Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Saturday, March 28
Good thing I didn’t put the heavy coat away…I went for my walk today and it was in the 20s and there was some light snow falling and a modest breeze to boot…Mother Nature being Mother Nature, there was some sunshine, too…Now, it’s late enuff in the season so that it doesn’t catch, but it was cold enuff to wear the winter jacket which was still easily accessible because you learn soon enuff here not to put it away until Memorial Day.
I am really enjoying my walks, necessary because Ryan’s gym is closed…(The walk takes me right past the gym, too, and Ryan’s car has been gone for a couple of days.)…And while you might think the weather would be warmer by now but it will be here soon enuff it was enjoyable to get some final cold-weather in…There wasn’t a whole lot in the mail, some junk and the water bill and while I’m not timing the walks, I did note I was home in less than 40 minutes.
In what must be considered the Upset of the Year, I paid the water bill today, a turnaround time virtually unprecedented in my experience…Hell, The Ex didn’t even pay the water bill the day it was received, but I am responsible for my own finances now, of course, and I am determined to stay on top of them…I got home and got out the checkbook and BOOM wrote out a check for $117.16, an insanely high amount, tho it should be noted it the figure also includes sewer and trash pickup…We pay a base rate for water and sewer, plus whatever we use over a certain amount and you can bet I’ve instituted economies in water usage, too.
In an effort to be a responsible handler of money I downloaded a checkbook register app on my phone and I am pleased to report that after a couple of weeks everything has balanced every time…I stay right on top of it, too…I buy something and it is immediately entered into the register…Before I met The Ex my finances were a mess, ol’ Sparrow paying bills only at the threat of disconnection or airstrikes, but I committed to better this time around.
In other financial news, I got an email from the credit union handling the loan for the new ride announcing that car loans in good standing would not have to be paid for three months…All right, I’ll take that for now…It’s preapproved and automatic, so there was nothing for me to do except going in and canceling the automatic payment I’d scheduled and I also went in and canceled the direct deposit out of my county salary…We’ll see if I need this…I haven’t heard from Brandon that the hotel has closed, so I may not need it.
I dropped the water bill off in the slot at the town hall on the way to the next county…I needed some things at the retailer and I wasn’t the only one because it was doing pretty good business…It was as if prizes were being issued for non-compliance with the state’s stay at home order…And nothing I bought was particularly necessary, either: a soap dish for the bathroom…An onion…Some of my fave veggie sausage patties in case I still have a job at the hotel…Some other things, too.
To reinforce my commitment to continuity in my personal habits, I even went to the Mexican joint, still heroically open for business…I had to use the drive-thru (tho it turns out I could have gone in and ordered at the counter) but I got my usual…The price was immediately entered in the checkbook register app.
I hadn’t planned on this – well, yes I had, I suppose – and was faced with the decision of where to eat…It was a 22-minute drive to The Shire…I didn’t really want to find out what effect a 22-minute drive would have on my treasured usual, plus I didn’t want to share it with the cat, so I pulled into the parking lot of the nearby strip mall and enjoyed it, making a mental note to wear an old shirt next time because, par for the Sparrow course, some of it got on my shirt…There were financial considerations, too…One of my economies is not eating out as much as I used to, but I’m not broke – yet – and while I hardly eat off the value menu at the Mexican joint, it was easily affordable.
Also at the retailer, I bought some wash-that-gray-out stuff for my new beard…It’s still growing…And it is mostly gray…I bought the same brand as the wash-the-gray-out shampoo I use…The directions say to wash it in and leave it on for 2-3 minutes tho if you want “greater or quicker results” leave it on a minute or two longer…Well, I want the quickest results possible because I do have a small amount of vanity, so I left it on for a full five minutes…Since I was washing my hair at the same time, that stayed on for five minutes, too, tho those instructions only specify leaving it in for one minute….Since I’ve instituted water-saving economies, I turned the shower off and sat on the edge of the tub, tho after a couple of minutes I decided to put the time to good use by cleaning the falsies.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log:
1800 Friday until 0100 Saturday
1830 Saturday until 2130 Saturday
10.0 hours for the day and a back-to-normal 47 hours for the week, last week’s 37.5-hour debacle now a distant memory…Regular readers of this crap will, of course, note the evening nap has been moved from Friday to Saturday in deference to having lost a shift at the hotel, and it was nice not having to spend all day Saturday sleeping…It was almost like having another day off.
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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