Just The facts, Ma'am...

The blog you have been reading is true. Only the names have been changed to protect my employment.

(cue music)
"Dun-da-dun-dun-duuuuuuunnnnnnnn!"

This is Raccoon City. At any given time it houses around 1700+ inmates, 100-200 correctional officers and around a hundred psychologists, nurses, doctors, clerical staff, caseworkers and administrative personnel.

I work the evening watch out of central security. My watch captain is whoever happens to be there that night.

My name is Sgt Rev.

And I carry a badge.

(cue music)
"Dun-da-dun-dun-duuuuuuunnnnnnnn!"

Okay, that was silly.

I've been asked several times in the last couple of months if I'm making all of this up. Just writing stories for my own amusement or for the edification or amusement of my readers.

As much as I hate to admit it..... I'm not making any of this stuff up. The average criminal class in this place is actually that lame.

Like I said once before, there are no Hannibal Lectors here. No Professor Moriarty's. Not a rocket surgeon in the bunch.

If you don't believe me, go to Bozo criminal Of The Day and look through some of their archives. Your average criminal has the intelligence of a rubber door stop or possibly a FOX news analyst.

There are people who work in Raccoon City with me that know I'm not making this stuff up. Sgt Drew, KP, Vinnie, Coup, TJ and others. They deal with the very same knuckleheads day in and day out just like I do.

They just don't write about it as much.

So the answer is: "Yes Virginia, there is a Raccoon City".

And I live in it five days a week. Doing twenty to life on the installment plan.

P.S. The Hive was pretty boring tonight so I had to fall back on my Plan B. Hence, this nonsense.

Tuesday is going to be National Popcorn Day and Child Labor Day, Inspire Your Heart With Art Day and Brandy Alexander Day.

Let the celebrations begin!

With A Concerned Look On My Face

One of the things I always hated seeing when I got in was all of the day shift Hive crew up in central doing paperwork. Especially when that was where I was headed.

Like today.

They said they had a double. They were taking an inmate out to put him on suicide watch and the cellie tried to push past the officers and run out of the cell. He got pushed rather firmly to the back of the cell while they took the one guy out. Not that big a deal.

Then when they tried to put the first guy in a suicide cell he bucked up and tried to fight and bite somebody and ended up getting sprayed.

Lovely.

Ran into Lt Strong and he was looking harassed. He said "I became shift commander in the middle of a bad count and then this happened! My day is going to last forever!"

I felt sorry for the guy. Bet he wished today that he'd stayed a Sergeant.

The house was full of utilities when we got down there, as they'd pulled everyone to do paperwork. They'd even pulled a caseworker to replace the Sergeant. Ten seconds after I walked into the office I was not happy. I could tell at a glance that my boards weren't right and the numbers were all messed up. That's bad.

A couple of them stayed to try and fix things and finally we just shooed them out and said "It's okay. We got this." and sent them home.

It took several phone calls and some heavy detective work to get all of our numbers straight enough to hope that count might clear. Luckily Stubby found one of our major errors and managed to clear it up. That one would have been hard to find without his help.

But it still took and hour to get things straight. First count cleared and we were on our way.

Later on in the evening Miz Goody came in and said the guy they had slammed earlier was complaining his hands were broken and wanted to see me. I'd seen him on the camera flapping his hands around so I was pretty sure they weren't broken, but I went anyway just to see what his deal was.

He proceeded to tell me the long sad tale of how they treated him mean ever since he got to this camp and wouldn't let him out of the Hive and when he tried to leave three officers jumped on him and strangled him and beat him up and broke his hands.

The whole time he's telling me this he's waving his hands around and wriggling his fingers to show me how broken they were. At one point he said they ripped "a big hunk of meat" out of his wrist. There might have been a scratch. I couldn't see very well. But he wasn't bleeding.

Then he said "They were beating me up and choking me and when I said they were hurting me they all said if I told anybody they would come back and do it again and call me a n*gger!"

"No! They didn't!" I tried my best to look astonished.

"They did, Sarge! They said if I told anybody they would beat me up again and call me a n*gger!"

"Well, that wasn't very nice of them ,was it?"

"No. I didn't like that at all."

I was starting to get an idea that this guy wasn't playing with a full set of hamsters in his wheel.

I stood there and listened to his tale of woe and all of his medical complaints with a look of real concern on my face until he finally wound down some. Then I told him to try and lay down and maybe get some sleep and that in the morning maybe they could put casts on his hands and maybe get him an aspirin or two.

That seemed to make him feel better and he went over and laid down on the slab, propped up against the heater and we didn't hear much out of him the rest of the night.

Then I went back in the office and slapped myself lightly on the forehead and said "Ay-yi-yi! What was I thinking?" If I'd have stayed out on the yard as a COI this would have been somebody else's problem!

Ah, well. I did it to myself and have nobody else to blame.

So. Saturday is going to be National Kazoo Day, Clash Day, Rattle Snake Round-Up Day and National Blueberry Pancake Day.

Sunday is going to be National Corn Chip Day, Curmudgeons Day, Freethinkers Day and National Puzzle Day.

Monday is going to be Escape Day (oh snap!), Inane Answering Machine Message Day, Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day and National Croissant Day.

I'll have butter on everything but the corn chips, thank you.

That Hat (Since Bryan Demanded It)

This is that hat. It's a Stratton brand felt "Sheriff" style hat. Except ours has a little thing in the front of the crown that holds a smaller version of our badge.

You can't see it real good in this picture, but the brim bends upwards all the way around. Just slightly. Alot of cops wear this style of hat. Either these or those flat brimmed "Trooper" style hats. I think the flat brimmed ones look even sillier but at least they don't collect so much water when it rains.

All I did with mine was bend down the brim in front about an inch. Maybe two. Not a whole lot. It doesn't take much. Then I wear it just slightly cocked over my right eye. Like some other famous studmuffin who seems to be fond of hats.

Not that I'm comparing myself to Harrison Ford. I'm just saying he has good taste in hats, too.

So anyway, it's just a slight alteration. Just enough to give it a bit of my own personal style.

And just enough to give them up at Central a case of the googly-moogly's. I don't care. We work in a prison, for goodness cakes. Get the frack over it.

So there it is. The Hat Explained.

Friday (back to the Hive again) is going to be Punch the Clock Day and Thomas Crapper Day (Oh, so fitting....), Auschwitz Liberation Day, Holocaust Remembrance Day, National Pre-School Fitness Day, Viet Nam Peace Day and Chocolate Cake Day.

That's alot to take in, I know. Start out slowly....

It Takes The Right Kind Of Guy

It takes the right kind of guy to pull off wearing a hat like that.

Some people just look awesome in hats and some don't. Luckily, I'm one of the ones that does.

In my mind, anyway.

The hats we wear as supervisors have this brim on it that curves up all the way around like a freaking salad bowl. Or one of those dishes that you can put chips all the way around the outside and the salsa in the middle.

They look just slightly ridiculous and if you keep them that way they tend to hold alot of water when it rains. I found that out in a hurry.

And no matter what they say, every single supervisor alters the brim of their hat slightly in their own way. Nobody leaves them like they came out of the box.

So I took a page out of Uncle T's playbook and bent the front of my brim slightly down. More like a fedora. Then I wear it slightly cocked over my right eye for that dashing rake.

It takes alot of work to get a quality felt hat to conform the way you want it to. A lot of bending and shaping and sometimes a bit of steaming to get them just right. Mine is still a work in progress.

I had it just about right when I came in the other day. I got called into the Lt's office and Captain Crane took one look at me and said a bad word. Then he said "If I'd have known you were going to wear your hat like that, I would have never promoted you! Dammit! I thought you were Uncle T!"

I just grinned and stuck my tongue out at him.

He curls the sides of his up and makes it look tall and skinny like him.

Now, I'm no Humphrey Bogart, but I do know how to wear a hat. And even if it's a bit contrary at times, I'm growing into this one whether they like it or not.

Besides, Uncle T is going to retire in a few years and somebody has to look this good after he's gone, right?

It was a fairly good day in the Hive so it didn't make me too grumpy. I survived. And I'll be back there again on Friday. Yayyy....

Thursday is going to be Australia Day, National Peanut Brittle Day, Toad Hollow Day Of Encouragement and National Pistachio Day.

Nuts!

They Really Are Listening!

There are signs up over all of the offender phones that state "ALL CALLS FROM THIS PHONE ARE SUBJECT TO MONITORING".

The offenders take no notice of the signs and say some of the stupidest things over the phones sometimes. Every now and then we get a call from some phone monitor saying "Go find offender such and such and lock him up under investigation. He's trying to arrange for drugs to be smuggled in. Or he's threatening someone or he's threatening suicide to his mother if she won't send him some money."

They are always so surprised when they get locked up. They never think that somebody actually listens to any of those calls.

One of the knuckleheads got grabbed up today, not long after he hung up the phone. Apparently he called his girlfriend and had an escape plan all laid out. He was going to fake some sort of serious illness to get sent out to the hospital and she was supposed to bring some guns and meet him there and he could get away.

Well, that didn't work. Someone else was listening.

The last time I saw him he was in the back of a state vehicle in full restraints including thumb cuffs, surrounded by six heavily armed transportation officers with bullet proof vests and they were off to drop him at the Maximum Security prison down the road.

And I'm sure the local PD would be making a visit to his girlfriends house real soon as well. Willing to bet her address would be changing fairly soon, too.

They don't look kindly on that sort of thing around these parts.

Those idiots really should learn to read the signs, don't you think?

I'm down in the Hive tomorrow and again on Friday. I'll probably be grumpy when I get home.

So Wednesday is going to be Opposite Day, A Room Of Ones Own Day, Macintosh Computer Day, World Leprosy Day and National Irish Coffee Day as well as Burns Night (which celebrates the poet Robert Burns, and not what you do accidentally with dinner).

I'll take the coffee. You can keep the leprosy, thank you.

Had To Lay Down The Law

Well, at least they didn't let me get bored tonight. Up in 10 house again. And there was no 30 house Sergeant so I got to cover both. One of the Substance Abuse Counselors caught an inmate smoking in the bathroom right before I got there, so I got to read a violation straight off the bat.

I should have seen the signs, I guess.

Not long after that an inmate came up to me and declared he wanted to got to the Hive for protective custody. Apparently he had gotten himself into debt with someone and was unable to pay so he was checking in.

**sigh** Made the calls and got his property packed and sent him on his way.

While that was going on someone called from 30 house and asked me to call or come over. When I get there, a gaggle of offenders were standing in front of the Sergeants office arguing and looking all sorts of pissed off.

It seemed that Kermit had found a broom and dustpan in one of the cells.

No big deal, right? We try to encourage cleanliness.

They had access to cleaning supplies but they were not allowed to keep them in their cells. They were only to use and put back. And apparently Kermit had issued a blanket warning to the room about this at the beginning of the month.

Now he was trying to give all six guys in the room extra duty work assignments for the infraction and they were all pissed off about it. And getting madder all the time, since Kermit isn't the easiest person in the world to have a conversation with.

So I stepped in and raised my hands for a little quiet. And I got it, amazingly enough.

"Okay guys, here's the deal. The broom was in your cell and you know it wasn't supposed to be there. You were supposed to return it when you were done. That's the rules."

"So what I want to know is, who brought the broom into the cell and left it there? We can settle this right here and now. Just man up and admit it and we'll deal with that person."

And all six of them stood there and stared at the floor like spoiled children and pouted.

I waited an entire minute, then looked at Kermit and said "Give them all extra duty. If they refuse, write each of them a violation and we'll go from there."

Well, they didn't like that decision one little bit. No sir. Several of them stomped off threatening to write complaints to the caseworker.

Like that scared me. Or Kermit. I think he gets a complaint a week, at least.

And to a man they refused the extra duty. So Kermit had to write six identical conduct violations. And he doesn't have any computer skills so he wrote them all out longhand.

So then I had to come back later and read all six of them to the offenders. Five of them refused to sign anything and gave me quite a bit of attitude but not enough to get locked up over. One was fairly polite and did sign his but still claimed he wasn't guilty.

I read the final violation at 9:55pm and just barely made it back over to 10 house in time for count.

And I was pretty happy when count cleared so I could go home again. I beat feet out of there just as fast as I could before something else happened.

Well, my first real attempt at some real sergeanting didn't go as well as I had planned.

But nobody got hurt and we all went home at the end of the night so it was okay after all.

Tuesday is going to be Eskimo Pie Patent Day, Belly Laugh Day, Beer Can Day, National Compliment Day, Talk Like A Grizzled Prospector Day and National Peanut Butter Day.

Exactly how does a grizzled prospector sound?

It Had It's Ups And Downs

My day didn't start off well at all. The National Weather Service was predicting that we might get anywhere from a tenth of an inch to up to a quarter of an inch of ice in the form of freezing rain between this afternoon and midnight.

And it started sprinkling right as I got to work. I had a feeling that I was going to be there a long time.

Then they started this new carp that if you come in and clear the metal detector then go back outside for any reason you have to clear it again. Meaning if you have already come in and got your keys and radio and all of the carp on then step out front to talk to somebody you have to take it all off again before they will let you back inside.

What the freaking snap?

I had to watch the control center while Sgt Banty was in a meeting with the major. No big deal. I went up and did an inventory and everything that was supposed to be there was there.

Then Weird calls me from the Comm Room and says a set of keys are missing. Not signed out. No key tabs. And he had shift change lined up at the door and didn't have time to look for them.

Aw........ fragsnaggle. Why me? I was just watching it for a minute.... Snap.

Start making calls trying to find out where the keys are and opening and closing doors for people who are impatient going in both directions. At one point the Chaplain was standing there tapping on my window giving me a snotty look because he wanted to leave. I came close to giving him something that would have gotten me a severe talking to later.

Sgt Strings volunteered to go help look for the keys and I almost kissed him. And then Banty came back from his meeting. I tossed the whole thing in his lap and beat feet. I was uncharacteristically pissed off and really needed to be somewhere else for a change.

Not sure exactly why, but I was. And there it was.

They sent me to 2 house with Doozey and Hayseed and The Guy Who Is So Irritating He Doesn't Get A Nickname, which didn't help elevate my mood any at all. Doozey and Hayseed are all right, but that guy..... Man, I don't know about him.

I spent alot of time outside either smoking or pretending to smoke just so I didn't have to be in there.

Stubby and Miz Twang called me later to see if I was all right. I'd calmed down a bit by then and actually managed a laugh or two. I appreciated that.

Doozey and Hayseed kept pointing silly remarks and little digs at The Irritating Guy then looking at me. Several times I had to shake my fist at Hayseed being The Guy's back to make him stop. He was going to get me to say some seriously un-sergeantly things if he wasn't careful.

I nearly bit a hole in my lip several times. Having fun at his expense is like trying to sandblast a saltine cracker. Takes no time or effort at all.

Things went fairly okay until the 10:00 count. They had a new procedure in place where each inmate has to come to the door of his cell and be identified and say his name and number before we can move on. It's not too difficult and only a little slower than the old way so it was no big deal.

We got our count done and called in about 10:25. I was supposed to get off at 10:30 but I was going to wait for count to clear before I left. So I sat and waited.

10:30

10:35

10:40

10:45

We start hearing radio traffic. Having the yards run their IP inspections again. Phone calls being made. Uh-oh....

10:50

Okay, this is getting ugly. We start discussing what would happen if someone was actually missing and what we would do.

10:55

Oh snap. We might not be going home tonight after all....

10:59 Count cleared!

You could hear a sigh of relief go up all over the whole camp. I packed up my stuff and left.

Just a little freezing rain had fallen. Just enough to cake over my truck windows nice and solid.

It took me twenty minutes of scraping my windows for my fifteen minute drive home. I burned more gas warming the thing up than I did going anywhere.

But I'm home and it's Friday and I'm done. Whew!

Here's the weekend lineup and I'm hauling my happy butt to bed.

Saturday: National Hugging Day, Fancy Rat And Mouse Day, Squirrel Appreciation Day and New England Clam Chowder Day.

Sunday: National Answer Your Cat's Question Day and National Blonde Brownie Day as well as Roe vs Wade Day.

Monday: National Handwriting Day, National Pie Day, and Measure Your Feet Day as well as Snowplow Mailbox Hockey Day.

Keep the celebrating calm, please. I'll be sleeping.

Not Our Finest Moment In Communication

For what could have been a long tedious night, it wasn't too bad. I went out on the yard and got Uncle Scary and Gray Ham and Kermit.

Even if I didn't get to talk a whole lot, at least two of my crew could be counted on to know their jobs and take care of business with minimal sergeanting on my part.

As a matter of fact the high point of my day was when someone came up to me in the chow hall and congratulated me on successfully using "sergeant" as a verb. That made me grin and made my day.

The only problem that came up was solved before I got there. The company that takes out our trash dumpsters has a supply of the locks we use to keep them secure. They brought us an empty dumpster today and when the guys went to take out the trash after dinner they found that it had the wrong lock on it and we couldn't get in.

That was a new one on me.

But Goosey has been around long enough and he thinks pretty good on his feet (at work anyway) and had already made arrangements to have main production come down and get the cans in his truck and dump them up there.

My job consisted of telling the Lt's what happened and what we were doing about it. It involved absolutely no decision making on my part whatsoever.

Even as a COI I liked it when somebody could make a decision. It just makes life easier on everybody.

And another problem solved. Man, I'm good! (grin)

At any rate, things went on calmly until the 10:00 count. I was up in central getting some advice from Uncle Buck and waiting for count to clear when Lt Farmer came in and said "We got two guys fighting in 10 house. They got one and can't find the other one. Take two yard guys and go help!"

I dashed off in the cart and grabbed Gray Ham and Kermit, leaving Uncle Scary on the yard. Cruised down to 10 house and in the back door. Twister was just walking out of the office carrying an empty coffee pot. I said "Where's the fighters?"

He looked at me and said "What the snap are you talking about? What fighters?"

"Isn't there a fight going on in here?"

"Not that I know of!"

Aw, snap. I remember hearing Sgt Moon on the radio so we dashed over to 30 house, thinking maybe it was a miscommunication. I asked the kid in the bubble "Where's Sgt Moon?"

He said "Over in 10 house with those fighters, I guess. He's not here!"

What the..... back to 10 house we went. This time we ran upstairs.

Looked down in E-wing. Nothing going on down there.

Ran over to F-wing and finally found Sgt Moon. He had both of them in cuffs, sitting in separate chairs. Apparently right about the time we got up there someone decided to call downstairs and let the rest of the house know what was going on.

If something had gone bad nobody would have known where to go. Sheesh! At least we now had plenty of backup. Hot on our heels were Lt Farmer, Lt Sienna and Lt Poolio. And I had Gray Ham and Kermit with me. Those two guys had nowhere to go.

Except to the Hive. And that's where they went.

By the time we got done running all over the place looking for them anything could have happened.

But nothing did and we were lucky. I sure felt a bit foolish running all over the place looking for them, though.

I'll have to work on ways to get more information the next time, if possible.

It's a learning process....

Nobody got hurt and we all got to go home at the end of the night. That's all that really matters.

So Friday is going to be National Butter Crunch Day (Mmm... Butter Crunch...), Camcorder Day, Inauguration Day, National Disk Jockey Day, International Fetish Day (not going there), Cheese Day and Learn To Ski Day.

I'll bet there's a bunch of people up in the Pacific Northwest learning to ski right now!

Be Careful What You Wish For

Last night on the way out I got a look at the chrono and saw that I was scheduled to be in housing units for the rest of the week. 3 house, 3 house, 2 house.

After being in the Hive for so long I find the regular GP housing units rather boring. Things rarely happen of any import in a GP unit.

And if you have a good or even halfway decent crew in a housing unit they usually don't leave much of anything at all for a sergeant to do. All you are left with is to sit there and sergeant. Which is kind of boring.

KP told me last night "These housing units wouldn't be so boring if they were yours." And that's so true. If I was in a house that was mine I would know most of the inmates and I would know how the house runs and I'd be making my own decisions about the standard operating procedure in the house and it would be more interesting. It would give me something to do other than just sit there and imagine becoming a verb.

Anyway, I didn't complain about the schedule, but I did groan a little theatrically. And roll my eyes a bit. I knew this kind of thing would happen if I got promoted.

Tonight Uncle T called me at 3 house and said "Remember when you whined about being in housing units all week?"

I didn't technically "whine" but.... yeah.

"Well," he said "Your wish came true! You are out on B-yard tomorrow!"

Okay. Cool. I can do that.

Then he adds "Better bring your ear plugs! You have Uncle Scary and Gray Ham out there with you!"

Oh snap. I'll never be able to get a word in edgewise. It will be like being stuck in a nest between two magpies fighting over the same piece of tinfoil. Oh lawsy.

I hear a voice in the background and Uncle T pipes up and says "Lt Baby Boy says if you don't like it, he'll put you in the Hive and sent LB out to B-yard instead!"

Oh, no. I'll take it. I can always disappear into the office and do some of that mysterious sergeant stuff that always needs to be done alone in a locked office somewhere. I'll come out for movements and to make sure the Geritol twins haven't talked each other to death and then sneak off again.

Sheesh.

What the snap was I thinking???

So Thursday is going to be National Popcorn Day (Hey! Uncle T! Popcorn!), Tin Can Day and Get To Know Your Customers Day.

Yeah, like that's going to happen.

I Was A Floater

Just not like that. If you read too many detective novels like I do, a "floater" is a corpse found in the water.

They tend to be pretty nasty depending on the water and how long they have been in there.

I was a different kind of floater. And generally not as nasty as that.

Well, for the most part, anyway. I guess that all depends on your point of view.

At any rate, for some odd reason every single one of our Sergeants came into work today and I had nowhere to go. I was completely an extra. All of the housing units were full and all the yards stocked. They even had an extra person down in laundry.

Now if I were a dedicated and conscientious employee, I would have just asked to go home and saved the state the expense of paying me since there was obviously nothing to do.

But frack that. Burn up my comp time or paid vacation time because we were momentarily embarrassed with supervisors? Oh snap no. I grabbed that tiger by the ears and held on for dear life.

I went down to 6 house and hung out with KP and Walleye while Sgt Major went to get his yearly performance reviews done. Then I went and spent the rest of the night taking up space in the yard shack with Uncle T and the lads, swapping war stories and bad jokes.

But By Jiminy Crickets if they had needed an Emergency Sergeant or even just someone extra to do some supplemental sergeanting somewhere (he said, spitting all over the keyboard), then I was there!

Luckily for me, nothing happened and I got to eat my dinner in peace and hang out and do exactly nothing. I never got any keys of any kind and never once even answered a radio call.

It was a good night.

And the day very nearly started off the way I predicted it might last night. Woke up this morning to high winds and tarantula rain and medium sized hailstones battering the side of my house at 6am. It scared me out of bed and when I wandered sleepily into the living room the wife said we were under a tornado watch! Lovely.

What kind of lunatic state is this, anyway?

If I knew how to write, I'd complain to the Governor.

If he knew how to read, that is. Ah, well.

Wednesday is going to be Winnie the Pooh Day, The Do-Dah Parade Day, Thesaurus Day, Peking Duck Day and Maintenance Day as well as the Blackout Protest Day for Wikipedia against the stupidly worded anti-internet piracy bills.

Huzzah! Rejoice! Let the banners unfurl! Release the dang pigeons, already!

Strange Eerie Weather

I guess you can tell right away since I'm writing about the weather that nothing of importance happened in old Raccoon City this evening.

And that's true, for my part, anyway. Nothing happened to or around or because of me that caused me the slightest concern.

I was pretty happy about that considering I work in a large steel cage filled with almost two thousand convicted felons and assorted knuckleheads and wobbleheads of all stripes.

A day where nothing bad happened is an entry in the "win" column.

But this weather now...... That has me a little worried.

Here it is the 16th of January and when I left the house to go to work it was 59 degrees outside. Windy as ten bags of what the snap, and extremely humid. So humid that the sidewalks stayed wet all day long, like it had just rained moments ago and even the 30 mile an hour wind gusts weren't drying them out.

And rather than cooling off as the evening progressed, it got even warmer. When I left to go home it was 65 outside. At 10:30 at night! In the middle of freaking January!

I stood outside with Lt Baby Boy and we looked at the sky together and wondered if we were going to get a tornado. I have a feeling that it wouldn't have taken all that much to get one going tonight.

They say the temps are going to drop hard tomorrow night and looking at snow again on Friday.

Man, when the weather here in the midwest starts doing that serious yo-yo thing it's time to start looking for the nearest shelter. I don't like it one bit.

On the plus side, it was a nice warm and enjoyable evening. As long as you didn't look up at the clouds and wonder what was going on up there.....

So Tuesday is going to be Blessing of the Animals at the Cathedral Day, Cable Car Day, Kid Inventors Day (the guy that invented kids or what?), Hot Buttered Rum Day and Ditch New Years Resolutions Day.

If you haven't done them by now, give it up and celebrate it!

It Smelled Like Old Times

Disclaimer: If you are eating or have a weak stomach or are just one of those overly sensible people to start with.....

Well, you should know better than to be here in the first place.

But if you can take it, then read on.

They sent me down to the Hive again. Imagine that. I won't go into the reasons why I was down there. That's just..... no.

And on the way down there I said a few things out loud that I won't print here about my crew. My rec crew was good. It was Compass and Gray Ham. They are like Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau together but they know their job and get things done.

On the other hand I got Patch and the Kid for my floor crew and I despaired deeply. Patch bid in down there and that boy needs a hearing aid and maybe some Ritalin. Everything he says comes out in this unrecognizable blur all jammed together.

"Sarge! Doweblurrbleisthevisitsnaffle?"

"What?"

"Doweblurrbleisthevisitsnaffle?"

"Yeah. Sure. Whatever. Just do it."

And the Kid..... Well, he's been thrown out of everywhere else so I got stuck with him. He has to be in a place where he is under "direct supervision". And only on A-side. He's not allowed on B-side at all.

I wasn't happy about having him there. But he managed to help count and pass out the mail without setting anything on fire so I guess he did okay.

Like last night, I was glad that I had two experienced officers around who could help keep an eye on things.

We had what we thought was just a plugged toilet. Patch got them a plunger and they tried it with no luck.

So we got the inmate plumbers down there with their snake. No luck then either.

I called up front and said we would have to take that cell offline until we could get it fixed. That would have been Tuesday at the earliest because of the upcoming holiday. They didn't like that option and said to hang tight.

Two hours later the head Plumber pulls up in his truck with his five inmate workers and they roll out the big industrial snake and a whole chest of tools and boxes of parts and start tinkering with the drains. They spend over an hour pulling out an accumulation of....... Some pretty nasty stuff that had built up in the main drain pipe.

The smell was pretty awful. It smelled just like.... It smelled just like the Hive used to smell like all the time in the bad old days. Like an open sewer. It made my eyes water and my sinuses slam shut. It was the kind of odor that clung to you in sticky clumps and skittered around on the floor like hyperactive demonic termites looking to bore into your brain.

I was immediately sorry that I quit carrying Vicks in my lunchbox. That would have helped alot.

They got done just before count cleared and had to wait. My poor dorm worker spent another hour with a bucket of bleach water and some other cleanser mopping and re-mopping the floor. The combination of the two cleaners he used was almost as toxic as the original smell. But he finally got it cleaned up and I sent him back to his house with stern instructions to take a long shower when he got there.

Even now, hours later, I still can't smell anything. My nose may have finally given up in despair.

But for a Friday the 13th, it wasn't as bad as it could have been. I've seen worse.

So Saturday is going to be National Dress Up Your Pet Day (Critter! It's time!), Organize Your Home Day, National Hot Pastrami Sandwich Day and Penguin Awareness Day.

Sunday will be Hat Day (Whoo Hoo!), Humanitarian Day, Strawberry Ice Cream Day and Snowflake Photograph Day.

Monday of course will be Hot and Spicy Food International Day and National Nothing Day as well as National Fig Newton Day and National Nothing Day.

Celebrate Nothing!

A Good Thing I Brought Burritos

It was a hard snow. A sudden and vicious snow. It wasn't deep or thick. It just rolled in with a sudden cold fury like a mad dog to a week old steak bone. It made the early morning roads a mess and a sudden ice rink that seemed to catch everyone by surprise.

I was scheduled to be in the Control Center. And my crew had already threatened to call out and leave me with a bunch of utilities unless I brought them food.

They were kidding. I think. But just to be on the safe side I stopped in to Taco Bell and bought a bag of big cheesy potato burritos. Goosey got me hooked on those things. They are filling and tasty.

It was a good thing I brought them. We needed the extra energy.

It seemed like almost everything that could go wrong did go wrong tonight. And if I hadn't had Vinnie and Stubby up there running the show all would have been lost. Once again they proved themselves to be the Pros from Dover when it comes to the Control Center.

Me, I just stayed out of the way and tried to divert some of the Captains ire and general fed-upness away from my crew. Captain CJ wasn't having any better of a night than we were and all of that steam had to blow somewhere.

What went wrong? Everything. Keys lost. Transfers delayed by the weather. A bad count. More keys lost. Bad weather. Even more keys lost.

The bit with the keys was really starting to get on my nerves. We found most of them but it was a major hassle.

Our transfers were supposed to get here between three and four in the afternoon. They ended up not showing until after 10:00pm count cleared. And we ended up being six short from what we thought we were going to get.

One got left in a prison halfway across the state because the bus was too full. Five more got left at the camp up the road because they weren't sure where they put them.

Captain CJ was hot. And all that jiggery-boo with the numbers force my guys to do some creative accounting with the paperwork to make sure it all came out right in the computer. What they did with the numbers wasn't exactly by the book but it straightened things out until the weather cleared and we could get caught up again.

And Vinnie was only half right. Sometimes putting the guy with underpants on his head in charge of the numbers is the best thing to do.

I'll just let you mull that picture around in your head on your own.

So Friday is going to be Make Your Dream Come True Day and Blame Someone Else Day as well as Friday The 13th (oh freaking joy), Public Radio Broadcasting Day, Rubber Ducky Day and Curried Chicken Day.

How I wish I could have blamed someone else......

Back To My Home Base

They had me on the bench when I left yesterday so when I came in I was dressed for wherever. It was supposed to be cold and bliskery outside so I layered up.

When I came in they said 25 house.

**sigh** Okay. I can do that.

It's an awfully boring house, for the most part. The offenders there are all in a program and they don't want to lose it, as passing the program is usually a condition of their release. So they usually behave themselves.

What I don't like about it is that they are all in the sexual offender program. So you know right away what kind of inmate you are dealing with over there. And they tend to make my lip curl.

But I was going to go and try to make the best of the evening.

Just as I was about to head over there Lt Sienna poked his head out and said "Hey Revvy! Change of plans! You're going to the Hive!"

Oh. Okay. I can do that too!

My first time down in the Hive as a Sergeant. I was kind of excited and a little nostalgic and a little bit saddened by being down there. The place seems so empty without BG in it still.

But I buckled down behind the desk and sat there kind of befuddled as I watched other people doing the stuff I was so used to doing myself. I tried to busy myself with paperwork but there really isn't all that much paperwork to do down there.

Just checking the numbers and writing a quick report to the Captain at the beginning of shift and I was done.

And nothing happened. They got their meds. And they got their chow. And some of them went out to rec.

And nothing continued to happen for quite some time.

Persistently, almost mockingly, the nothing continued happening despite all of my mental efforts to the contrary.

Then about halfway through the shift I hear a call from the wobblehead house to Sgt Uncle T and they said "10-10 ASAP!"

Oh yeah. I know what those ASAP calls mean. Something bad has happened and I'm going to be getting something to do finally!

So I grabbed up my lockup sheet and had my pencil poised, waiting for the phone to ring. All the while listening to the radio traffic. Uncle T called Lt Farmer who called Captain CJ who called Captain Spit who called Sausage out on the yard and told him to go get the camera and bring it down.

That's never a good sign when they want the camera. If they need pictures of something it's going to mean paperwork for somebody. At least it wasn't me, this time.

Turns out there was a fight in one of the cells. One of them ended up getting whomped in the.... groin area.... and the other one got his head banged off of the bunk. The first one got a bag of ice for his crotch and the other one had to be sent out for stitches.

And nobody saw the fight before it was over. The cell door was closed and apparently it started right after the officer had left the wing so they would have the maximum amount of time.

Well, we got the kid with the bag of ice pretty quickly. I think he was happy to get in a cell and lay down for awhile. The other guy didn't come back from the hospital until just after we left for the evening.

I thought that was going to be our excitement for the evening when I got another call. They were locking one up out of 2 house. He was hearing voices telling him to kill himself. Nice.

We got him in and stripped down to a smock in a camera cell in no time. He wasn't real happy, but at least he would find it a bit harder to kill himself in there. And being in a cold cell with nothing on but a kevlar smock makes you realize that there are some good things out there worth living for. Like clothes and hot food and a mattress and blanket, if nothing else.

And to top my night off the lovely and sniffly Sgt Miz Archer came in early to relieve me. Bless her heart. She sounded like she had a miserable cold but she was happy to see me and I was happy to see her. In more ways than one.

So I survived my first night back in the old homestead.

We all walked out safe at the end of the night, and that's all that mattered.

Thursday is going to be Feast of Fabulous Wild Men Day (okayyy.... sounds kind strange...), National Peach Melba Day (really?), National Pharmacists Day, National Handwriting Day and John Hancock's Birthday.

Go party on, you fabulous wild men!

Selling Out To Commercialism

I don't often do product endorsements here. Lampoons, yes. Endorsements, no.

As a matter of fact, I don't think I have ever done a product endorsement on this site.

Not that I can remember, anyway.

But I have one now. When I got promoted my wife took one look at those white shirts and declared "You are going to need one of those bleach pen thingies!"

As a profession doer of a sloppy husbands laundry, she knows these things. So the next time she went shopping she bought me a Tide Stain Stick. Which I of course, promptly stuck in my lunch box and forgot about.

I went three and a half weeks without spilling anything on my shirt. I was so proud of myself. Then last weekend when I worked that double I managed to spill some coffee on myself. Not much, just a few drops.

And I was so out of it from being tired I forgot I had the stain stick.

Yeah, I got frowned at for that. But she managed to get it out anyway in the wash with a few dark looks and some vigorous scrubbing. I vowed to remember it the next time.

Lo and behold tonight I was sitting in the little sauna of a Sergeants office in 30 house tonight and I got a drip of coffee on my shirt. Being the thoughtful and dutiful husband that I am, I remembered the stain stick in my box. Got it out and went dab dab dab.... Holy snap! It works!

I was really astonished. Actually had to go look in the mirror to make sure it was really gone and it was.

So if any of you are a messy drinker or eater like me or if you are prone to fashion faux pas and wear white after Labor Day, you might think about getting one of these things.

It takes out small dribs of coffee anyway. I won't testify to anything more than that.

And P.S. Don't let the dog chew on the thing. It's not good for the dog or the stain stick.

Disclaimer: No animals were harmed or even greatly inconvenienced in the production of this blog post.

Wednesday is going to be National Step in a Puddle and Splash Your Friend Day (Not Sgt Puddle, but the other kind), National Human Trafficking Awareness Day, Secret Pal Day and Hot Toddy Day.

I'm Darev2005 and I approved this message.

War And Peace

The day started out pretty peaceful. For our shift, anyway.

On day shift right after lunch some knucklehead down in the Hive got frisky. They ended up calling a 10-5 (officer needs assistance) and spraying him and having a pretty major use of force.

When you call 10-5 over the radio people come out of the woodwork. And sometimes you end up with more help than you really needed to begin with. But you get help, anyway. That's always good.

At any rate, alot of people got involved and everyone involved had to do paperwork. Replacing those people brought the staffing levels down so the Major closed the yards for the remainder of the afternoon.

So when we came in there were no inmates out playing and only minimal movement.

Since I was the A-yard Sergeant, that didn't hurt my feelings at all. Once the guys got IP done, we had nothing to do until count cleared after 4:30.

As soon as we were done with mainline I was standing out in front of A-dining and Fogey came out and said "I think I'm going to have one of my workers in cuffs here in a minute. He went to med pass and never came back. I'm through messing with him."

I told him "Do what you need to do. Call me if you need me." Then I headed across the yard to get a cup of coffee. No sooner did I reach the shack when he called me on the radio to come back. Sure enough, he had the little numbskull in cuffs.

Fogey had released his workers who took meds to medical. Everyone else came back in less than twenty minutes. This idiot was gone for almost an hour and didn't walk back in the door until chow was over with.

Trying to get out of working. Well, it worked. In a way.

The knucklehead tried crying to me about it saying that medical made him wait up there all that time. It was all their fault.

So I called the medical officer. "He was here, all right. Got his meds and walked out the door. We didn't keep him any longer than anyone else."

Walked back into the office and looked the kid in they eye and told him what the medical officer told me. When he tried to cry again I said "You're beat. You are going to the Hive. Get over it." Then I read him his violation and sent him off to the Hive for refusing to work. That is one quick way to get locked up around here.

About an hour later I get a call to go up to 1 house. Miz Spikes is up in the bubble and she has two small chunks of rock, about an inch long and maybe half an inch on each side. She was doing a cell search and found them in a desk. When she picked them up and asked the inmate about them he got a bit agitated, saying that he was Native American and they were "Ceremonial" stones. He went on to say that she had "tainted" them by touching them and now they would have to be "blessed" again before they would be of any use.

Now, religion is kind of a touchy subject in a prison. As it is outside. You tread on thin ice when you start handling religious things. And certain religious sects are more touchy than others about the handling of their things.

But there are strict rules about "sacred objects" and how they must be identified and packaged. These were just laying open in the desk.

So I took the rocks down to the office and called the offender down there. He was a little upset. I told him that I understood, being part Native American myself. I'm not enough to really count for anything, but it's still there. I told him that if he wanted to keep his sacred rocks free and clear of any molestation that they would have to be sealed into a medicine bag. That way we would know it's his religious objects and it wouldn't get touched or tampered with. And if it was sealed then we would know that it didn't contain any contraband.

He calmed down and said he understood and took his rocks back and said he would get a medicine bag to put them in from the chaplain.

I thought the problem was solved.

About two hours later I got another call to come to 1 house.

JonT had heard the story from Miz Spikes and had gotten curious and looked the offender up on the computer. It said his avowed religion was Christian. And when JonT called the guy down there and asked him about it, whether he was native American or Christian the guy tossed the rocks back down on the desk and said "Actually I'm Southern Baptist!" and stomped out of the office.

Now, according to DOC policy, you are only allowed to claim one religion. You can't be a Catholic Muslim Jewish Wiccan Baptist. Or a Seventh Day Mennonite Odinist Baha'i Pentecostal. It doesn't work like that. You have to be one or the other.

As you can guess, I was getting a little pissed off about this whole situation at this point. Called him back down into the office and between JonT and I we laid it out flat for him. Pick something and stick with it or stop playing games. I said "I don't care about you. I don't care what religion you are. And I don't care about your rocks. If you want to keep them, put them in a medicine bag or the next time your cell gets searched they will be taken as contraband and disposed of. Period."

JonT actually got to play "Good Cop" and told the guy to go talk to the chaplain and maybe get some counseling and decide what he wanted to be. Me, I got up and told him to take his rocks and go away.

And he took his rocks and went away.

I suspect that he was just trying to make a fuss about it and make people less likely to search his cell. They do that alot. And more than once I have found what they didn't want me to find hidden amongst or behind their religious objects. Like the one time I found a tattoo gun in a hollowed out bible.

But either way we shut him down on that approach. I'm sure he'll try it again on someone else.

But at least the officers in 1 house are wise to that one now.

And the remainder of the evening passed in peace.

Tuesday is going to be Peculiar People Day (Oh yeah. Lots of them), National Cut Your Energy Costs Day, League of Nations Day and Bittersweet Chocolate Day.

Let's get there early for the parade!

I'm Not 21 Anymore

Back in my younger days, about the time this country of ours was founded, I could stay up all day and night and not miss a beat.

Of course, I won't go into detail about what I was doing back then while staying up all night. Needless to say it was a lot more fun that what I did Friday night.

Since there are so few Sergeants the list for overtime is short and tends to rotate quickly at certain times of the year. They'd called me last Friday and said I was #2 again, even though I'd worked over only two weeks before that. So I sat and trembled with fear all week every time the phone rang.

On Friday I knew I had to be getting close again so I decided to take the horns by the bull and do it on my time, rather than theirs. So I called up and volunteered, knowing if I stayed over it would give me two days to recover.

And I got my wish......... Sort of, anyway.

I got what I asked for.

Lt Pennybags (who looks just like the Monopoly Man), that strange little gnome who runs the books on midnight shift, called me up.

Lt P: "You volunteered to stay over, right?"
Me: "Yup."
Lt P: "Okay. We need a yard sergeant."
Me: "A'ight then. Which yard do I get?"
Lt P: "Both of them."
Me: "Okey....... Dokey."

Having pretty much no idea what went on during midnight shift as far as the yards went, I wandered back and forth, writing down names of my officers and who was what and asking lots of questions.

We had an inmate in the dry cell. That meant that we had to supply someone to watch him in rotating shifts every hour. And they kept pulling from my yards. Since I only had two officers on each yard, that meant I was short most of the time.

So instead of being a lazy joik and sitting on my butt saying "Get it done" I did half of the A-yard inner perimeter check and then went over and did half of the B-yard IP to give my guys a hand. They were startled but grateful. Apparently that doesn't happen too often. From what I hear most of the midnights yard sergeants sit up in central and drink coffee with the Lieutenants or nap in a chair somewhere.

On midnights we count at 1:30am. The first time, anyway. And I had to go help count 1 house. Right about the time we were going to count two things happened. One, another camp showed up with an inmate that they were dropping off at our medical. Why, since they were only twenty miles up the road, they decided to bring him up at 1:15 in the morning we have no idea. So that delayed our count. And two, we had some guy in 1 house yelling that he had a medical emergency at 1:25.

I went up with some grumpy know it all new guy to check out the situation. The offender was pale and panting and shaking saying he was having an anxiety attack. Not knowing what else to do, I called a Code 16 (medical emergency) and stated "difficulty breathing".

Lt Beez came trotting in and took charge of the situation in his usual "I know more than you so I'm taking charge" kind of way which was fine with me. It was good to give a Lieutenant something to do rather than sit and think of mischief to get into.

It turned into a great big deal with them taking the guy to medical and then locking him up "under investigation", suspecting that he might have been intoxicated. That pissed the guy off and he swore he was going to sue us all. He claimed he had a good attorney (that always cracks me up) and that we would be left with nothing by the time he was through with us.

Hey, I got nothing now. What are you going to take from me?

At any rate, between him and the delivery we ended up counting almost an hour late, which threw everything off for the rest of the night.

And they kept me busy running back and forth all night long. At least I got some exercise. I learned a few things about the way midnights functions.

It's a whole other world. Believe me. How they manage to function with so few people is a complete mystery. You learn to juggle, I guess.

Apparently I didn't screw anything up too badly. I didn't even get any nasty looks.

And now I have to spend all day today trying to do all the stuff I was going to spend all weekend doing.

Joy....

Monday is going to be Play God Day (Sweet!), Balloon Ascension Day, National Clean Off Your Desk Day (I'd have to rent a dumpster!), National Static Electricity Day (shocking, eh?), Panama's Martyr Day (Noriega?), National Apricot Day and Aviation In America Day.

Take the day off and celebrate!

I'm A Zombie

Worked another double last night. I'm.........


Tired.



Think I'll go to bed now.

Job Offers

Most of what I have heard since I got promoted is "You're going to midnight shift down in the Hive, sucker! Hee hee hee!"

I kind of expected that was going to happen.

But now since Sgt Drew says he wants that spot, different things are opening up. More Sergeants are wanting to move around than I first expected and hopefully something at least halfway decent will come up on our shift.

I talked it over with the Watcher this evening and he gave me some sage advice. "The longer we are in limbo, the longer we get to stay on third shift where we want to be." That is so true. He's so smart it scares me sometimes. I may have to adopt him.

Went across camp to read a violation because Uncle Buck was busy flirting with the Captain or something. Big Mac cornered me up and said that he was bidding in down in 30 house and Sgt Moon was bidding out. The Kid got himself pulled out of there again (hopefully forever) and he wanted me to come down there and help clean the place up. Big Mac said he wanted me down there at his back.

Granted, that house needs some serious cleaning up. And Big Mac has a lot of back to cover. It would be a serious challenge. I'll have to give it some serious thought. But I felt a little proud that he wanted me down there.

When he said "I need a Daddy down there to protect me." I had to laugh. Like he needs protection. What he needs is someone to keep the Captains and the FUM off his back while he gets the place running the way we want it to.

I could run interference, anyway.

As long as the Kid is gone and I don't inherit that train wreck I will give it some serious consideration.

If the spot actually comes open.

We'll see.

So Friday is going to be Bean Day, Three Kings Day, Twelfth Night (on the 6th???), National Smith Day and the birthdays of both PePe LePew and Sherlock Holmes.

Egad, mon ami!

The Evil Glare

The Evil Glare. Usually reserved for inmates who won't behave, but is more often than not used on staff. Just a silent and subtle warning that usually gets ignored to their peril.

But I'll remember.

And this Evil Glare goes out to Sgt Uncle T who called out tonight and left me (again) on the yard with Sausage and Kermit. My ears are still stinging from the constant chattering.

I don't think I spent more than fifteen minutes inside the shack all night long. Instead I went and found Sergeanty things to do elsewhere. Like hanging out in the office in dining and reading violations at 6 house.

It got me out on the yard, yeah.

But I'll remember that....... Just you wait....

And by the way, the coffee pot in the shack is now dead. At least I didn't do it this time. It died all on it's own.

Maybe it's a sign.

Thursday is going to be Bird Day, National Whipped Cream Day, FM Radio Day, Bozo The Clown Day and National Second Hand Wardrobe Day.

Get all dressed up for it!

Just In Limbo

Still in limbo about where I'm going and what I'll be doing. Sgt Drew and one of the other new sergeants want to go to midnights and that should fill them back up again.

And right now there just aren't any openings on evening shift for the Watcher and I to fill, unfortunately. I keep hoping that at least two of ours go to day shift and leave openings for us.

The last rumor I heard was from Capt Wheelie who had heard that the decision was going to be made tomorrow and we would start our new shifts on Sunday. And that would mean of course that we won't be staying on evening shift. Pfui.

One of the things that really sucks about getting promoted is that we are now all the way down at the bottom of the seniority list. The Watcher and I especially were just getting to the point where we'd been here long enough and proved ourselves and could probably get anything that we wanted to bid on.

Three weeks ago when we were COI's.

Now we have to start the whole process over again, getting the spots that nobody wants and the ratty days off until we can get into a good spot again and hang onto it.

I'm not ready to get stuck in a house again five days a week. I'll take it if I have to because the Major put me there, but I'd prefer one of the utility spots where I can move around some days and work different places.

And the inmates really don't want me stuck in one house all of the time getting into their business. When I get bored I tend to get into things to make the time go by. The type of things that amuse and entertain me and make my nights go faster but that really annoy the inmates.

**sigh** Maybe we'll hear something tomorrow....

Wednesday is going to be Trivia Day and Humiliation Day as well as Perihelion Day, Dimpled Chad Day, Pop Music Chart Day, Tom Thumb Day, World Braille Day, World Hypnotism Day and National Spaghetti Day.

You are getting sleepy...... sleepy.....

A Long Road Ahead

I got a long way to go before I get comfortable in this supervisory role. I was kind of a nutcase at chow this evening.

I think the high temp this afternoon was in the high thirties or low forties. With some pretty intense wind gusts all night long which brought the wind chill down into the low teens.

It's been close to an hour since I got home and I think my earlobes are just now starting to come back online. It was the kind of cold that felt like someone was running a frozen chainsaw up and down your legs, even through the long johns.

As usual when we are running the chow line, there were officers inside the chow hall and some outside doing pat searches and watching the yard. I was worried that they guys outside were getting too cold and I kept running out there to make sure they were okay and then running back inside to make sure things were going well in there.

I'm sure it was mildly amusing to watch.

We had a good crew out on the yard tonight. I had the Fireman and Gray Ham and Snack. The Fireman and Gray Ham are both old yard dawgs and know what to do without me getting on to them. Snack is young and fairly new but has a pretty good head on his shoulders. He'd gone up to watch the med line and I ran up to make sure he went inside and warmed up when he needed it.

The Fireman was inside calling the houses and checking with me about the timing and Gray Ham was out in his insulated bibs wandering the yard watching the movement. He wouldn't have gone inside if I had told him to so I didn't bother.

It should have been a no-brainer. They could have easily run chow without me.

But instead I let it get to me and I ran back and forth like a fool trying to keep an eye on everything all at once. I know better than that but I did it anyway. Not exactly sure why.

Even way back when I first started working for the DOC years ago I always wanted to know where my crew was at all times. It was just a thing with me. Not necessarily for my own safety but for theirs. If I hadn't seen someone for a few minutes, I wanted to know where they were and that they were okay.

And now that I'm a supervisor that has stayed with me. And gotten worse. Or better. Stronger, anyway.

During mainline I had eleven officers and a Lieutenant wandering hither and yon inside and outside of the chow hall. And my mind wouldn't rest until I had located all of them.

Crazy, I know. I really need to learn to relax a little.

I'll get there. I hope. Or I'll get an ulcer. Another one.

So, still no word on where I'll end up or what shift. What with the holidays and all the Major hasn't been in much and alot of people are shifting around. I keep hoping at least two Sergeants on our shift want to go to days and open up a few slots on evenings so I can stay where I'm at.

Keeping my fingers crossed.

Tuesday is going to be Festival of Sleep Day (Ahhh... sweet, blissful sleep!), Drinking Straw Day, JRR Tolkien Day, Momento Mori (Remember You Die) Day and National Chocolate Covered Cherry Day.

Sleep.......