It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Thursday, March 10
It was a good but not particularly great troika at the gym this morning…Well, cardio and the soak were strong, but weights were only OK, a combination of not having lifted since last Friday and a lousy week of nutrition.
The big news is before heading home ol’ Sparrow found himself at the car dealer’s Parts Department…What happened was the driver’s side windshield wiper fell off right after turning on to Main Street to head into the gym…I am not making that up…Not only that, it was the second time it had fallen off since it was professionally installed at the oil change place in the big city last month…I forget when the first time was, but yours truly was able, eventually, to stuff it back on the hook.
Well, as the old senior chief in the Navy once said, once is a mistake, twice is a habit…I turned around and retrieved the wiper blade and then returned to The Shire to attempt reinstallation…This was, despite pulling into the carport to take advantage of the porch lite, utter folly…One, it was five degrees out…It was impossible to install with gloves on and wasn’t a whole lot easier with them off…Two, it would take ol’ Sparrow 20 minutes to figure it out even at high noon on the 4th of July…The morning was clear and it was unlikely windshield wipers would be needed on the drive in, so we risked life and limb and headed in anyway.
Fortunately, Parts opened at 0800 and yours truly was there at about 0815…The new ride wasn’t purchased there, it was bought in the next county, but former neighbor Darrell runs the department and he was one of the first contributors to Sparrow for US Senate, so God bless him…It had been a couple-three years since I’d been in and he recognized me of all things…I explained the problem and showed him the blade and he examined it, immediately named the brand, and noted they’d changed the connector and this wasn’t the first time he’d had a customer come in with this problem…We went outside to the new ride and the first thing he did was check the passenger-side blade, which he said “seems happy” and then he fussed with the driver-side apparatus a bit and said, yeah, he could put it back on but it would probably fall off again, again noting the others who have come in with this problem.
Well, that is unsatisfactory, of course; you need your wiper blades, so yours truly suggested putting a new one on there and Darrell nodded approval and chuckled when I also requested expert installation from him…Ed, who’s been working parts counters since the Model T, nodded his approval when Darrell – I think jokingly, tho it was tuff to tell – told him not to put a labor charge on the invoice, which led Ed to note yours truly was not only getting a top-quality wiper blade, but courtesy installation as well, which for some reason made me laff.
The big news is a not-too-bad Level II cleaning was accomplished after returning from the gym…I am not making that up…Regular readers of this crap know that when ol’ Sparrow goes to the gym before Day Off Cleaning (DOC) is executed the DOC is usually scrapped in favor of retirement to the chair or couch.
Not today…It helped that there was a modest amount of snow to be shoveled in the driveway, which set a strong tone to get other things done: dishes were washed, laundry was started, and rugs, runners, and carpeting were vacuumed…The cat box was attended to and the sole remaining plant from the Marriage Era (ME) was watered and ol’ Sparrow was done for the day, with only laundry to worry about, by 1100, a pretty good time.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 1800 Wednesday until 0130 Thursday…7.5 hours for the nite and 29.0 hours for the week, a solid total.
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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.
Gaylon’s books can also be found at The Reading Salon.
