Yay for the return of Read Free Sunday (RFS) at The Diary.
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Saturday, August 10
We were two rooms away from a sellout when we reported for duty at the hotel tonite…The Assistant Front Desk Manager (AFDM) said there’d been some modest interest and both he and the AGM we’re hoping we’d delay running the nite audit until at least 0100 in the hopes we’d get a couple of walk-ins…There’s for the asking because, of course, we get a bonus for selling out, and it’s no problemo to rearrange matters to accommodate a later audit.
We almost made it, too…We hadn’t even finished limbering up when a room sold online, visibly and audibly pleasing the AFDM…This left us one room to rent, and while the AFDM initially toed the company line and said we couldn’t get less than $300 for the room, he later realized the folly of that and said screw it, a rate as low as $200 was authorized.
We kept an open mind in the matter…On the one hand, too-discounted a rate could cause a stiff cut in our Sold Out Bonus (SOB)…On the other hand, a smaller SOB is still more than no SO so, while it wasn’t Name Your Rate Nite, we were prepared to slash prices in order to move some product.
We did have a walk-in, but it didn’t work out, which left the AFDM – plainly rather emotionable tonite – visibly shaken…It was a workingman in his 20s and he asked how much and we quoted $250, plus tax…He asked if there was a contractor rate and while there’s not, we tapped a hand on the counter, said of course three was, and immediately went to our best price, $200, plus tax…He didn’t like this much, either, so we asked what he wanted to spend, to get an idea of what we were working with here, and he said his per diem was $75, I am not making that up.
Good gravy, what kind of employer offers $75 to find a place to stay midway thru the third decade of the 21st century???…And it wasn’t clear if he had to feed himself on that, too…We told him we couldn’t offer that, that $200 was the best we could do tonite, and he walked out…There was no other interest, so no sellout.
The AFDM also brought out his birthday card, which was moderately funny…He was plainly reviewing it and had a puzzled look on his face – plainly, something was bothering him…Then he snapped his fingers and pointed out ol’ Sparrow’s signature appeared to be missing…We nodded solemnly and held out a hand for the card…We had not, in fact, signed it because we hadn’t seen it…We wanted to make a smart-ass comment about last year’s signature carrying over but didn’t, and we took up half the card with our signature, a Sparrow staple on birthday cards here.
We don’t know what the hell the deal with the scale is…We are on program and – after some initial losses – we’ve gained five pounds…We don’t understand this at all…It’s as if we’ve spent the last few days gorging at the fast food and Mexican joints instead of working out and eating well…We’ve been counting our calories, and numbers that should be producing losses are not…Recall last May, we went on vacation for a couple of weeks, ate whatever we wanted whenever we wanted, and gained all of two pounds.
So we upped weight tonite…Recall a couple of weeks ago we went from 10th-rep failure final sets to 12 reps on the final sets because that was what we did when we lost 60 lbs a couple of decades ago…But that’s not working, either, so we upped everything a dumbbell or a plate and the big news is we were stronger than expected, with the final sets producing eleven or twelve reps failure instead of ten…Regular readers of this crap know this means it’s time to up weight, to make sure tenth reps are failure.
It was a gorgeous summer evening, so afterward, we drove around our small town…We went up the hill to where the (relatively) rich folks live – their streets have curbs and gutters – and took the road out past the cemetery…Then, we took Main Street back into town and worked our way out to the river before heading back…The first leaves are starting to turn, too—right on schedule—though fall is still a ways off, of course.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 0930 Saturday until 1730 Saturday…8.0 hours for the day and 46.0 hours for the week, hardly the weekly figure we’re looking for, but still not completely without merit.
Recall the cat knew the difference between when we were waking up and when we were merely stirring and would time her appearance on my back accordingly…Bandit is still learning…He doesn’t hop on my back, but he does sit at my feet, meowing for cuddles, even when we are merely getting up to use the can or rolling over after a dream…He’ll learn, tho.
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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.
The Diary of a Nobody was inspired by the 19th-century British novel of the same name.
Coming soon! Gaylon’s books in actual book form!
