Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life. 

Sunday March 13
It’s always good to be home….I wasn’t even gone all that long and it was good to be home.

The Wife worked today, so I stopped by the retailer on the way in to say hi and then went home…Neither of us really handles separations well and the cabin takes the brunt of it because neither of us pays attention to domestic duties while the other is gone…So it was not the Upset of the Year when I came home to find dishes in the sink and clothes scattered all over the couch, tho it should be noted the clothes were clean and straight from the dryer.

So I got busy and cleaned the kitchen and folded the clothes…Neither of us was really in the mood to cook so I went to the local market and got one of their ready-to-bake pizzas, which aren’t too bad…We would have preferred one from the local diner, but Charlie takes Sunday off.

The Wife and I were preparing to retire last night…As I head to the can for my evening’s constitutional I notice she’s putting on some socks, her multi-colored wool ones, for the record…I come back in and she’s lying down, ready for tucksies…I put her covers over her and her pillows under her legs and she sticks her feet out from the end of her blankets and wiggles her toes and instructs me to take the socks off…Feigning frustration, I stroke my forehead with a thumb and forefinger.

You just put them on…I mean, you know that right…I was right here…I saw you…

The Wife laughs…It was a pretty good line…Maybe not a Line of the Year candidate, but the type of funny line that keeps marriages fresh.

I know, honey…Take the socks off, please, tho.

I sigh rather loudly and take her socks off before climbing into bed myself…I’m sure, one day, men will understand women, but this incident set that prospect back a few years.

The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of Gaylon’s imagination or are used fictitiously. 

The Diary of a Nobody began in October, 2013. Read past entries here. 

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Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…

Saturday March 12
Sparrow for Congress!!!

I didn’t come here looking to be nominated for the United States House of Representatives…I came to be nominated to run for the United States Senate, however the vote between Lily and myself – which she won by a few votes – would have meant a primary election in June.

Well hell, primaries can be lost and then I’m not running for anything in November and I want to be in the game in November and not on the sideline, so I told the convention that if I am nominated for Congress I would withdraw from the US Senate race…There was no one else running for the nomination from my Congressional district, so it wasn’t all that hard a nomination to get, and afterwards I withdrew from the US Senate, the voting was reopened and Lily was nominated unanimously.

This was not as spur-of-the-moment as you might think…I had been thinking about this since Lily announced…Recall, she grew up in Communist China, which is a lot more compelling than ol’ Sparrow growing up Lutheran…She is very popular in the party and while I didn’t announce this from the mountaintops, I knew she would be tough to beat…I emphasized the fact in 2014 I received more votes than any other third party candidate ever in a US Senate election in this state, but it didn’t sway enough people.

Some said it was selfless of me to do this, but don’t kid yourself: I did not want to leave here without a nomination…There are no guarantees in a primary and if I lost that’s it, I am not running for anything in November and the House of Representatives is in the same Congress as the Senate is so officially, I am “Pleased”.

The Wife announced she is ready for me to return home…She said dinner last night was some tater tots, and some Canadian bacon on top of a veggie patty…This is a cry for help…I told her that is actually a pretty good bachelor meal – not perfect, there are an awful lot of courses there – and I asked her if she ate it over the sink, which made her laugh, because I am, or was, notorious for that.

The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of Gaylon’s imagination or are used fictitiously. 

The Diary of a Nobody began in October, 2013. Read past entries here. 

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Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…

Friday March 11
Casino night!!! 

Before we get down to the serious business of saving the country, us members of the Minor Party got rowdy until almost 9:30 tonight!!!…

The theme of our gathering was a 1920’s speakeasy – imagine that – and they had a trio that was pretty good and it was casino night, too…I don’t really have the competitive instincts required to enjoy gambling, but it wasn’t real money so I enjoyed a couple of hours of blackjack…I had trouble grasping the concept of what to do when I had a 12 showing, which I seemed to have every other hand…Initially I hit, but then Elena, our cute, funny dealer, said pay attention to her cards, because I am in competition with her, and if she has a numbered card showing, hold, but if she has a face card showing, then hit…She then said something about presuming her down card was a face card, and if she has a numbered card showing she might bust, but if she has a face card showing, she might not…I didn’t fully comprehend this…That didn’t stop me from implementing it, and I actually started doing a bit better…My $20 donation to the party got me $200 in chips and I was actually up a couple of hundred bucks at one point.

Myself and Lily, the other candidate for our US Senate nomination, got a chance to talk, too…I talked, briefly, about the success we had two years, when I was our US Senate nominee and got 52,000 votes, two-thirds of them from outside our party.

I was up early at cousin Mike and Barb’s house…I they were up and out of the house for work (they’re both in some sort of sales) early after we had some coffee together…Barb told me to help myself to anything for breakfast, which was not the best instructions to give ol’ Sparrow, but they got off easy, as I just had some cereal and raisin bread toast and I even cleaned up after myself.

At 1pm I was at Mike’s work in the big city to meet his boss, Shane, who turns out is a Minor Party member, too…We chatted for a half-hour or so and at the end he was completely on board with Sparrow for US Senate…I told him he could be a big help by organizing appearances for me in town and overall it was time well-spent.

I am, of course, a perpetual optimist…I am going to earn the nomination tomorrow and Sparrow for US Senate is going to strike a chord and we are going to win.

The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of Gaylon’s imagination or are used fictitiously. 

The Diary of a Nobody began in October, 2013. Read past entries here. 

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Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…

Thursday March 10
Greetings from Cousin Mike and Barbs house…I am ensconced in a bedroom in the basement…It’s pretty nice…Too bad I don’t drink because Mike keeps his booze down here and I’m family so I could drink it all with impunity.

My talk with a county Minor Party group north of the big city went pretty well…Over a dozen showed up, pretty good for our party and, after a brief biographical sketch, I talked about why I was running for the United States Senate.

I told them I wanted peace, an economy anchored in low taxes, a country that stopped convicting the innocent and voters that were empowered…I also said our biggest challenges was not talking issues, but overcoming human nature, which causes us to stick with the familiar even when it isn’t serving us particularly well.

Like the last time we saw each a couple of years ago, Mike and I spent some modest amount of time chatting about our ailments…There aren’t many, fortunately…Mike is going deaf and I can’t read some labels anymore, but that’s about it…Mike still smokes tho, something that runs in our side of the family…My dad used to smoke until mom made him quit and Mike’s mom, my Aunt Babs, used to smoke and Grandma Mary used to smoke, and my mom and brother were both smokers, too…Everyone but me, it seems like…Mike said, right before he retired to the back porch for a cigarette, that he intended on quitting this year.

Mike also gave me a couple of pics to get copied…One was of my dad and his mom when they were young…Dad looked about 13 so Aunt Babs would’ve been 17 or 18 and another was of Grandma Mary, probably in her 70, dressed like would expect a Midwestern grandma to be dressed, and going through some scrapbooks.

I also asked Mike about the mineral rights we had inherited and had leased to an Illinois oil company, but he didn’t have any details…He said he’d look into hit.

Mike and I haven’t seen each other too much over the years, but his middle name is my last name and I have the same name as his uncle and grandfather, so it’s a nice family bond.

The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of Gaylon’s imagination or are used fictitiously. 

The Diary of a Nobody began in October, 2013. Read past entries here. 

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Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life. 

Wednesday March 9
Had a very pleasant night at work then a very pleasant day with The Wife.

Work was easy…I had everything done by 1am, which gave me no less than six hours to kill…Now, some don’t like that…Jesse, the night auditor who fled us, hated it because there was nothing to do and he had no one to talk with…That’s OK with me…I did some writing, including some quality work on my remarks for the convention this weekend, and finished up watching some old TV show rerun online…This was a great way to kill some time and fun, too, because we don’t keep a television at home.

My next shift at work isn’t until next Monday at 11pm.

The Wife made biscuits and gravy when I got home…Offhand, I’m calling them not only Biscuits and Gravy of the Year, but the best ever…Heck, maybe the best anyone’s ever had because if you entered them in the Biscuits and Gravy Olympics they’re on the medal stand…Easily…Maybe some old biddy down south has a recipe that would top The Wife’s but maybe not…They might’ve been the best anyone’s ever had.

After that, we got my clothes ready…I’m taking a suit, plus some khakis and polo shirts, standard middle-aged white guy attire, at least if you’re running for a small-party US Senate nomination.

After that we went into town and did some shopping, then I went to the self-serve car wash nearby and washed my car.

Now, those of you keeping score at home might be reckoning ol’ Sparrow’s been up for a quite a while now…Good call…After all this was done I had been up for about 27 hours straight and I went to bed after that.

The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of Gaylon’s imagination or are used fictitiously. 

The Diary of a Nobody began in October, 2013. Read past entries here. 

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Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life.

Tuesday March 8
The Wife took me on a tour of the garden today…Temperatures have been really warm, at least in the afternoon, and we’ve lost, more or less, three feet of snow in the yard and there are large patches of grass visible and parts of the gardens are visible, too.

In the kitchen garden, so named because you can see it from the kitchen window, the scarecrows are back on patrol and The Wife pointed out that while the poinsettia didn’t survive winter both the strawberry plant and the apple tree did…The apple tree is still rather small, not much more than a large stick, really and some bunnies vandalized it last year…It had been in a pot for a year or two then The  Wife transferred it to the garden last spring…I don’t really see it making much progress, frankly, but The Wife insists we are no more than 20 or 30 years from our very own, home grown apples.

I went to bed as soon as I got home from work and slept till about 2pm…Not quite as long as I was hoping for, but it was good rest…The night audit was easy…The program copped and attitude and didn’t want to print the reports it was supposed to so ol’ Sparrow had to print them manually, but that’s all right.

When I woke up The Wife was at the dentist getting a cleaning, so I went outside and filled the bird feeder…We have an awful lot of birds hanging out and singing in our trees and we like that, so we try to keep them fed…The Wife is trying to get me to fork over for some premium quality bird seed but I am not having any of that…They’re birds and my working theory is they cannot tell the difference between the premium crap and the 20 lbs for six bucks stuff I buy them…If they can tell the difference they don’t particularly seem to care because they eat the cheap stuff up left and right.

Went to the local diner for dinner…It’s Taco Tuesday and Charlie, for a white guy, puts out pretty good tacos…Full of enthusiasm for spring after The Wife’s garden tour I suggested we walk to the diner – about seven blocks – but The Wife reminded it was still winter and still a bit too chilly for a walk longer than going to the car.

The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of Gaylon’s imagination or are used fictitiously. 

The Diary of a Nobody began in October, 2013. Read past entries here. 

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Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life. 

Monday March 7
Spent some quality time with Alberto during the wee hours of this morning, training for the night audit shifts I will be pulling a couple of nights a week until we get a new full timer trained.
Alberto said they offered him the job fulltime, but he said no, because he makes better money running the deli at the supermarket than he would here…Recall he has a wife and new baby – not to mention his mother – to support…He did say if the money was equal he would rather work here, even graveyards, because it is nice and quiet and the work is a lot easier than lugging ham all over the place and dealing with rude customers.
I have some zero clue if they’ve had any applicants…I know they haven’t any interviews yet…Maybe we’ll get some luck, but maybe not because it’s tough finding employees in town…Not just here, either, but every other business in town is having trouble finding people, too…It’s not that weed is legal here, either, because few places bother to drug test because then it would really be tough to find people…The Wife, in fact, said the retailer even stopped testing for weed except for those who work with guns or electronics…If you work in the pharmacy or with gardening chemicals I guess it’s OK to smoke whatever the hell you want.
This was hardly my first ever graveyard shift…I’ve been working the hotel racket off and on over the years, in fact since right after I got out of the service, and I’ve done more than my share of night audits over the years.
It’s not that hard…One, we’re a time share, so we don’t take payment here, they pay through whatever group they’re owners in…Plus, the point of sale system we use for our gift shop decided to stop accepting credit cards a few weeks back, so there are no receipts to balance…Most of the time is spent printing reports and whatnot and Alberto was thru teaching me stuff before 1:30 and I was in bed just after 2am.

I will come in tomorrow night and Tuesday night, too. I get off Wednesday morning and that will be my last shift until next Monday night because I am going to the Minor Party’s state convention this weekend because I am running for their US Senate nomination I don’t know if I mentioned that…There is another lady running for the nomination, too…Recall I was the nominee two years ago and not only did I run unopposed for the nomination, I couldn’t even be bothered to show up for the convention.

The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of Gaylon’s imagination or are used fictitiously. 

The Diary of a Nobody began in October, 2013. Read past entries here. 

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