Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Friday, October 9
Sickies!
No wonder I had lousy strength in the gym yesterday, I was coming down with something…I first felt it while executing one of my patented rollovers while sleeping: a sore throat was coming on, plus some muscle aches.
I went on the attack, too, getting some daytime medicine and some of that spray sore throat stuff I’ve always wanted to try but have never have before heading into the Veterans Service Office (VSO)…It pains me to report tho, that after a lifetime of waiting to use it the spray stuff didn’t work all that great.
The problem was the directions said to spray it in and let it sit for 15 seconds and then spit it out…Now, it didn’t say death would happen if you happened to swallow some of it, which is good because I did, which is sort of tuff not to do when you have to spray it down your throat. The fly in the ointment was it didn’t do much good, unfortunately, so later I took the day medicine with OK results.
A routine day at the VSO…Larry from the Legion post came by to fill out a VA medical care application…He had Medicare but his supplemental insurance company sent him a letter saying they would no longer be doing business in the county after the first of the year and Larry, a sensible sort, wanted some backup.
I’ll tell you something, this is a time when VA medical care could come in handy…Now, the VA and Medicare do not work in tandem with each other, but you can certainly pick and choose which one works for you in a given situation and as we’ve noted before vets generally save some pretty good dough on their prescriptions, tho Larry said he doesn’t have any right now, which is good.
Mr J was early, again for his appointment…He’s the one whose daughter, in New Zealand, first contacted me because he was hell-bent on not dealing with the VA based on a lousy experience with them ages ago…But he’s older and will need medical care soon enuff and his daughter was concerned…They’ve applied for VA medical and he hasn’t reported any income or paid any taxes since the 80s and I am not entirely certain how that will affect matters…Another fly in the ointment is he is still married, tho both he and his daughter say they’ve long been estranged from each other…Because he has no income and no assets he is entitled to what the VA calls a non-service-connected pension, meaning there aren’t any ailments connected with his service, but he’s broke, is over 65 and has the required qualifying wartime service…His appointment today was to fill out the application and his daughter called in from New Zealand like she did last week.
We’re getting along very well…While a lot of this job is knowing what paper to push, another lot of it involves the same customer service skills I’ve been using to schmooze everyone from the homeless to US ambassadors for years…He’s comfortable with me and even called me a “right on” guy and will even recommend me to a fishing buddy, another vet who needs things.
38.067 MPG
All right, it’s moving back up a bit after last week’s anemic 37-something and while you do get spoiled after a couple of 40-something MPG figures, 38 MPG is fine gas mileage and there is no use whining about it…There’s been a lot of stop-and-go traffic the past couple of weeks due to repaving and restriping the highway heading back into town, so maybe that’s had something to do with the lower figures the past couple of weeks.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log:
1700 Thursday until 0130 Friday
1730 Friday until 2130 Friday
12.5 hours for the day and 39.5 hours for the week…I’ll tell you what, we could end up with a fine weekly figure because I will be taking some of that ZzzzQuill cold medicine prior to the Saturday Sleep Session (SSS) and that usually ensures a nice total.
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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