Come on in and stay awhile. It’s Read Free Fortnight.
Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Wednesday, October 14
For the first time in my couple of years at the hotel there weren’t any rooms with dogs…I am not making that up.
Now, there’s been fewer than usual lately because, despite being more or less sold out for a while now, a lot of our guests are federal firefighters (and guys, you may – or you may not – be surprised at the number of cute chicks that are federal firefighters) and other workers and they generally don’t travel with dogs…Even with that, there were a handful of dogs in-house Monday and Tuesday, but none tonight, a Sparrow Hotel First.
Some of you may recall that for the past three weeks or so at the Veterans Service Office (VSO) I’ve been dealing with Mr W…He’s the older vet who called me needing to sign up for VA medical care PDQ, the one I personally visited so he could sign the application, the one who wouldn’t let me in his house because it was so decrepit, the one who, almost offhandedly, said he was going to get kicked out of his lousy, decrepit home in a week, tho some investigation by yours truly found that not to be true…Those dealings will end tomorrow when he will die after the plug is pulled on his life support system.
The message from his daughter was waiting for me when I got in…He’d had another trip to the ER here in town and was diagnosed with throat, lung and brain cancers, tho why these weren’t diagnosed on his first ER visit two weeks earlier isn’t clear.
The daughter had questions, tho it was plain she was being prompted by someone who knew what questions to ask…The first questions concerned what VA benefits would be available….Well, since the death is not service-connected – at least not yet, he’s a Vietnam vet and presumed to have been exposed to Agent Orange – the VA will reimburse $300 towards funeral expenses…If he were not being cremated they’d also provide a headstone and a plot in a government cemetery.
She also asked if the VA would pay any of the ER/flight expenses and I told her I had no idea…He was enrolled in VA medical care and there is ER reimbursement, but I told her I would look into it to be sure.
Mr and Mrs Jim M were on time for their 1300 appointment…Recall the VA needs some medical records but we don’t have them yet and they came in so we could produce a statement telling the VA to chill out, we be working on it.
It should have only taken a few minutes, but we’ve become friendly over the past few weeks and we chatted for a bit, mostly about the election specifically, the mechanics of voting…I told them I tend to vote in person and they said they didn’t really trust mail-in voting because in their small county (about a thousand people) one family has nicely consolidated power at the county courthouse and they didn’t really trust them and weren’t entirely certain they weren’t invalidating ballots they didn’t agree with…And even if they did, everyone in town knows how everyone else voted 20 minutes after the polls closed.
I went for a soak after the VSO…I’d been up since 1400 Tuesday but, as noted, these are hardly uncharted waters, and I wasn’t even yawning all that much and the only problem was the hot springs was packed…Ol’ Sparrow had some luck, tho, as some people fled my fave pool immediately upon my arrival, providing my usual roosting spot.
I also went to the tailor…The London-NYC cruise is still on, sailing next April, and recall I’ve dropped no small amount of money on clothes: blazers, trousers, vests, even a brown corduroy blazer and a raincoat…For gala nights, as opposed to mere formal nights, I completely lost my mind and bought – get this – tuxedo pants and a green velvet jacket and matching vest…Or waistcoat as us upper classes tend to call it…Well, the brown blazer, the green velvet jacket and the raincoat needed the sleeves tailored because my elbows do not provide complete extension…Karen’s one of a couple of alteration shops that has been in business in town forever and she spent 20 minutes flattering me, especially on the green, velvet blazer which almost had her disrobing.
Look, despite the fact I lead a rather quiet life, I am not riding the Queen Mary 2 not to be noticed by the anticipated gaggle of wealthy and royal women that will be there needing a gentleman’s bar tab to hijack.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: As usual for Wednesday, there is no sleep to report.
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.
Let’s be friends. Follow me on Facebook.
