It’s Read Free Sunday! Enjoy today’s entry with Sparrow’s compliments.
Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Saturday, November 21
The Christmas tree’s up in the hotel lobby, a bit earlier – I think, I don’t really know – than usual, but they join a couple of neighbors that already have their holiday lights up and ol’ Sparrow still thinks this is too early, but nobody consulted me on the matter…The tree, as we’ve noted here before, is really nice…I’ve heard a rumor it’s professionally done, tho as nite auditor I’m hardly on the distribution list for stuff like this so nobody tells me anything.
In other holiday news, there hasn’t been any news on the hotel’s Christmas party, so I guess there isn’t going to be one, hardly a surprise in the Virus Era, but you know, they are good for morale.
At 0415 some oaf comes in and says “hey” in a tone that indicates this is how he summons everyone…I ignored it, of course, tho in a few seconds it turned out he was smart enuff to recognize and ring the bell…I go out and there’s this fat guy who gives the immediate impression of being tedious and pretentious, tho it should be noted our transaction went rather smoothly.
Anyway, he said he had a reservation for tonight tho everyone was long in for the night, tho he immediately added he had made his reservation “three or four hours ago”, well after I’d last checked for arrivals…All right, I check today’s arrivals and BOOM there he is but – and this almost interesting – his reservation, made thru the home office, did not include either a rate or a rate code…I am not making that up and I was obliged to ask him what his rate was and he could have said ten dollars and I would have been up a creek…But he said the total, with tax, was $157 something and I could wing that and then he proved to be helpful by going out and getting his phone and the confirmation email quotes a rate of $139.99.
I still had to wing the rate code, tho, an incomprehensible assortment of letters I’ve never understood…They’re for administrative purposes and automatically generated andy why this reservation came thru without one may always be one of the Wonders of the Front Desk that pop up from time to time…So I called up the reservation of someone already in-house and stole theirs…I have some zero clue if it was accurate or not.
Later, I told Tammy about this and she recognized the name and what she said confirmed my impression: he was, in fact, a difficult guest who was always whining about this or that and it was nice, tho not particularly surprising, to have my first impression confirmed because when you’ve been knocking around front desks as long as I have your first impression skills end finely honed.
At 0515 yours truly was in the back office getting ready to prepare the registration cards for the day’s six arrivals and I was looking for a fine-point Sharpie…None were found…Not in my usual palace and not not in the drawer and not in the desk organizer…There were, however, eight of those money markers you use on currency to detect fakes…I’ve never understood why we have even one of these because we never use them…Had we used them it’s likely Heidi would not have accepted a fake C note that had FOR MOTION PICTURE PURPOSES stamped on it, a prop that is still kept in a drawer in the back office, just for funsies/educational purposes…I finally found a box of fine-tip Sharpies in the storage room.
I started doing burpees at workout tonight…Well, resumed doing burpees, I suppose, is more accurate because I did one burpee a while back…I did this because it won’t be practical to walk for a few months and I’m feeling it in my legs and I want to do something besides lifting.
Burpees were invented by Satan on the seventh day while the Big Guy rested, shortly after he invented golf…You stand straight up, squat, put your hands on the ground, kick your legs out, do a pushup, bring your legs in so you’re squatting again and then stand up…I did one before diving in on the night’s lifting and did burpees after each set (shoulders/biceps and then chest/legs/triceps)…One burpee proved to be not particularly challenging so I upped it to three and even did – because there was no one there to stop me – two pushups instead of one.
The only problem was after the third or fourth set of burpees my left knee started wondering what the deal was…Nothing too bad, only very minor discomfort, put you pay attention to these things – at any age ideally, but particularly in your mid-50s – and especially particularly when you live alone because you have on one to take care of you, one of the advantages of having a mate…So the final two sets of burpees weren’t done…The discomfort died down soon enuff, but there was no reason to force matters, and we’ll see if we resume burpees or find something else.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 0930 Saturday until 1730 Saturday…8.0 hours for the day and a more-than-satisfactory 49.0 hours for the week…We audited the weekly figures hoping we might have missed an hour so we could claim the rare 50-hour sleep week (50HSW) but no go, 49.0 was the correct figure.
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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