Today was a good day to be home with family. This morning I woke up and did the usual routine, however, Dennis was coming over at 9:00 AM to ride bicycles. I texted him last night to see if he wanted to go for a ride, and he stated that he just received his bike on Friday and would love to go for a ride today. He got here around 9:20AM with his new bike. We headed out to Anderson Snow park down the street. We hit the bike trail that extends all the way to Tampa and beyond, about 50 or more miles in either direction from Anderson Snow park. We headed north on the trail and it was a fantastic day. The weather was spectacular with a cool breeze blowing just enough to cool you down. Dennis has a bad knee because of his police work. He stated that every cop that he knows has a bad left knee from getting out of squad cars with 40+ lbs of gear on their belts over 20-50 times a day. I guess that torquing of the body on that knee takes it’s tole on the police officer. Anyway it was really bothering him prior to our ride and he wasn’t sure how long he could go for today. It ended up that his knee felt great due to the exercise that we did on the bike. We biked for over 11 miles today and we both felt great.
In the afternoon, Ihla wanted to go to the Spectrum store to inquire about changing her service provider from Verizon. We got there and found that our pastor, Roberto and his wife Anelli were there with their kids. He’s a wonderful man and the two of them pastor the best church in the area. He was there getting a new phone and we had some small talks and exchanged hugs. Spectrum has a great deal going on where if you purchase a land line for $14, you get one line for free of unlimited calling, text and data on your cell service. I’ve reduced my cell phone to the minimum amount to save some money. I don’t want to give up my number and/or contacts, so I just have the minimum service available for $14. The problem with purchasing a new phone for her is that she needs an application that she uses for logging into her work called DUO. The app is a free download, however it has to be configured for her work, so we decided to wait till after she speaks to her IT department on Monday before we pull the trigger on a new phone for her. They also had a deal on a new phone for $11.11 per month for three years. It’s a Google Pixel phone which seems to be a good phone. It was a $1000 phone reduced to $350, which is a really good deal.
We decided to go over to the Verizon store to see if they could reduce her monthly payment from $78 to something more reasonable. They basically stated that they could only reduce it $10 only if we get her brother-in-law’s military card and we would receive a military discount. I guess they feel that they don’t need to give out deals…
We came home and I started to read my book by Viktor Frankl while we waited to go to a Mexican restaurant. Dennis, Remy and Trina took us out for a farewell dinner. Trina was very interested in the whole experience and what I can expect from prison life. I tried to explain to her what had transpired over the past 2.5 years of my life. It seemed that the whole restaurant was listening to our conversation, maybe because of my loud voice, but I didn’t care. I wanted the place to know the truth about that day and wasn’t afraid anymore about what I did. For the past two years I’ve been ashamed about my participation in the protest, afraid of what people will think about me. Today it didn’t matter. I was going to serve my sentence soon and had nothing to hide or be ashamed of. For the first time in the last couple of years I felt as though a huge weight has lifted from my chest and I could once again be myself. I joked and laughed as though I was free of this heavy burden that has cause so much turmoil in my family.
We headed back to the Plymale’s house and Nikki was awaken by Dennis’s call. We all gathered around the I-Pad looking device and had a lengthy conversation with her about her job and how life was treating her in Japan. Trina started to talk about their friend in CA who had posted pictures of her feet on line. Apparently there’s money in that and she made $2000 for her feet pictures. Trina showed us her feet that looked like huge fat thumbs and she had huge gaps between her toes. I called it Spock feet, because she could separate her big toe away from her other toes like the symbol that Spock from StarTrack used to say peace and prosper using the V symbol on his hand. Anyway, we had a blast talking with Nikki and teasing Trina and I was joking and laughing like the happier days of the past.
Ihla and I came home and started watching a movie. She fell asleep on the couch while I continued to watch the movie. It was funny for a while until Seth Grogan started talking about his hatred towards Republicans, so I turned it off and went to bed. Just another reminder of how Hollywood is so convinced that this administration is somehow good for America and the elites. Of course, that brought me back to reality and I had a difficult time sleeping again.
