It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Tuesday, October, 3
Ol’ Sparrow screwed up…One hell of a screw-up, too, one that could’ve seen the destruction of this week’s Sin City plans…Fortunately, with the good luck that has occasionally attended my life, everything worked out.
In the spring Chris had asked me if I would work for him sometime in the fall…We said sure and forgot about until a couple of months ago when we asked him again and he told us the date which we promptly forgot.
That date is this Wednesday nite at 2300…Chris reminded me of it when we reported for duty and our heart immediately sank because we are going to Sin City and we were going to drive to the big city airport at 0100 (or so) Thursday morning.
Crap, crap, and triple crap…Holy living f*ck, actually…This is bad and the usual thousand thoughts invaded…I can’t this and I can’t that but after a couple of minutes we regained our senses…Experience has shown that when things go wrong – like they did here – it is best to look inside and see if it was our fault…In this case it was: we had known about this for months and had neglected to write the date down…Our fault.
Soon enuff our options presented themselves…We said we’d work Wednesday nite/Thursday morning, so we have to be there, so the options were to either cancel or modify the trip…To beg off would’ve caused problems, problems no one expects ol’ Sparrow to cause and I’ve learned over the years this causes bad feelings that do not easily dissipate…So we dove in on modifying the trip and, with typical Sparrow good luck, everything worked out and while it wasn’t cheap, we didn’t take it in the shorts, either and the plans we made will go off as scheduled: Thursday dinner with TC and his wife, Friday lunch with Kirk and Vince, the Friday celebration of life, and coming home Saturday…But we were scrambling there for a bit.
Originally, we were going to drive to the big city after waking up early Thursday morning and fly out at 0800, arriving in Sin City by mid-morning so the first thing to do was to see if there were other flights out Thursday…There were two leaving Sparrow Regional Airport (SRA), next door to the small town: one on United, our usual airline, and one on Southwest, which we don’t like flying any more than you do, but their price was reasonable, a lot less than United, which was charging about what you’d expect for the convenience of flying out of a small, regional airport on two days notice…And arrival in Sin City is only a few hours later…This will cost us lunch at one of our all-time fave restaurants, but there will be two other meals there, plus we won’t have to kill time before checking into the hotel, not that killing time in Sin City is particularly difficult.
Now, we didn’t need to alter our return flight, but it was into the big city where we expected to park our car, so we needed to get from the big city airport to Sparrow Regional…We contacted a shuttle company in town that offers regular service from the big city but they didn’t have anything for this Saturday…A flight in was an (expensive) option and then we thought about checking into a rental car…Usually, picking up in one location and dropping off in another location is out the arse expensive but we got a break: a rental from the big city airport to SRA for a tad more than a C note…Not too bad…Our plans were successfully altered and the wallet got off pretty easy…It could’ve been worse.
For the second consecutive week there was not a Coke order from Chris!!!…I am not making that up!!!
Recall last week Chris didn’t leave a note and he chose not to comment on the matter…Today, tho, he did comment, noting that the Coke gal has adjusted our delivery schedule and was actually here Monday afternoon…Here’s where we missed Chris’ thoroughness: while soda was stocked, water was not, so not only are there zero cases of SmartWater, we’re also down to one full case and some stragglers of Dasani.
Dray the Dairy Delivery Driver (D4) was really running late this morning, not showing up for pre-shift coffee until a bit after 0400 and all he had time for was filling up his coffee mug, reporting that his experience sanding a house last week on a taller ladder then he’s generally comfortable with went well, and that he had a long day ahead of him.
There was good strength in the gym tonite but, Christ, the place was packed…The parking lot was about as full as it gets and there were people playing pickleball and kids practicing volleyball, and the weight room was busy, too…This included a guy who had a tablet strategically set up so he could watch TV between sets…I am not making that up.
(In fact, the entire small town seemed to be out of the house…We took the Fairgrounds Route to the gym and judging by the number of cars parked there was something going on at both the park and the high school.)
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 0930 Tuesday until 1730 Tuesday…8.0 hours for the day and 23.5 hours for the week.
This was exactly what we were looking for because we have to be back at the hotel Wednesday nite at 2300 and this will follow a full day at the veterans service office (VSO), so there won’t be much sleep Wednesday evening, which will be the last sleep session (SS) until we get to bed Thursday nite in Sin City…We’re not really worried about this because regular readers of this crap know we’re strong for a long time on short or no sleep, but it’s still going to be a long nite/day…God bless all of you.
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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!