The Diary of a Nobody/March 23

Sure, Read Free Sunday (RFS) is in play today. 

It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…

Saturday, March 23
We got to have breakfast at Waffle Palace this morning, that chain diner we’ve always enjoyed…It was packed and as good an experience as we’ve had there. 

It was 0200 or so when we got there. We were coming down the hill, and you could see the parking lot was packed, so it was hardly the Upser of the Year to see it was also crowded…Most of the customers were kids, and the place had what they’d probably call a “vibe”…We lead a quiet life and usually dislike “vibes”, but we found a seat at the counter and sat down in good spirits. 

This will surprise a lot of you, but we always get the same thing here: a sausage and egg Texas toast sandwich, which comes with hash browns, and a waffle…Despite the crowd, service is efficient because they’re adequately and competently staffed and the sandwich and hash browns are delivered in due course and a bit later the waitress comes and refills our coffee and announces the waffle would be coming up “in a bit”…Excellent, we’re thinking, because the waffle will still be decently hot when we get to it. 

Well, excellent turned into perfect…With timing that could not have been better orchestrated had it been conducted by the Son of Man Himself, she brought the waffle exactly at the instant we finished the sandwich and hash browns…Not too soon, and not too late: exactly when we finished…Well, this woman’s place at the right hand of the Father for eternity should now be secured, and we tipped her $10, a smidgen less than half the bill. 

There was some minor terror at the Minor Party state convention this morning…We get there and are checking in, and this guy asks us if we’ve paid our membership fee because the name Sparrow wasn’t showing up on the list of credentialed delegates…Well, no, we hadn’t…One had never been required before, and we hadn’t paid sufficient attention to the inner workings of the party and didn’t know one had been required for a year or two.

Crap…Crap, crap, and double crap, because while we could certainly sign up there, the fee had to be paid by the end of 2023 to be eligible for the 2024 convention.

The terror turned out to be both short-lived and for naught, however…We found our buddy Jacob, who’s the party’s campaigns director, and he dismissed the matter…Not being a paying member only meant we couldn’t vote at the business meeting…To be a candidate you only needed to have been registered to vote with the party by December 31 and we were well qualified there having been a registered Minor Party voter for years…He noted we were still the only announced candidate for District 2 and even handed me the state form accepting the nomination to fill out…We hesitated filling it out on the theory you don’t touch the trophy before you’ve won it, but we decided that was ticky-tack and, besides, we might want to cut out early and a filled-out form would help facilitate that. 

The business meeting was dull and ran long and Congressional nominations weren’t until the afternoon, after the election for delegates to the national convention…(This was an election you did not want to be a teller for…There were dozens of nominations for 33 spots and voting was by paper ballots that took four people almost five hours to count.)

We were allowed to make some remarks and we told the delegates, most of whom probably didn’t know me, that we were US House nominees in 2016 and 2018 and carried our party’s banner for the US Senate in 2014, an event that still generates a few applause because there are a few long-term Sparrow supporters out there…We added were the peace candidate, and that our feeling was perpetual war will destroy our country, perhaps before this half-century is out. 

Tho we were the only human candidate, None of the Above is always an option at a Minor Party convention and while some malcontent older gent actually got up and spoke on NOTA’s behalf – I am not making that up – but in the end ol’ Sparrow trounced NOTA 32-3, meaning three democracy lovers preferred no one on the ballot to yours truly…Oh well, you’re not going to please everybody. 

The first interview of the campaign is in the books, too…There was a freelance reporter there…We had met him at lunch and introduced ourselves after noting his long, thin reporter’s notebook and said we were a former plier of that honorable trade…We talked toward the end of the day and then we headed back to the hotel, blowing off the gala dinner…We chatted with Jacob first because we wanted to make sure nothing else was required to secure the nomination…Assured there wasn’t, we scooted out. 

We might head home tomorrow…We’ll see…The only convention activity is some candidate training, which we probably don’t need because we’ve established we already know how to lose elections…We do have dinner reservations at the steakhouse at the 5-star hotel in town and you hate to drive all this way and not go there – and we’d hate to miss out on a chance to wear our corduroy blazer – but we miss the cat and our own bed, tho were sleeping pretty well here. 

Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 1830 Saturday until 0130 Sunday…7.0 hours for the week and 49.5 hours for the week, just short of the preferred 50-hour mark, but a fine total nonetheless. 

Regular readers of this crap know that usually this sleep session would’ve been included in tomorrow’s entry because it ended on Sunday, but we wanted to get the sleep week (SW) closed out tonite.

———

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. 

Coming soon! Gaylon’s books in actual book form!

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