Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Friday, August 16
We went to the fair Thursday…We were there by 1130 for the goat judging, where kids bring a variety of goats to be judged, don’t ask me to explain the differences…I can’t tell…The lady doing the judging and the announcing was tuff to listen to, tho, because every other word was “me”…She appeared to be an expert in goats, tho, pointing out minute differences in animals that looked identical to yours truly…Then we walked back to barns and saw the rabbits and the chickens and the turkeys, none of which were doing anything, just lying around in the cages…They were doing this last year, too, and the year before that…The pigs and cows weren’t doing anything either.
In the auditorium, there was a lot of judging going on, none of it of stuff from the gardens at The Shire because The Wife couldn’t be bothered to enter anything…After talking smack about entering rhubarb, kale and maybe the onions, nothing got entered…Too bad, too, because we could have cleaned up on the ribbons because there appeared to be a lot fewer entries than in the past and I overheard some blaming the late frosts we had…In fact, there were so few entries you probably could have entered some weeds and gotten at least a 2nd Premium ribbon…The Wife, tho, got some expert instruction on rhubarb – there will be changes in the criteria next year – and she also wants to enter some flowers in 2020.
This followed The Wife sleeping in until almost 0900…I was folding some clothes on the couch when she stumbled into the living room, technically up, but still groggy…I cleared a place on the couch for her and she sat down and still wasn’t completely coherent…I gently pushed her until she was lying down.
Here, lie down…You’ve been sleeping all night…You’re tired.
We were back later for dinner and some horse racing…I had meatloaf from one of the food trucks and The Wife had a disturbingly large potato topped with every condiment on the planet…The meatloaf was really good…With the falsies, it was tough to eat as a sandwich, so I used a fork which was actually practical because the sandwich came with coleslaw…Then we went and watched horse racing.
This was bad, even by rural, small-county fair standards…As usual, it was late…Advertised for 1830, it didn’t go off until 1845 or so…The first race had one entrant…I am not making that up…It was the Junior Division and only one girl cared enuff to enter, which doesn’t really make it a race as much as an activity.
And she’s off!!!…It’s Cameron with the early lead…As she heads into the far turn it’s still Cameron showing the way…She’s at the head of the stretch!!!…It’s Cameron still in the lead as she approaches the finish it will be Cameron with the win!!
Later, the announcer said the second race, which actually had three entrants, would start in about ten minutes – actually code for 15 minutes – because one of the entrants just showed up and would need time to warm up his horse…Meanwhile, she said, the band would play…This was news to the band, who was nowhere to be seen…The only entertainment were the two bonfires roaring in the infield…The one on the right was the better one.
Having an actual race was nice but it would have been even nicer had they told us when it was starting…There’s a lot of stuff in the infield and we couldn’t see the starting line, so it was news to all of us when three horses turn the corner at the head of the stretch and started heading for home…It wasn’t that close, either, as the chick beat the guy who just showed up, and they were both far ahead of the horse who had the fat guy riding him.
Still slow at the Veteran Service Office…Frank did come by tho, with some gas receipts from his trip to the VA hospital south of here…He said he was “running a little short” and wondered if he could the paperwork and receipts out to Stanko’s house himself…Sure, of course, you can.
With VSO training in the big city coming up at the end of the month, and with this a part-time job that does not have unlimited hours, I will only be in the office Monday and Wednesday next week, and I’m only going to be in Monday because I only put a half-day today.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: As regular readers of this crap know, sometimes when you keep the hours we do there are times you can’t sleep and Thursday nite/Friday morning was one of them.
It was funny, as usual for Thursday, I was dead tired by early afternoon…I have no idea why this is…I was up at 0530 Thursday, fairly late, and I was soon exhausted…I wasn’t sleepy, tho…I remember dreaming, so I am crediting a couple of hours, but that was it…I was up all night otherwise.
1430 Friday until 2130 Friday…7.0 hours for the day and we’re reckoning 43 hours for the week.
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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