Yes, it’s Read Free Sunday (RFS) at The Diary.
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Saturday, January 1
An alarm was going off in the back office when yours truly arrived at the hotel and, not too surprisingly, Amy wasn’t at the front desk…She’s back a bit later, tho, with Gavin the Tech and then Gavin starts farting around with the back office alarm panel and then Amy leaves, but not before reporting it’s the system acting up, there really isn’t an emergency anywhere.
So Gavin – a tall, dorky sort – goes to alarm in the housekeeping office and then comes back and says he’s got everything in order and then the alarm starts going off again…I am not making that up…I go to the panel and Gavin’s standing there and he keeps hitting the SILENCE button which just set it off more…Gavin advised that I should devote my time to standing there and shutting off the alarm which wasn’t very practical because ol’ Sparrow has duties and besides, what’s the point because the silencer isn’t working anyway.
So he wanders off to the alarm panel in the housekeeping office again and the alarm won’t stop but it’s a short beep and not continuous so you can live with it and then the alarm shuts off again and eventually he makes his way back to the front desk…You do have questions here: one, is the alarm going off because of an emergency???…Are guests being inconvenienced???…Will silencing the alarm prevent me from hearing a real alarm, presuming the alarm is actually ever silenced, of course.
No, no and no and then Gavin, bless him, went into no small amount of technical detail that yours truly didn’t understand at all…Good gravy, I must’ve constituted his social life for a week because just as he would seem to be wrapping up BOOM he gets his second wind and has more tasty technical tidbits (TTT) to pass along…Eventually, he runs out of stuff to say and leaves.
We did good business tonite: there were the first couple of $400 rates and room revenue was a Sparrow-era record (SER) of a bit over 41K…The end-of-year numbers were good, too: room revenue was up from 3.4 to 4.24, the average daily rate (ADR) was up from 133 to 143 and occupancy just missed 70 percent, up from last year’s 60 percent.
And there was a hooker sighting, too…Recall yours truly as significant professional experience with hookers and knows one when he sees one…I was leaving the lobby heading out to walk the hotel and I see this pretty, attractively attired girl heading into the lobby and I ask if I can be of service, noting I’m stepping away from the front desk…She says no, she’s meeting someone.
Tsk, tsk…I bet you are…Part of me wanted to go back just to see who it was but the other part didn’t care and ol’ Sparrow headed out on his rounds…There weren’t any complaints about getting robbed and one must suppose the transaction went off without a hitch.
The Portfolio continues to show modest declines and yours truly is starting to think about getting out and getting some professional advice to invest the proceeds/remnants in.
And ol’ Sparrow is sickies again…Recall my right cheek was swollen for most of November’s vacation and something started setting in New Year’s Eve and today yours truly wasn’t feeling too good when he hit the sack this morning (see Sleep Log below)…It got worse, too…Sleep was fitful and dreams were disturbing and I woke up exhausted and couldn’t speak too well.
What I really needed was some chicken noodle soup…Of course, Bachelor Sparrow didn’t have any in the cabin and the last thing I wanted to do was get dressed, walk out into the bitter cold and drive to the market…But I did because that was preferable to sitting there miserable…I bought three family-size cans and three single-serving cans and cooked up a family-sized one, took only the broth and BOOM the results were immediate…Quicker than immediate because results were felt even as the broth was being taken!!!…I am not making that up…It worked so well yours truly was able to go back to bed and get a modest nap in before heading in for the hotel.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log:
1000 Saturday until 1600 Saturday
1900 Saturday until 2100 Saturday
9.0 hours for the day and 48.5 hours for the week, not the 50+ we’ve become accustomed to, but still not too bad…God bless all of you.
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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.
Gaylon’s books can also be found at The Reading Salon.
