It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Wednesday, January 11
Blue and pink!
I am not making that up.
After seemingly eons using purple ink and pink highlighter – with the rare respite for green ink – to accent his cash drawer spreadsheets (CDSSs) with, Mark took all of us – and perhaps even himself – by surprise when he used blue ink for his CDSS signature tonite…(It looked dark blue, but could’ve been black, however a definitive analysis wasn’t conducted.)…We were as shocked at this as you no doubt are, and it raises the exciting question of exactly what this will herald for the rest of the winter.
A little after midnite Oscar, a server in the restaurant, calls to advise he won’t be in for work in the morning…We advise Oscar that we’re not the go-to guy for restaurant call-offs and he says he doesn’t have anyone else’s information, which we don’t believe at all…He asked if we would advise Halston – the extraordinarily cute AM manager at the restaurant and we emailed her, noting Oscar was advised that we weren’t the person to call on this one…We’re hoping Halston will take this as a sign to pledge eternal love, but we’re not holding our breath.
A bit later a guy comes in – mid-20s, jeans, western shirt, cowboy hat – and declares that he was riding the bus with this “cute little blonde” and she was staying here and that she left her ID on the bus and that he had it and if I would just give him her room number he’d go and return it to her.
Good gravy, what an idiot…Yeah, sure, I’ll give a guy the room number to a “cute blonde” for any reason whatsoever…Of course we’re not going to do that…The kid was told that if he turned the ID over to yours truly that we’d make certain she got it, which led him to note the ID was actually in the truck and that he would go and get it and come back…Of course, he never came back and you don’t have to be Joe Friday to wonder why he was riding the bus if he had a truck.
The knife got some work tonite, its first besides cutting open cases of water in a while…A new box of European blend coffee had to be opened today but here’s the twist: because coffee boxes are now stored on the top shelf of the rack in the back office coffee room, a slot needs to be cut in front because we’re not tall enuff to reach over the top…You gotta be careful cutting this slot, too, taking care not to poke yourself in a finger.
Well, that new duty we were assigned last night must not be particularly important, because there were not follow-up instructions this morning on how to do it…Recall it involved auditing the day’s receipts at the restaurant and tho Chris provided thorough verbal instruction on the matter, ol’ Sparrow had already forgotten it when it came time to actually do it…We had heard that Allan, the accountant from the home office who’s still in house, would be down tonite to provide instruction this morning but – like the other time he said he’d be down – he didn’t show.
It was another slow day at the veterans service office (VSO)…There was a call from John F – who is Julie’s stepdad and who would not violently object to ol’ Sparrow becoming his son-in-law – who stated he got a letter from the VA advising they wanted to reduce his rating from 100% to 20%, the second such client this year…We also checked in at the weekly state VSO meeting online.
It’s been so slow up here that Ed – the VSO in the next county – asked me if we were as slow as he was…This really wasn’t desirable because we really don’t need understaffed VSOs in larger counties who are working their keisters off knowing this, but I said yeah, it was dead slow here, too, and immediately changed the subject to the couple of clients for whom the VA wants to reduce their rating, which did its job nicely, because this is happening all over the state.
The big news is ol’ Sparrow owes the world some good karma…Groove on this: someone plowed my driveway for me tonite!!!…I AM NOT MAKING THAT UP!!!…And this hot on the heels of that kid showing up out of nowhere Tuesday morning to help me move snow off the carport roof…Here’s the deal:
As we turned onto Maple Street around 1700 or so following the VSO there was a guy with a humongous, tho still pushable, snow mover doing Zach’s driveway, which regular readers of this crap know is across the street from mine…We drove past the driveway, turned around at the alley, and saw him point to our driveway as if he were obliged to clear it…We nodded, just for funsies, and BOOM he immediately crosses the street to The Shire and starts in on my driveway…This was nice because the driveway had to be cleared right now…It had been warm all day and the snow, while showing signs of melting, would freeze again overnite and we all now what a pain in the arse that would be.
His machine was superb and we were instantly envious, an emotion we seldom encounter…It was so large it handled the berm without shoveling and he was done in five minutes, a fraction of the time it takes yours truly…Tho we offered payment, he was content with a heartfelt thank you, which means ol’ Sparrow will be on the lookout for the chance to issue some good karma of his own.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: In accordance with standard Sparrow policy (SSP), there is no sleep to report today.
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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.
Coming soon! Gaylon’s books in actual book form!
