20 March 05

Odds & Ends

My former cellmate, Jerry, has returned and is now housed in Building 1.

Long Island has stopped earning tickets and has commenced a marketing correspondence course. He has turned out to be a good cellmate. He is respectful and easy going, but also someone who stands up for himself if anyone tries to push him around. Long Island gets released later this year, so I will have to shop around for a new cellmate shortly before he leaves, as I don’t want to end up playing what's called the "celly lottery": waiting for a random assignment, which can be good or bad. The key to happiness here is good cellmate chemistry.

I have a workout partner, Popcorn, who claims to be seven-eighths Chicano and one-eighth Pima Indian. Together we do my yoga routine and his jogging routine. Popcorn can walk on his hands and he has helped me half master the scorpion pose – I can hold the pose for up to thirty seconds but my feet do not touch my head. We jog up to five miles every couple of days and with Popcorn’s motivation I’ve been attending the twice-weekly 5:00am breakfasts in order to go to the 6:30am rec sessions. In order to rise so early, I now go to sleep between 9:00pm and 10:pm.

I’ve been trying to start a correspondence course with Rio Salado Community College but it’s a slow process.

In the chow hall, I sit at a table with String Bean and Fish. String Bean is the skinniest man in the unit – and probably the entire complex – standing six-feet tall and weighing
one-hundred-and-twenty-two pounds. He is so thin that the Medical Unit has authorised him to receive extra chow. Fish is an occultist intellectual with a British sense of humour, who, tragically, is HIV positive. Fish is due to be released shortly, and String Bean gets out in one year’s time.

Thank you for your support. I hope that your letters, emails, comments and questions keep coming because reading them makes my day.

Cheers! Jon

Email Jon at writeinside@hotmail.com
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