Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Thursday, June 22, 2018
Saw The Wife today!!!…About time…Good gravy, it had been at least a month – and it will be at least another week before her return to The Shire – and it was long overdue.
Actually, she had already checked into the room after my day’s labors at the Legion state convention…I had tried to check in early – rich, coming from me, I know, but hope springs eternal – and when I did I put her name on the room and when I went to check in at 1630 or so they girl merely asked if I wanted a key.
This was the longest we’ve been separated in the eleven or so years we’ve known each other…Fortunately, one of our fave restaurants is in town and although it was a week late, we managed a satisfactory celebration of our anniversary…The restaurant is at a 5-star hotel and The Wife’s porterhouse was as good as you will have…I know this because I had no small part of it…This is one of the benefits to being married…You know your wife will not eat all of her meal and you will get part of it and this frees you to explore other things on the menu, like the crispy chicken cordon bleu…This was good, but not inspired, but no matter…I had enough of The Wife’s steak to make up for it.
My only real complaint is that they went and changed their onion rings on me…I have significant street cred in this matter so when ol’ Sparrow says the old onion rings – hand-battered and created by Providence on the seventh day – would earn the medal stand at the Onion Rings Olympics you can take that to the bank…The new onion rings were good, but they were the type you can get anywhere…The Wife insisted on separate bills, too, so she could pass her meal off to the retailer as an expense.
Dinner culminated a long day…I was out the door at 0545 for the four-hour drive and with stops, I was there just before the 1030 reporting time for instruction in being a judge for the first-ever state honor guard competition…Unfortunately, the gentleman who had been designated Chief Inspector (CI) had a stroke a couple of days ago so ol’ Sparrow was promoted to CI…I’m cut out for stuff like this and it’s actually similar to sports officiating: you put on a uniform and pass judgment on others…Also, unfortunately, only one post entered…We made them earn it tho, and they were told if they did not measure up the title would be left vacant…This was an idle threat…As long as they 1) showed up and 2) had even the slightest modicum of military bearing and 3) didn’t tell us inspectors and judges to f*ck off, they were going to win.
There were actually two phases…The first is a personnel inspection behind a curtain…This was my job…You’re looking for an awful lot of things, both general and specific and you can’t keep consulting your checklist and writing things down during the inspection and good luck remembering everything on the checklist, so you merely make mental notes of discrepancies you see…As it was, they looked pretty sharp and I only had four ticks as we call it, so called because you make a tick mark on your score sheet to note the discrepency.
First, their lineup wasn’t completely straight…A couple were slightly out of line…Two some had their heels together and some did not…Now, whether the entire squad has their heels together or not is up to them, but everyone has to be doing the same thing…Three, their flag poles were different…And fourth – and this is really chickensh*t as they say in the service – some had their name tags lined up against the top of their breast pocket while some had it a quarter-inch or so above…Again, pick one…It doesn’t matter which one, but every member must be identical.
Then the squad is judged on their performance presenting and retrieving the colors…Between practice and the two official runs, they must have done this five times…At first, they weren’t very good, frankly, but after their final presentation their score was up to 42 out of 50, which isn’t too bad.
A long day and more long day tomorrow…I don’t really like being away from home, so for some continuity I brought the brick red house shirt for sleeping in, by the by.
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Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 2300 Thursday until 0430 Friday…I slept pretty good considering I was sharing a bed for the first time in a month and the air conditioning was going…0430 is a bit early, but The Wife needed to get out the door to get back to the retailer’s store she’s working at for another week or so.
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.
The Diary of a Nobody was inspired by the 19th century British novel of the same name.
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