Read Free Fortnight continues at The Diary, so dive in and enjoy today’s entry.
Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Friday, January 22
More good strength in the gym this morning…I was there a few minutes before it opened and there was already a line so I got out and stood in it, unlike last Friday, when I waited for it to subside and I’ve concluded that unless you’re one of the very first in line, it doesn’t really matter…Between the waiting and changing shoes I was on the floor this morning ready to move some weight around 0615, not too much earlier than last week, when it below zero out and I waited in the car until the line was gone.
I got the 200-pound bench press up only six times again, and consecutive six-rep sets is not what I’m looking for, so I am going to cut the weight down to 190, which is still more than the 180 it used to be…When 190 can be done eleven times, then we’ll try 200 again.
At the Veterans Service Office (VSO), Ms W from last week called…She’s the daughter of the vet who had called me last fall, the one who up and died before I could be of any real service to him and she wants to know what’s available to her.
(It turns out I know her, too, because we worked at the retailer together and let me tell you something, it was tuff to believe she was his daughter because she can’t be more than 30 and that’s pushing it…If she was 25 I’d be surprised, but presuming she’s 30 this means Dad produced her when he was my age.)
Anyway, they cremated Dad and he didn’t die of a service-connected condition besides, so she wasn’t eligible for the $300 reimbursement, but I did have the forms for the flag and memorial certificate signed by the president for her, and she was really interested in the flag…The only problem was she had some zero clue what a DD-214 was much less whether or not she possessed her father’s…Still tho, I told her to fill the form and take it to the post office, where they keep flags for this purpose, to see if they’ll give her one without her dad’s discharge papers and I threw in my card in case the post office clerk wanted to call and verify anything.
Later, a vet called me looking for housing…He was a friendly, rather long-winded sort who knew this and said if he “started blabbing” to feel free to stop him…It turns out he’s having problems with his roommate and needs to get out…I told him the VSO doesn’t handle housing and there really isn’t any transitional housing in the county anyway but I did give him the number of the outfit that does help veterans find a place to live…What I didn’t ask him was if he needed a place to stay tonight because short of having him stay with me there would be nothing I could do for him and one thing you learn in this job is not to get personally involved…Besides, he didn’t really sound desperate, chatting away rather pleasantly.
Otherwise, it was slow enuff to go and get a haircut today, as the flowing locks have needed one for a while now…I keep telling myself two things regarding the flowing locks: that I am going to get them trimmed regularly so that it will be hard to tell when yours truly does visit the barber and when I don’t do that that I am going to let them grow long enuff so they are curly and stylish in the back…This never happens, either, because after a while it’s plain they will never be curly and stylish in the back.
I went to the barber down the street from the county building, the same one I went to last time…I called first to see if I needed an appointment but the girl said no so I got down there pretty quickly and a pretty young brunette named Katie took care of me…Hubba, hubba, this haircut could have lasted all day without complaint…She was friendly, too, and I told her what I wanted and she stood there and regarded me for a bit, before nodding confidently and diving in…Perhaps I’m biased because of the immediate crush I had on her – I’m hardly in the market and crushes like this are rare nowadays – but it was a heck of a haircut, and she did my eyebrows and ear hair, too.
I was heading out of the county building this morning and there was a kid at the door trying to get in, which isn’t possible without a key because the county building remains closed…I opened the door and told him this and he showed me the card the state sends you when it is time to renew the registration on your car…I told him the DMV office was closed to the public right now, but that it was a simple matter to do this online, even pointing out the address on the card…I added that if you’re like me, who also chose to take advantage of the grace period, the state will email you a temporary registration that you can show the officer in case you’re pulled over…He seemed grateful for the information.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log:
0530 Thursday until 0130 Friday
1730 Friday until 2130 Friday
12.0 hours for the day and 40.5 hours for the week, hardly a Friday record but a wonderful total nonetheless.
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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