A couple of interesting things happened today:
1) When I got to work, I checked in with my friends, J. & R., waving to them from a distance. R waved me over and told me with tears in his eyes that he heard back yesterday from the Appeals Court that they agreed to hear his appeal sometime in July. He was trying to act like it was allergies or something, but can you imagine being brought to tears not by the fact that you WON your appeal, but just the fact that THEY AGREED TO HEAR YOUR APPEAL? He doesn’t even know yet whether he will win it or not. Just to put it into perspective, Ron is a big strong dude probably about 60 years old. He can bench press my body weight and still have some room left over. He does something like 300-500 burpees per day for a period of 2 hours. Only a fellow prisoner would understand how something so simple could make a true man so emotional.
2) I went to lunch today and somehow, they forgot to put the donut on my tray. Once you step away, you cannot go back, so I got screwed out of a donut (no big deal – I would have felt guilty eating it anyways). Because the Earth believes in balance, when I got back to lunch after chow, the one CO went through and yelled out that they had a sale on for ice cream down at the commissary. I guess a truck of it showed up and they did not have room for it in the freezer. J, R & I ran down there and got some. I got two pints of Twix ice cream and 2 frozen Snicker Bar ice creams (about double the size of a big Snickers). I tried giving the one bar to a guy who does the verification work at Unicor, but he said he is lactose intolerant and could not eat it. So, I gave the one bar to two of the guys on my team and the other bar to the other two, so most of the people on my team got half a bar. It probably sounds a little bit gay, but the one guy was somewhat emotional about the whole thing and when I was sitting at my chair, came up and gave me a quick, silent hug. I know that he is practically destitute with no help from the outside and about all the money he makes at Unicor goes towards his FRP (Fines & Restitution Payment). In fact, he said last month he did not even make enough to cover the payment, so that means he NEVER gets to go to commissary. I guess the morale of the story is that sometimes it is the little things that make it all better.
3) Lastly, my one buddy Jay has been trying to go to a camp for several months now. He has been going to visit his case manager 2X per week for the past month or so (has to visit personally since the CO doesn’t use email). He visited today & the CO said “I put you in two weeks ago.” Jay said, “Were you going to tell me?” His response was, “Oh, I thought I already told you.” So all of the stress that has been affecting Jay for the past month was because a CO doesn’t use email & forgot to tell him. First of all, in my book, if you are working in middle management and refuse to use email, then it is probably time for you to move out of the organization. Still, I am happy for Jay that they put him in for it. I suspect he will be gone from Lexington in the next 2-3 weeks. I also suspect that once he is in the camp, they will release him from the prison system sooner than they would have if he had stayed here. We will all know soon enough.
