Per standard Sunday policy (SSP), it’s Read Free Sunday (RFS) at The Diary (TD).
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Saturday, June 26
We ended up getting really far behind schedule at the convention today…Recall this is our first convention since 2019 and there were no less than 22 resolutions to dispense with…Resolutions start off in posts and are approved by districts before being sent to the state where a committee decides to recommend approval, rejection or referral to another committee…There are a couple of other administrative options, too.
Anyway, some were controversial resolutions that required discussion and some source – the bylaws, basic parliamentary procedure, the Ten Commandments, who knows – mandates that before there is discussion the entire resolution must be read…(To start only the resolve clause is read; the whereases and therefores are dispensed with.)…The same source dictates the entire resolution be read after discussion and before voting…Fabulous…This was tedious and some of the issues were contentious and when we broke for lunch were a solid three hours behind schedule.
Speaking of committees, guess who the new chairman of the Employment Committee is???…Not only that, yours truly volunteered for it, too…Incoming commander Chip had noted the opening and ol’ Sparrow thought that sounded like a harmless way to get your name and pic in next year’s convention program so I talked to Chip and said that – subject to his approval – I was interested…I noted, tho, that I live in a remote part of the state and I keep really odd hours and can’t, you know, drop everything and sashay into town for immediate consultations, but he waved it off, noting the job mainly entailed coordinating the Employer of the Year awards we pass out.
I’ve actually been on this committee in the past, but my only duty was standing there in a suit looking important while helping to pass out awards at a couple of past conventions to employers that hire a lot of veterans.
There was only one contested election, for our alternate to the national executive committee, known as the ANEC…My friend Terri was running against outgoing state commander Greg.
This caused an administrative issue with our post delegation…It was me, Stanko and Tina, as Post Commander Hal had already left…Our post had seven votes and we can use all seven despite the fact only three of us are there and Stanko and Tina favored Greg, who lives in the western part of the state, tho south of us, while I was going to vote for Terri…We decided the fairest thing to do was give us each two votes and abstain the seventh one.
The one vote hardly mattered…I was a teller for the vote, which meant me and two others sat behind a screen and watched Elaine enter figures into the computer while also jotting down the votes on our own tally sheets and Terri could only have won by more votes had she counted the votes herself…She won by 180 or so and afterward I gave her my tally sheet as a souvenir.
The big news, and it’s pretty big, is that yours truly is the proud new owner of a supposedly sterling silver service set…I am not making that up…Hell, I couldn’t make that up…I have some zero clue what got into me, either…I was at the Auxiliary’s silent auction and noted it at the end of a table and thought that looks interesting while simultaneously thinking I have no use for this whatsoever…I mean, who demands sterling silver service at The Shire, the cat???…Still tho, I couldn’t get it out of my head during the morning session, so later I went back and for reasons that might well be clear one day wrote down a $100 bid, topping the only other bid by only $95…I don’t know…I figured it would look good, once it was shined up, somewhere at The Shire.
Anyway, I won and the box was too heavy to lug back to the room so the plan was to swing the new ride around and put it in there, but it was raining hard enuff to build an ark, so I got a luggage cart and hauled it back to the room.
‘Ol Sparrow doesn’t style too often, but he was styling at the banquet, breaking out the gray slacks, burgundy blazer and the black-and-white-checked vest he’d bought for the canceled cruise…Combined with a black crew neck shirt it’s a hell of a look, frankly…Stanko, typically, had reserved seats for the Post 44 delegation at a table in the back, making it easy enuff to sneak out about 2130 or so, because yours truly was exhausted.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 1900 Thursday until 0200 Friday…7.0 hours for the night and 39.0 hours for the week.
It was a heck of a rest, too, with yours truly taking a melatonin and sleeping all the way thru without waking up to use the can.
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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