Last week laundry managed to lose 3 of my 4 laundry bags which are supposed to come back 2 days after you send them out. This meant that I was wearing the only pair of pants that I had from last Thursday evening through till Tuesday evening when all 3 showed up. I’m still short 1 of the 4 pairs of pants I’m supposed to have which is a bit of a bother as they get dirty fast when you’re a porter, especially a shower porter. I’m now leary of sending my laundry out for fear it won’t come back but the only alternative is to wash clothes in my toilet like I did in San Quentin. At least as a porter I get access to cleaning supplies and have made sure my whole cell is nice and clean but drying, especially the heavier clothing like pants, in my cell would make it a virtual sauna. Yeah, now that the heat is hitting 100 the AC isn’t on anymore and it’s warm and muggy in our cell even without drying clothes. And here I was thinking NE Corrections was better than CA. Maybe not so much.
The job is going well. I just finished my first week on the job and tomorrow and Friday are my “weekend” so I get to sleep in tomorrow morning…for 30 more minutes before I have to get up and eat breakfast. *chuckle* I like being out of the cell more but a lot of the time we are waiting for people to finish eating to clean the tables or some such thing and I wish I could spend that time reading. I’ve not made much progress in Moby Dick over the last 5 days. *sigh* I get along well with the other porters which helps. We chat and BS to pass the time while waiting. The lead porter is Archie (short for Archuleta, his last name). a long time gangster OG (Old Gangster) from Cali and he and I have bonded over stories of Cali, including its prisons. LOL Brian Black is another shower porter but from B side. He’s a vet and was a teacher in Omaha before coming here so he’s pretty good to talk to. The other A side porters are Mike (Country) and RJ, both of whom I get along with but neither of whom I care to engage in a lengthy conversation. Archie actually blew up at Mike one afternoon because just about any time he opens his mouth it is to talk about his $50K jeep that he gave his ex wife and how she rolled it, or how he has so many horses, or so much land or something that shows off how much he has. Well Archie has nothing and was fed up with Mike’s bragging especially since Archie assume he’s lying.
I don’t think Mike is lying, but he is definitely compensating for some insecurities by showing off. (I just had to break the previous sentence off into a separate email because when I tried to send the original it was 2514, or 14 characters too long, but nothing in the MP4 player’s interface gives any indication of length so I don’t know till I try and send it that the email is too long and then I have to guess at how much text equals the number or characters I am over. Luckily, 14 is easy enough to count but when it’s significantly more I have to transcribe whole paragraphs to paper, delete it from the original email and re-transcribe it into a new email. Oh what fun!)
I think Mike’s ego and mouth are going to get him into a lot of trouble when he gets into general population at his final prison.
I have taken to the porter position very well. I’ve organized and cleaned our utility closet where our rags, brooms, mops, etc are stored. There are 2 5 gallon buckets in there, one of which they use to fill the mop buckets and the other had been sitting in a corner full of scouring pads and old rags and was actually growing mold. I cleaned it out, dried it out and organized all the stuff that was in it on a shelf and then I scoured the utility sink in there so it’s actually white again. If I’m going to work with supplies from there I want to make sure it’s clean. *smile* The other day I even talked the CO into going out to yard with me so I could clean the outside of the windows from the dayroom. LOL He had to announce it to central control so the tower wouldn’t shoot us. Ha. I wipe down the phones and kiosks every day. That wasn’t being done before which is kind of disgusting when you think that almost every inmate touches both the kiosk and phones and even breaths on the receivers. I’m somewhat surprised there aren’t more contagious illnesses going around…and around and around. Bottom line is they probably couldn’t have picked a better person for the job. I hope the parole board sees is that way in 7 years too. LOL
We have another handball tournament this weekend. This one sponsored by D&E, so no pop token buy in. *chuckle* I signed up and they did random pairings again. I told Jackson, who’s coordinating the tournament, that he should make sure I’m not paired with Marquez again. Not because I don’t want to be his partner, but because I don’t want to be responsible for him not winning a 3rd time. LOL I’m paired with Cuba, his cellie, a Cuban guy. Duh! I don’t think we stand a chance of winning the staggering $2.50 pot that D&E gives the winning team, but we’ll have fun playing at least.
Yesterday I tried to send a very insightful article on Obama from The Atlantic to McK so he could read it and share it with Justin and my parents and then we could discuss it. I thought it would be a good way for him and me to stay connected but the mailroom has a differing opinion.
They sent it back to me with a note saying “Altered – Contraband.” Because I had taken just the article out of the magazine I had now “altered” the magazine thus rendering it contraband. Contraband which they stapled to the envelope along with the note identifying it as contraband…and sent back to me. So the mailroom sent me…contraband. *boggle* This is the same group that has rejected materials my father has sent me, such as the printouts of NE legal records that they said were part of a book and you can’t mail in books, they have to come from a vendor like Amazon. First off, it’s legal research materials, not some novel I’m trying to get mailed in page by page. Secondly, they’re court records, you CAN’T purchase them to have them sent from Amazon or anyone, they’re public records. Then dad tried to send in another summary of an NE Supreme Court decision pertaining to lifetime parole for sex-offenders. They rejected that saying “Another person’s court papers.” Yes, they are. It’s called precedent and case law! I am stunned at what appears to be random excuses to attempt to block correspondence. If it was a consistent reason given for not allowing legal research materials through the mail I could maybe, grudgingly, understand. But it is the ad hoc nature of their explanations that makes it appear that someone with a giant chip on their shoulder is taking advantage of their control over mail to justify their personal decision as to what they want to let through and what that person feels shouldn’t be allowed. I am getting fed up with these petty power plays and am on the verge of making this (and taiji) my personal mission while I’m here. US mail should not be blocked arbitrarily or on personal petty whims, even if it comes from or is sent to an inmate. Now the question is, will this email be censored because I spoke ill of the censor? That would just prove my point now wouldn’t it? *grin*
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