Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Tuesday, May 14
Dee, the new part-time night auditor was supposed to be here for some training, but she couldn’t be bothered to show up…She was on the schedule, and no one crossed it out, so she didn’t call to send regrets and probably just blew it off…Too bad, because she’s scheduled to go live Wednesday night and she’s only had a couple of days of training and she really could have used another couple of nights in the saddle…I joked with Q that he should be standing by to fill in Wednesday night after she quits tomorrow, a joke Q – who despises graveyard – did not find funny at all.
Chicks, by and large, do not make good night auditors…One, they call off when they have so much as dandruff. Two, as noted, 90 percent of this job is showing up every night and, boy, having a woman working alone on graveyards, I don’t know, you just need one lonely, demented nutbag to wander by and decide to take a crack at her…But there aren’t a whole lot of options out there: employees in general are hard to find and the bitter, lonely old men that, historically, have always made the best night auditors are not always available.
Q reports his new apartment is working out well…The only downside he just can’t walk home like he used because his new place is a couple of miles away, near downtown, tho you have to go up a fairly steep hill to get there, a hill the carless Q is obliged to walk every night…He says it isn’t too bad, the hill’s steeper than he was looking for, and it will be a dangerous pain in the neck come winter, but the walk is only about a third of a mile.
The cookies did good business Monday, there were only a few scattered sugar cookies left on the tray, so I tossed those for efficiency’s sake and put out a whole new spread…Morning coffee service got a workout, too, with ol’ Sparrow being obliged to change both pots right around 0600, which is rare even in ski season…Most appeared to take their coffee black, too, because there weren’t a whole lot of creamers used.
Put the overalls on for some yard work when I got home…Recall The Wife is off in Sin City visiting the kids and the gardens aren’t going to water themselves…Within 15 minutes I was off to the local hardware store for a new hose.
Look, I am not going to spend another spring and summer uncrinkling the hose every five minutes and today the hose was in rare form, crinkling every three feet and after a while I said screw it, rolled up the old hose and put it in the trash (for collection later today) and got in the car.
There were a couple there that interested me…The one that really interested me was $29 and I asked the guy if the $33 was any better and he said the $29 one actually cost more because it was on sale, down from $42 but you had to be a rewards club member to get that price.
Well, sign me up for the rewards club, I said…At the register tho, it rang up at $42 and investigation showed the sale tag on the shelf was an old one that had not been taken down…Well, we’ve all spent enuff time at the retailer to know what good customer service dictates here: you honor the sale price, which is what the owner, Bill, did, heroically taking it in the shorts in the name of satisfying ol’s Sparrow, adding his crew is usually good for missing one or two a week…He said this good-naturedly, so I don’t think anyone was taken out back for beating for costing him $14.
I also bought a sprinkler, one of those that moves back and forth, and splurged on a good one, too…Gone (literally, we can’t find it) is that one with the bar up top that moves, and in is a long tube with a couple dozen nozzles and various controls for the width and length you want watered.
I also fed the birds and cleaned the cat box.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 1700 Tuesday until 2130 Tuesday…4.5 hours and that’s being generous…I could not fall asleep at all today…I first went down after the yard work was done about 1000 and at noon I was still awake so I got up and putzed around a bit and did some reading, a lot of reading, actually, before finally dozing off…This is barely enough what with tonight’s hotel shift plus a full Wednesday at the VSO, but we’ve been through this, before.
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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