It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Friday, December 9
We were back to very good strength at the gym this morning…Recall yesterday everything but the squat machine was down a notch but today we got the notch back…Shoulder side lateral raises were 27.5 lbs on the last set, bicep hammer curls were 35 lbs ten times, bench press was 180×10 and the tricep cable machine was 90×10 on the last set…The big news, tho, is we saw a modest gain on the squat machine, moving 60 pounds eleven times, one more than the specified nine.
Now, you’re probably thinking that ol’ Sparrow can now go and up that weight to 70 pounds…Don’t think that…When we move twelve on the final set two or three times consecutively, then we can think about it.
It was a busy morning at the veterans service office (VSO)…Mike was on time for his 0900 appointment to sign up for VA healthcare because he said he wanted to get some hearing aids…Well, it turned out Mike worked flight decks on aircraft carriers off the coast of Vietnam so, being a curious and generally proactive VSO, I said how about we file a claim for hearing loss as well and he was hoping I’d say that because he just so happened to have the results of his October audiogram with him…The VA medical application will become academic if his claim is approved, which it should be because losing your hearing is pretty standard when working a flight line.
Jimmy F was early, too…He was a grunt in ‘Nam and is already 80% rated for a variety of ailments – most of it associated with PTSD, which he refers to as “my mental” – and he’s had hypertension for years and the VA now considers that a presumptive of Agent Orange exposure, which everyone who served in Vietnam is automatically presumed to have been exposed to and his claim was easy to fill out…Jimmy and I shared a laff, too.
He had pulled a form out he had gotten at his last VA physical, a living will that details what he does and does not want to be done in case he turns into a vegetable…He could’ve sworn he’d done one years ago, so I offered to give him the number of the VA hospital south of here so he could call and find out…He wasn’t entirely thrilled with calling someone, tho, so I said let’s do it right now…We were on hold with a lady who could help us and he thanked me for making the call and I said we all have our talents, noting that when I needed a wiper and bright headlight replaced on the new ride this week we went strait to the dealer.
Jimmy then got a sly grin and said:
– You know, those headlights now, they just snap right in and out…
This was funny…I pursed my lips, started nodding, and held the phone out.
– You want to make your own goddamn phone call???
This was funny, too, and got a good laff from Jimmy.
We talked with Mrs L on the phone today, too…She had left a message requesting help getting a DD-214 for her late husband, who died last month…The memorial service is next month and the mortuary said they need one to provide the flag for the ceremony…Usually, it takes a few weeks to get your discharge papers, but the National Archives site has a dropdown menu where you select the reason for your request, and one of them is Emergency…You have to provide either a death certificate or link to an obituary and you’ll generally have your discharge papers in a week…I actually read the obituary and it turns out the Ls are one of the more prominent families in town, owning one of the shopping plazas and evidently Mr L was singlehandedly responsible for instant oatmeal, and you might be thinking that based on our Widow B experience we might be, you know, calling occasionally over the next twelve months to say hi and check in but no, we don’t have plans for that, partly because we have some zero clue what she looks like but mainly because there is reason for the commotion of a relationship right now…Jackie from the gym could announce she’s single and start disrobing when we see each other on Friday mornings and we probably wouldn’t act on it.
And, as an aside to yesterday’s bright headlight installation, it should be noted we had both brights replaced, on the sound-to-us theory they were installed at the same time so it would not be the Upset of the Year to have the other one go out fairly soon, too…Darryl said it wasn’t too bad a theory…He’s had people who only replaced come back in a week or two, while sometimes they don’t come back for several months…He congratulated me, tho, on replacing both of them.
The big news is those three $99 withdrawals from my bank account by Paypal that we didn’t make were refunded…Not only that, they were in when we checked right after waking up this morning (see Sleep Log below), meaning the bank had received, reviewed, and acted on my request in a matter of hours…Good thing, too, because we have a variety of accounts and Household Accounts generally just has enough to handle our automatic withdrawals and grocery money.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log:
1830 Thursday until 0030 Friday
1730 Friday until 2130 Friday
10.0 hours for the day and 37.0 hours for the week, neither total being particularly inspiring and regardless of how much sleep we get in Saturday’s finale, we are going to be well short of last week’s PB of 59 hours.
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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.
Coming soon! Gaylon’s books in actual book form!