Read Free Fortnight is officially, over, but today’s entry is free anyway.
Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Wednesday, January 27
Mark used the orange highlighter for his cash spreadsheets tonight and unless I’m wrong I’d swear he’s highlighting more things than ever…I seem to recall he was originally highlighting the amounts and his initials but tonight his spreadsheets almost looked like art projects…Not only were the amounts and his initial highlighted, but so were the day, date, time and the am/pm check box that already had pm checked.
Right after I reported for duty there was a call from some broad looking to make a reservation for Saturday night…As we’ve noted here before, you spend enuff time serving people you get so you can tell pretty much right off who is going to be a pain and ol’ Sparrow was spot on: from her first words it was plain she was going to be tedious and she was.
She was coming up with her kid’s hockey team and she was looking for a really good rate, “something cheap”…I asked if her team had rooms blocked and she said no and she was already so annoying I’d determined there was no way in hell she was going to stay here…I checked and verified there weren’t rooms set aside for her son’s team and without even telling her to bend forward and whistle Dixie gave her the rate the system was asking – which I seldom do: $224.99, plus tax.
She didn’t like that all and seemed to think she could invoke the divine right of cheapskates because she dismissed the rate out of hand, calling it – and I am not making this up – “inappropriate” and wondered if I “could do better”.
Well, I could., of course…Regular readers of this crap know rates are not engraved on tablets that are issued from atop Mount Sinai – they’re whatever the hell I say they are – but with that snotty attitude, I’m not budging.
– Last year we were up there and they gave us $95.
– That’s very nice, ma’am, but I can’t do any better.
Her sigh was peevish, as if I’d denied her an entitlement, and I even outright lied to her, telling her it’s winter in Ski Town, USA and rooms were filling up fast, despite the fact they weren’t…In fact, we had a couple of dozen vacancies.
One thing ol’ Sparrow isn’t too bad at is forming and working a plan and he gave a further example of that today…My plan today was to eat like an utter pig, a plan that was neither arduous nor unrewarded…I did eat my daily veggie ration at the hotel – that is inviolable, as much medicine as food – but other than that, it was oink-oink city.
The plan commenced on the way into the hotel when I stopped at the convenience store for two of those microwaveable and not particularly small cheeseburgers and proof that ol’ Sparrow will whine about anything can be found in the fact I’m whining about this because both the convenience store in the small town and in town are out of those fried chicken and rib sandwiches that are also in favor…They have been for a while now, too, so I’ve been making do with two burgers.
Then, between the hotel and the Veterans Service Office (VSO), I went to the conveniently-located, on-the-way fast food joint for a value menu invasion…Good gravy, that’s a lot of food, even for a growing boy like me, enuff so that $1 Pizza Slice Wednesday at the small town convenience store wasn’t even observed on the way home.
There was a phone message from someone who turned out to be a fellow Navy vet waiting for me…He’d contracted Lyme disease while he was in and it was never treated properly and past claims were denied or abandoned and could I help him???
Of course, I can…I told him not only could he file a claim for the original ailment, but for secondary ailments caused by the first one…The county building is still closed, so I met him in the parking lot and he gave me his DD-214 and he waited while I went up and entered him in The System and generated Power of Attorney and Intent to File forms.
I also told him, look, claims like this can get complicated…A doctor certifying that today’s ailments are directly connected to the service-connected ailment will be required and will require some work on your part…I added that while I can provide big-picture guidance and fill out paperwork for you, you gotta stay interested and keep up with your claim because ol’ Sparrow is not going to pester you…Because you’d be surprised how many vets lose interest and I do not keep a flow chart of who’s got what working.
I also favored the weekly Wednesday regional VSO Zoom call with my presence…Today there was some training on what’s known in the VSO trade as direct submit, which is a feature of The System…This allows you to submit your forms electronically thru The System instead of printing them out and faxing them in…It was a feature I thought was available when I started this job and even had the IT Department fork over for a signature pad, but it turned out it was then only available for state VSOs and not mere county VSOs.
Anyway, the training was pretty good and yours truly has a knack for stuff like this and it will be pretty easy to use.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: Per standard Wednesday protocols, there is no sleep to report today.
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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