Day 6 of my first week in Federal Prison.
Still in quarantine pod of unit 10, and fortunately, we have our first commissary we receive this Wednesday. We have to turn in the lists tonight. What normally is a 180 dollar limit every two weeks is now 50 due to the Covid Con and I do not even have a bowl or a cup yet so I am bartering with other inmates trying to scrounge up supplies. I know it sounds bad but please do not pity me. Overall I am doing OK, and this isn’t a bad place. What most people have mentally in their head is jail or prison, this place isn’t it. It is like I am locked in a big college campus with no vehicle and no cell phone. The housing unit I am in and the one I am going to consists of two-person dorm rooms with doors (not cells), a window that you are free to open and close an industrial-sized ice machine that is always full of ice, and a hot water maker. The bathrooms resemble a dorm housing unit also, two urinals with a partition in between, two stall toilets with doors, four sinks one with a full soap thing on the wall, and two showers with surprisingly good pressure with shower curtains.
I finally got my medicines Friday afternoon, not long after I wrote my long complaining blog post. Another nice perk, is they give you 30-day supplies of your medicines in bottles so you don’t have to line up once or twice a day and be rationed your medicine. I keep the medicine in my room.
If only I had a tv I could control at my behest and an iPhone…it would almost be heaven lol.
Ok so here is the tv situation in this quarantine unit and we are down to about 10 of us now. We have 4 Mexicans who don’t speak a lick of English & 1 Mexican who doesn’t really speak any Spanish. Nice guys, I actually hope to learn Spanish while I am here, and if not learn at least know more than Biblioteca and esposa. 2 Black guys. 10 white guys of which I think 6 are sex offenders. There are two TV rooms. The whites have one room with one TV and the other room has two TVs, and one TV is for the Mexicans and the other is for the blacks. The blacks’ TV resembles the TV situation in the main housing units where to get the audio you have to have an FM radio, kind of like a gym (which they sell on commissary) and you can hear the audio through 88.1 FM. It is kind of cool actually especially since it can get noisy. The main issue here is I am the only sports guy in this unit. The whites (largely sex offenders) are almost always watching weird shit like cartoons, crappy movies like Snow White, or comic book movies. I hear once we get to the main unit the sex offenders are treated as their own race and have their own segregated area. I am also told I won’t have this sports problem as there are dedicated sports TVs. From the sounds of things, the sex offenders have it as good as they can possibly have it in quarantine, although they say this place is 80% sex offenders because FCI Seagoville is a sex offender treatment program facility for the BOP (I will believe it when I see it). Anyways, I made a deal with one of the two black guys to get his TV for the entire weekend (bought it for $50 dollars). Good deal considering I have been shut out from sports and had full control of the TV yesterday and again today. The games are not that great today so I am thinking of seeing if my guy wants his TV for half the day today so i can watch the Baylor/Texas game tomorrow. I befriended the correctional officer assigned to our quarantine unit (1 officer sits in his office all day across from the ice machine and surfs the internet). He came in and watched the end of the Auburn/Tennessee game with me yesterday. I shot the shit with him for about 15 minutes (he is a big Arkansas fan); but after he left the English-speaking Mexican who thinks he owns the unit pulled me aside and said i can’t be talking to the lawman. I said, “Yes sir, I understand, thanks for letting me know.” The main thing he was upset about is our banter interfered with his ability to hear his TV because his TV does not have an FM receiver because we are in this quarantine pod. He had a point with that, that was inconsiderate of me and I didn’t even realize. But as far as befriending the correctional officers, I don’t view them as cops, I view them as people I want on my side on this journey. Plus, they aren’t really cops. They are more like security guards on steroids. Almost all of them are friendly and here to help you (as long as it doesn’t require much effort) except for this one guard I won’t mention his name, last name begins with a C. The other guards just roll their eyes when his name comes up, lol.
Still waiting on the distilled water for my CPAP. I am going to go finish my commissary list and make a couple of phone calls. It is hot as crap right now because the computer I am sitting by has the sun beating on me through the window even though it is pretty damn cold outside.
Anyways, I hope everyone reading this is well. My lovely wife Amy gets sentenced on March 1. She is blameless in this whole deal so please be praying for her. The pre-sentence report is recommending only 10-16 months for her and if the judge follows that she could be gone only 3-6 months. Her max the judge can give her is 4 years and the government is asking for 3-4 years. Please reach out to her if you have her info and go to her sentencing to support her if you can.
Brad