely instructing Manuel to ‘make me look good’…I’ll remember to specify a trim next time.
Manual was fairly chatty himself…He asked about the campaign and I told him I was doing a good job of utilizing the resources I had but that no one really gets interested in campaigns like this until after Labor Day.
After that I headed out to the next county and lunch at my fave Mexican joint…There was a new guy working the counter and it didn’t look like he spoke the Queen’s English so I ordered in Spanish – not problemo for me, of course – but the cook was the same guy that’s always there and he actually came up and tapped the new guy on the shoulder and made a motion that in any language means I know what the deal is, which was kind of funny, actually.
After that, I went to the retailer there because we needed coffee…This one is a lot bigger than the one in town and they had my fave house brand donut shop knock-off and they had it in two containers, too…Of course, they had the 2-pound package I usually get but they also had it in 30-ounce cans, too!!!…I am not making that up!!!…Not only that, the can was two bucks cheaper for an ounce-and-a-half less…So I got the can.
Then this: I was inspecting both containers, just for funsies, when I noticed the package claimed to make 113 cups while the can, containing a bit less coffee, claimed to make 240 cups…I read both packages a bit closer and could not find a reason how less coffee could produce 127 more cups…So I livened up the department manager’s day by confronting him with my findings…He inspected both containers as if the future of the free world were at stake and then announced he had no clue why this was, either.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 0930 Wednesday until 1100 Wednesday…A brief nap…The Wife kissing me goodbye woke me up, which was the idea…I didn’t want to sleep all day, dammit.
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.
The Diary of a Nobody was inspired by the 19th century British novel of the same name.
Read Gaylon’s latest: We The People: Making America America Again at www.GaylonKent.com
