It’s Friday again so I got a visit from mom, dad, McK and Roz this morning. The CO who did the strip search even asked if I had gotten a visit every week I’d been here and I told him “yes.” He said it’s good to have that kind of support and then he asked how long I had to serve. I told him I wasn’t eligible for parole for 7 years and I could tell he was shocked. *shrug*
Being a weekday it was empty in visiting for the first hour or so but eventually another inmate had a couple of visitors. Even with them there it wasn’t that noisy at all. I think dad appreciated the lower noise level so he could actually hear. *chuckle* This was their next to last visit before they hit the road for the Northeast, next Friday will be their last for about 4 months. Mck was in a pretty good mood and continued his wedding planning for when I get out. LOL Last week we chose the colors, black and white with purple accents, I wear a black tux and he wears a white one. 😉 This week he wanted to know what kind of wedding bands I wanted. We settled on platinum. Then he asked about inscriptions and I said I wanted “FU” for “Forever Urs.” Hahaha!
Roz came a little later and had to leave for work but we got to talk about tai chi practices and Gary, who has shaved off his mustache. I’m guessing there’s some mid-life (or post mid-life) thing going on there. *chuckle* There is a new student who has shown up in classes that has impressed Roz so I hope Gary gets to meet him before he leaves for Cali for the rest of the summer. The new guy is Japanese, an engineer at Kawasaki and apparently has done a lot of martial arts training in the past so perhaps he is the disciple that Gary has been waiting for all this time. *smile* Roz had sent the letter she and Gary composed to try and convince the warden to let me practice tai chi but unfortunately Newring hadn’t prepared his yet, or even picked up my emails until today so their two letters won’t arrive together which may lessen their impact somewhat. 🙁 Let’s see if I hear anything from the warden next week about it.
I am tempted to write the warden to complain about the mailroom too, but I’m sure that would just piss him off and be unproductive. Not only did I not receive my weekly Economist magazine this week (it’s the second time in 6 weeks that they didn’t deliver to me) but they also rejected some legal research dad had tried to mail into me.
There was an NE Supreme Court case that determined that a judge had to find “aggravating circumstances” to add LSO status (Lifetime Supervised Offender or Lifetime Community Supervision according to dad’s research) as an enhancement to your sentence. Dad had printed out the Sup. Court decision and tried to mail it to me. They had earlier rejected printouts of case materials saying it was part of a book and books had to be purchased through a vendor like Amazon. Dad resent it with a note explaining that these were NE court records printed from online so you couldn’t purchase them and have them sent by Amazon. Finally they let those through. This time they said “another person’s court papers” and rejected them.
The CO Cherry was on the floor this evening and he was over the moody funk he was in a week or so ago so he talked and joked more. At one point he was walking with me back from the cleaning supply closet and he asked why I hadn’t been a porter before now, which I thought was an odd question because they choose the porter. I said they hadn’t offered it to me till just this past week and he said I should have been a porter from the day I arrived. I’m not sure if he was complimenting my compulsive cleaning behavior or sympathizing that it would have been good for me to be getting out of my cell from the start, or maybe a bit of both, but it was a moment of genuine human connection and I appreciated it. Nothing like that would have ever happened in CA. Again, Cherry, the CO he defended my taiji practice from heckling from unit 2’s yard, earned my respect for making a small but significant effort to connect as human beings.
At yard today I tried to listen to Radio Lab, and episode on chance and randomness, but Tanner, Jackson’s cellie, came up and seemed to need to chat. He usually walks the yard with George but George was working out so Tanner needed a talking partner. How that fell to me I’m not sure but oh well. You can’t expect any quiet private time anywhere while you’re in prison…well MAYBE in the shower. *chuckle* Tanner is an early 20s white kid from Kearney I take it. He’s into automotive repair but that makes him sound like some cool auto-mechanic type but he’s actually pretty geeky and kind of awkward, though not as nerdy and uncoordinated as Josh whom the unit has taken to actually calling Nerd. LOL Tanner and I talked about nothing of significance but he seemed to enjoy it. I would have prefered to listen to Radio Lab but hey, when in Rome, do as the Romans do, when in prison, you’d damn well better make an effort to get along with the other prisoners. LOL
At gym tonight I didn’t play any handball because my achilles tendon is quite sore. I think playing in ankle high boots is the cause so I took a break to let it heal some. George had also injured himself playing handball yesterday, he twisted his ankle when he stepped on Tanner’s foot. *chuckle* So we were both benched with injuries.
When I went to through my paper plates away that they used instead of tray, Enoch approached me, pulled a paper out of his shirt pocket and listed the names, ages, and lengths of sentences of the 2 inmates who had escaped from LCC. Conspiracy theorist or not, he was right. I guess you shouldn’t dismiss everything someone says just because they’re a little crazy. LOL
Turns out the 2 guys were both sex-offenders, one was mid 30s with over a 100 year sentence and the other was mid 50s with over a 50 years. Rumor is that they escaped through the laundry somehow. Now how old jail-house-escape movie is that? LOL I have to say I am surprised that we weren’t on lockdown longer than we were but I guess it was LCC not D&E so we aren’t held responsible or implicated in being involved, which is good for us. I told Dennis that we should write the warden and ask to be sent to LCC…since we heard there were 2 beds open now. HAHAHAhaha!
On another humorous note, since Ness left Jackson is now the most senior inmate on A side in our unit. And he was the one that initiated the idea of the handball tournament so they were running all questions about the tournament by him. He decided that if everything needed to be approved by him and he was the most senior inmate then he must be the Pod Father. LOL! Now that made me belly laugh when he said it.
I did practice handball tonight at gym with Marcos for the tournament tomorrow. My serve has stabilized to an acceptably average level but my actual play seems to have weakened. I’m afraid I may lose Marcos the tournament yet again. *sigh* I did go out of my way to make sure that no one could accuse me of rigging the pairings to get partnered with him again but it happened anyway and I feel guilty that he has to play with the handicap of me as his partner. I guess we can just do our best. At least he’s being very friendly and jovial about it though I suspect in Spanish he’s saying something else to his friends. *chuckle* Oh, we named the teams after animals since one wanted to be called goats (for greatest of all time). Marcos and I are the bulls, there’s vipers, buffalos, peacocks (one of the weaker teams LOL) and even the mythical chupacabras (a wholely Latino team *smile*).
We got canteen tonight too. Or more accurately, everyone else got canteen. I got nothing. The well oiled machine that is this prison must have lost my order form because there was no bag of goodies for me tonight. This happened to James a couple of weeks ago so I shouldn’t be too surprised. At least there wasn’t anything that I absolutely couldn’t get along without that I didn’t get. In all honesty, there isn’t anything off canteen I couldn’t live without for a week, though the state razors could conceivably end one’s life, they are just that bad. *chuckle* The only thing I’ll probably miss is the squeeze cheese that I’ve taken to squeezing onto most of my meals for a little added flavor, but I’ll manage a week without. Such deprivation…what am I, in prison? LOL
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