Book in a Day

The rain came down heavy Saturday night into Sunday morning. As I walked to the dining hall for breakfast, it was still rainy, cold, and windy. Walking back from breakfast was not a nice weather day as the rain came down. It made me alter my plans and I decided to take the full day off from exercising. Normally, on the weekend day in which I have morning yard, I will run the entire time the yard is open. However, even though I am a fanatic about exercise, I do have some limitations. I’m not fond of running in the rain, wind, and cold. Yesterday morning all three of these variables were alive and well.
I mentally prepared my self to take the entire day off. When the yard opened, the rain had stopped and I was second guessing myself something awful. I felt guilty staying inside the dorm and not going outside to exercise. I had to busy myself with something so I started to write. Thirty minutes after the yard opened the skies opened up and it poured. I did make a good decision by staying inside.

This is something I don’t do if I can help it. However, with the inclement weather, I had little choice. Also, my body needed some down time as I have exercised just about everyday over the past seven weeks. Anything in excess including exercise is not good and the day off was well needed. I didn’t do much all day yesterday. Of course I wrote, I even watched a little of the morning news along with catching a few minutes of the NBA playoff game between the Phoenix Suns and the Los Angeles Lakers. Apparently, many of my dorm mates are fans of the Lakers and were rooting quite vigorously during the game. Unfortunately, they lost and my dorm mates were disappointed.

Most of the day, I remained on my bunk reading the fourth installment in the Left Behind Series. I was able to receive this from another inmate shortly after lunch. I did eat more than I usually eat yesterday probably out of boredom more than anything. The Sunday breakfast had cold cereal ( a knock off of rice Krispies) and eating only this made me hungry an hour later. I snacked on some trail mix prior to making the PB &J sandwich and soup lunch. Even after this large lunch, I felt myself getting hungry a few hours later and I had to snack on some pretzels before making my own dinner. I passed on going to the hamburger dinner as there weren’t any beans on the menu. I made my rice and peanut butter. The key to this dish is heating the peanut butter so it spreads easily. I have never thought of having peanut butter and rice together until I came to prison. Unbelievably, it actually tastes good to me!

As I mentioned, I spent most of the day reading. I started the book shortly after lunch and finished it before going to sleep at my usual time. These books read very quickly, but I was surprised to finish it in one day. Unfortunately, the inmate who gave me this book cannot get the next book in the series until next Sunday. The prison church dispenses these and I should have told him to get number 5 along with number 4, but I didn’t think about it until later. The book was just like the first 3 in the series and the story continues. There is more mystery than Biblical inferences in the book which I believe is good. I was very happy to spend an entire Sunday passing the time reading. I’m not sure if I have ever finished a book in one day before, but now I have. As I was reading during yesterday afternoon, my dorm mates decided to have a radio war. That is when two, sometimes more but yesterday there were only two, thank goodness) radios are played at opposite ends of the dorm with different radio stations blaring. In my opinion, the radio stations couldn’t have been worse as one radio was playing the twangy country music which is not one of my favorites – while the other was playing Spanish/Mexican music – also not one of my favorites. This was unusual for my dorm as there usually is only one radio playing at a time which plays the oldie rhythm and blues station – which I do like. However, yesterday afternoon I was subjected to the radio wars for 2 hours. Somehow I found a way to block out the noise and just concentrate on reading. I’m not sure how I accomplished this, but I did and stayed focused on the book. I guess the book was good enough to block out my surroundings and I wasn’t upset about the noise.

After I ate my peanut butter and rice dish, I waited for the evening yard to open. The rain had stopped earlier in the afternoon and the skies were clear for the evening yard. I was looking forward to going out since I was cooped up in the dorm all day. I put my book down and went outside for the evening yard. I had given my telephone call to my friend since he gave me his on Friday night. Before that phone call, we walked for a few minutes and talked. Once again my friend told me that this was the week I will be transferred to Fire Camp. He has said this every week for the past three weeks and one of these weeks, he will be right. Now that my friend has finished the firefighter program, he is into the waiting game as well. I am fairly certain he will not have to wait as long as I have since he has previous fire camp experience and is a clerk. His job as a clerk provides him access to the Sergeants and Lieutenants who can help him expedite his transfer. It wouldn’t surprise me if my friend was transferred before I was. I certainly hope this doesn’t happen, but if it does we have an agreement which is whoever arrives at Fire Camp first brings the other one the next week. It would be nice to be at the same Fire Camp with my friend as he has served as my mentor and I serve as his listening buddy. Who knows what the future has in store for either one of us and for right now I am happy to call him friend. I signed up for a telephone call on Tuesday evening which will hopefully serve as my last phone call here as if I do depart it will be early Wednesday morning.

The evening yard ended and I went back to finish my book. I only had 60 pages to go and didn’t have any trouble completing it prior to my normal bedtime. I finished the book and because I really didn’t really do anything physical all day, I wasn’t really tired. I had a hard time falling asleep especially since I drank about 2 gallons of water during the day. I made sure to drink enough during the day and I didn’t want to eat all my food so I switched to water. I must have an undersized bladder because I would swear more water comes out of me than goes in! I’m not sure how this is possible but I am always making trips to the bathroom. I finally fell asleep after the lights went off at 11:00 pm but woke up 90 minutes later to use the restroom. This happened every 90 minutes thereafter until I finally got out of my bunk to start the day. I read somewhere that sleep cycles are 90 minutes in duration and this must be true because I wasn’t that tired when I got up this morning. Also, in between those times of getting up my sleep was filled with dreams. Sometimes it seems my dreams start as soon as I close my eyes. They were non-sensical and not very memorable.

Normally when I get up during the night no one is awake. This was the case this morning. I made my way into the television area and had to turn it on. This is where I start my stretching routine for 15 minutes. I wasn’t sure if I was going to early breakfast or not so I kept a watchful eye on the window for my fellow instructors. Time came for the early breakfast and none of the Instructors were outside and I knew I would be going to regular breakfast. Normally there is a menu posted in our dorm every Sunday night for the following week. Over the past few weeks this has been my job. However, the kitchen didn’t pass out a menu last night. I like reviewing it so I can plan my eating accordingly. This morning I headed toward the dining hall not knowing what was for breakfast. When I arrived, I saw other inmates eating their pancakes, sausage, and oatmeal breakfast. It was the very filling pancake breakfast and as I approached the CO, he knew right away to call for a “no-meat” tray. I have certainly been here too long because most of the CO’s in the dining hall know my vegetarian requirement. I have come along way in the last 6 months but it is time to move on.

After breakfast, I headed over to the basketball court to start the PFT class. Once I arrived there, I had to wait another 45 minutes so all the inmates could eat breakfast. The breakfast release is somewhat back to normal even though the one race is still on lockdown. However, the CO’s were taking their time releasing the dorms for breakfast. Normally, breakfast is over by 8:00 am, but this morning it took until 8:30 am. Finally all the 10 PFT students arrived at the basketball court to start the class. Prior to this I was making small talk with the new coach which I am not crazy about doing. I don’t know what it is with this man, but each time I add something to the conversation he seems to change his demeanor. He could be very jovial and I or anyone else for that matter will say something and he tenses up. Upon seeing this, I said very little and tried to make myself scarce. Normally I can get along with most people, but the new coach is a tough nut to crack. My best strategy is to say very little and feign interest.

The one-sided banter with the new coach was over and again I was in charge of the class. I led them in all aspects of the class and everything went well. There was a little mix-up on the burpees but I quickly rectified the problem. The best part of the class for me is leading the mile run and the power walk. The cadences are not what they used to be when there was a 50 man class. Since there are only 10 students in the class, the cadences aren’t nearly as loud. In fact I gave up half way through the power walk because they were too quiet. The power walk was supposed to be 4 miles but only wound up to be 3 miles because the coach had to go somewhere and the class is not allowed to convene unless he is physically there. I was able to cool the class down with a series of stretches and then they were done. This left less than an hour in the morning yard and since I took yesterday off from any exercise I was feeling very strong. My normal routine is to run every other day while doing the Harvard Wall and push-up routines on the opposite days. Since I was feeling good, I opted for a pushup routine and I would do the Harvard Wall later in the afternoon. I had enough time in the morning to do 800 pushups and I finished my last one as the door closed.

Once again it was a very fast morning and a very good exercise session. I was able to do 4 miles in the class along with several calisthenics. It was a good morning and I went inside for an extended lunch period. I needed substance and found that with a peanut butter and banana sandwich, some trail mix, and graham crackers. I spent the rest of the lunch period listening to the lunch period while waiting for the afternoon yard to open.