Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Tuesday, July 16
Boy, both phone service and front desk Internet were down at various points tonight…When I reported for duty Mark reported he hadn’t received an incoming call in hours and, it turned out, phone service was down all over the place…Maybe cell service was down too, but who knew…It was all rather confusing – the newspaper even had a headline online that said “Landline service disrupted, use landline to call 911″ – so I don’t think anybody knew what the heck was going on.
A little after midnight a guy checked in with a corporate lodging reservation… Unfortunately, he didn’t have his corporate lodging card with him, which is required for check-in…We actually run it over a receipt on one of those old fashioned credit card imprint deals, which makes you feel like you’re working a Texaco station back in the 1970s…The guy noted his company was new to the wonder that is corporate lodging and said he hadn’t been issued a card…I’d never come across this but some research into his reservation showed a comment that said ‘crew fax’ on it…I had no idea what a crew fax was – I do now – but I figured if I checked him in everything would work out.
It did!!!…Tammy said crew fax meant the reservation had already been checked in at the corporate lodging website – usually, we do that ourselves – and that payment was guaranteed and all we had to do was check him out…Ol’ Sparrow had actually done well despite doing nothing because he had some zero clue what was going on.
The phones came back up because at 0300 Angel from Halliburton called needing some folios emailed to her…This happens regularly…There were a couple dozen of them and she emailed me the list…This required some research because for some of them all she had was a room number and the date they were billed…I was in the middle of some of my treasured projects at the time and I resented the intrusion and part of me wanted to pass this off on day shift, but this is a reasonable night audit function, and Angel was probably under instructions to get it done on her shift, so I dove in in good spirits and knocked it out in a half-hour or so.
The Internet went out about 0530…Front desk Internet not, thank god, hotel Wi-Fi…I was just starting in on preparing key packets, which involves the Internet because I have to look up guest’s rewards club point total so, with nothing better to do, I printed out some stickers that have Wi-Fi information on them and stuck them on key card packets…We needed some, too, and I made a couple hundred of them, enough to get us thru the rest of the week…Internet was down for about 45 minutes and ol’ Sparrow had to scramble to get the key packets made in time.
You know, on the one hand, today’s workout was just one of many I’ll do this month and really wasn’t all that important…On the other hand, following Monday’s calzone gorgefest, it was supremely important because without it the next thing you know a bad day eating has turned into a bad week eating before you can say “extra cheese” most of the gains you’ve made in the gym the past couple of months are gone and you are darn near back to square one.
So I didn’t even bother with morning routine…I woke up, made a half-pot of coffee, took my pre-workout stuff and got dressed…I didn’t even turn the computer on because the next thing you know I’m distracted and am running late…I had a great workout, too…Despite consuming 100,000 calories Monday, I was able to up the weight on hammer curls, a bicep exercise that involves holding a dumbbell in each hand at your side and moving it up to your shoulder and for Pete’s sake, don’t move your elbows…I’m up to 35 lbs in each hand, where I was at my peak, which is a good feeling.
It was satisfying to note both neighbors mowing their lawns today…Our new neighbor Journey actually had his girlfriend Olivia out cutting their grass, and Devon, the guy who turned the abandoned coffee shop next door into a home, hired somebody to cut his acre or so of overgrown mess…The Wife said this is the influence our rather nice, colorful, well-maintained yard is having on the town…Our windows were open, of course, and it was nice to smell freshly cut grass in our cabin.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 0930 Tuesday until 1630 Tuesday…7.0 hours for the day and a routine 18.5 hours for the week…I took some Zzzz-Sleep, too, because I wasn’t all that tired and I didn’t want to wait until noon to fall asleep.
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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