Read up. Read Free Fortnight rolls on.
Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Friday, January 15
I enter the main pool following my workout this morning and the lifeguard informs me the pool is closed for the class that’s going on and could I utilize one of the other hot springs???…Of course I can, tho I ask if I could sneak thru because it’s below zero out and am told no, I can’t…Well, OK, but it would have been useful to know this before I’d gotten soaking wet so ol’ Sparrow wouldn’t have to report to the heart spring with a layer of ice on him…You get used to walking in only a swimsuit in the brutal cold here, but doing so wet for even that relatively small distance was really effing cold.
I was alone, tho, in the heart spring until the class broke up, then assorted old biddies joined me prattling about things that warm the hearts of these sorts and it was all pleasant enuff until the Sunday Yapper joined the festivities…Christ, this is not what the situation needed at all…Evidently, they all knew each other, too, because everyone dove right in on some major league blather, which caused me – immediately – to flee, in terror, to the safety of another hot spring.
Where there were still more people!!!…I am not making that up…A dad with his two kids was there – and in my fave spot, too – but the other side good’s, too, and they scram soon enuff, leaving me some solitude.
They were still yapping when I left, too, because I could hear them in the parking lot…Now, it should be noted I parked just on the other side of the fence from the heart spring so it’s not as if voices were carrying a long way, but still, that is some serious blabbing, tho it was far enuff away so that you couldn’t really make out what they were saying…Thank God.
The weight lifting was good…I did the upped weight from yesterday on the cable should press, tho some loser was using the Smith machine for squats and I didn’t want to wait, so there was no bench press, but I got good work in on the cable chest press.
It was relatively busy at the Veterans Service Office (VSO) today…First, I got a call from Mr M, who had received a letter from the VA advising they were going to reduce his rating for an ailment from 20% to 10%…Regular readers of this crap know this happens from time to time and Mr M asked what his options were and I told him to be of maximum (any) service to him it would be really nice to see the letter…This is not as easy as it sounds because the county building remains closed to the public and it was made even more difficult by the fact Mr M announced he had no idea where the letter was.
Well, heck, this is a problem because ol’ Sparrow cannot be of service if he does not know what is going on…I advised Mr M to look really hard for the letter and he called back about 20 minutes later and said he’d found it…He wasn’t in the mood to fax or email it so I told him to come in and I’d meet him in the parking lot.
The letter said the VA had made a mistake in awarding him the original 20% rating…It showed, rather clearly, that based on his current condition and how he was being treated for it he was, by law, only entitled to a 10% rating…There is really nothing to do here…The VA has spoken and further whining would be futile because they’ve cited established federal law…The downside is this will cost them about $275 a month (they do not have to repay the overpayment), but the only way to get back to a 20% rating would be to get sicker and we don’t want that.
Later, Mr R called…He said a few months ago I had sent in an Intent to File (ITF) form for him, which advised the VA a claim would be forthcoming. These are useful because it reserves the date of your claim for the date you sent in the ITF and not when you actually send the claim in and it gives you a year to send the claim in…I was obliged to take Mr R’s word for this because it was a while ago and I didn’t remember him.
He said he’s been working on his claim himself and he had the bugger almost ready to go, but he wanted to run it by me first to make sure everything was in order…Smart move, because while am hardly Mr VA a set of VSO eyes on your claim before we send it in can’t hurt, so I told him I could meet him the usual parking lot or we could meet somewhere for coffee, adding I’d be happy to send it in for him…He said this was exactly what he wanted and that he would call me next week to arrange this.
It’s rare when people do their own claims like this…The forms aren’t really all that difficult, but as we’ve noted here before, any paperwork associated with the VA can seem intimidating and clients generally enjoy the comfort their VSO offers.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log:
1800 Thursday until 0100 Friday
1630 Friday until 2130 Friday
12.0 hours for the day and 39.5 for the week.
Ol’ Sparrow was a rascal and knocked off a bit early from the VSO, hence the earlier-than-normal start to the Friday Afternoon Nap (FAN).
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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