Offered with our compliments, as Read Free Fortnight rolls on.
Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Wednesday, October 21
One thing’s that has always bothered me working is when higher-ups do not provide feedback on your vacation requests…Recall I am going to see Uncle Rudy and Aunt Suzie over Thanksgiving and, of course, there’s the cruise next April that, so far is still a go, tho since the virus isn’t going away I’m beginning to doubt the Queen Mary 2 will sail as scheduled on April 19.
Anyway, after talking these dates over with Front Desk Manager Brandon a couple-three months ago I submitted appropriate paperwork and put them in his box and heard squat…He was in to relieve me this morning so I asked him and he said of course, they were approved, both vacations…I wanted to smack him and ask why he didn’t tell me this earlier, but I didn’t…This won’t be a worry at the Veterans Service Office (VSO), because I set my own hours and can take time off whenever the hell I want…All I have to do is let Jenn, my nominal supervisor know.
I think the sold-out days might be over…I have no idea what the fire north of here is doing, but over a dozen firefighters left Tuesday evening and they had been scheduled to stay through the end of the month…Included in this total were three pretty girls who were always friendly when they came by to get their restaurant vouchers, which was really good for morale.
Moderately busy at the VSO today…Almost interesting was an email announcing the search for the new county manager is starting over…The old one retired last spring and they found some old, retired geezer to take charge until a new one is found and that won’t be for a while now…They had three candidates make the final cut but it turned out all of them were found wanting and told thank you but no thank you.
Ol’ Sparrow can relate to that…Regular readers of this crap may – or they may not – recall I applied for a vacancy on the town council here a couple of years ago…I didn’t really want to be on the town council but I didn’t want to see the position go unapplied for…As it was, there were a couple of others who put it and we all appeared at a town council meeting and we were later told the council was going to continue their search, which suited me fine because municipal stuff bores the hell out of me.
Mr S came by around 1000 or so…Recall he is the one who was among the soldiers who the army favored with a front-row seat to a nuclear test in Nevada back in the 1950s…He, and others, have had assorted cancers since and for years the army told them to keep their yaps shut about it and later the VA relented and started accepting claims…Regular readers of this crap will recall that a couple of months of ago Mr S came in to report the VA had actually approved one of his five claims for a 30% rating and even awarded him 13 years of back pay, which shows you how long Mr S and the VA have been doing battle.
So far we are batting .100 in getting money for Mr S…Now, his other four claims were actually approved by the VA, but were judged not sufficiently disabling to warrant payment, so on each one he was awarded a 0% rating, which is better than having the claims denied.
Mr S said he had an appointment with a doctor Friday and I told him to take the VA letters and I highlighted the parts the doctor should read and to ask if he agreed with them, because if we can present new evidence and a second opinion then we can submit an appeal.
My weekly soak at the hot springs was uneventful…Dave was there in the heart spring – so named because of its shape – and recall he cornered me a couple of weeks ago because he wanted an audience, but I got off easy today: he’d already shanghaied someone – some hapless sort named John – and his talking points hadn’t changed in two weeks: some business stuff and his wondrous genealogy, both of which bore me to tears…John left, tho, and you can’t not say howdy without causing offense – the gravest of crimes for someone half English and half Mexican – so I said howdy and I could see his teeth flare like a predator about to spring but it turned out Dave knew some broad also in the heart springs and I was spared.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: Per standard Wednesday policy, there was no sleep to report for 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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