Getting My Hands Dirty

If you want to get something done in a hurry in Raccoon City, all you have to do is utter the magic phrase "The Major is pissed!" and it generally gets done pretty quickly.

And once again, third shift shows why we are always batting clean-up and for a good reason. We find the solutions and get the snit done.

Lt Beez calls me at 25 house and says "There's some stuff down in your basement. Broken brooms and stuff. It all needs to get hauled over and thrown in the trash compactor. It was supposed to get taken care of days ago and the Major is pissed. Will you take care of it?"

I said we'd handle it.

When I went down in the basement I saw about 25-30 broken brooms and mop handles taped together in bundles along with another pile of broken crud. It didn't look too bad. Then when I turned around I found a laundry cart (without anyone hiding in it)
loaded with more pieces of wood and metal pipes and about three hundred pounds of torn up floor tiles and chunks of drywall that needed to go out with the broken brooms.

Oh freaking joy.

The Lt said we could conscript a few inmates to push the carts over, but they were not allowed to throw any of that stuff in the dumpster themselves. So I took Tilt and a couple of inmates to push the carts and then Tilt sent them back to the house and we got busy.

When we had the first cart about halfway empty Tilt lifted one end of the thing to try and dump it all into the dumpster. He said "Watch out!" I said "What?" And a large handful of crap fell out and went right down the front of me.

Of course at that point the laws of laundry physics took over. The black stuff hit that white shirt of mine dead center. And the white stuff rolled down the leg of my black pants and all over my black boots.

I repeatedly said something that sounded nothing like "Oh snap!"

**sigh**

Afterwards I spent about twenty minutes in the bathroom trying to get at least some of that black crap out of my shirt to little avail. I finally managed to look halfway presentable again, anyway.

That's why I'm sitting here now well after midnight on my Monday evening or Tuesday morning as the case may be, doing a load of laundry as well as writing a blog post.

But we got the job done and Capt Strong (who used to be Lt Strong until recently. Congrats by the way!) did remember to say "Thanks!"

And third shift manages to do what day shift can never seem to accomplish. Once again.

So Saturday is going to be Bunsen Burner Day and National Clams On The Half Shell Day as well as National Pencil Day, National "She's Funny Like That" Day and Terri's Day.

Ya know? She is funny like that. Now that you mention it...

And just in case anyone was wondering, I didn't win the Mega Millions. So it looks like I'll be here a while longer...

Ask And Ye Shall Recieve!

Yesterday my food holiday I listed was Spanish Paella Day. And I had no clue what a Paella was. But thanks to our friend Coup we will be clueless no more!

Chicken and clams and sausage and lobster and shrimp! And some other stuff just to hold those yummy things together. Here's the recipe:

The Ultimate Paella

Recipe courtesy Tyler Florence

Prep Time:

30 min

Inactive Prep Time:

1 hr 0 min

Cook Time:

1 hr 0 min

Level:

Intermediate

Serves:

4 to 6 servings

Ingredients

• Spice Mix for chicken, recipe follows
• 1 (3-pound) frying chicken, cut into 10 pieces
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 Spanish chorizo sausages, thickly sliced
• Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
• 1 Spanish onion, diced
• 4 garlic cloves, crushed
• Bunch flat-leaf parsley leaves, chopped, reserve some for garnish
• 1 (15-ounce) can whole tomatoes, drained and hand-crushed
• 4 cups short grain Spanish rice
• 6 cups water, warm
• Generous pinch saffron threads
• 1 dozen littleneck clams, scrubbed
• 1 pound jumbo shrimp, peeled and de-veined
• 2 lobster tails
• 1/2 cup sweet peas, frozen and thawed
• Lemon wedges, for serving

Special equipment:

• Large paella pan or wide shallow skillet

Directions

Rub the spice mix all over the chicken and marinate chicken for 1 hour in the refrigerator.

Heat oil in a paella pan over medium-high heat. Saute the chorizo until browned, remove and reserve. Add chicken skin-side down and brown on all sides, turning with tongs. Add salt and freshly ground pepper. Remove from pan and reserve.

In the same pan, make a sofrito by sauteing the onions, garlic, and parsley. Cook for 2 or 3 minutes on a medium heat. Then, add tomatoes and cook until the mixture caramelizes a bit and the flavors meld. Fold in the rice and stir-fry to coat the grains. Pour in water and simmer for 10 minutes, gently moving the pan around so the rice cooks evenly and absorbs the liquid. Add chicken, chorizo, and saffron. Add the clams and shrimp, tucking them into the rice. The shrimp will take about 8 minutes to cook. Give the paella a good shake and let it simmer, without stirring, until the rice is al dente, for about 15 minutes. During the last 5 minutes of cooking, when the rice is filling the pan, add the lobster tails. When the paella is cooked and the rice looks fluffy and moist, turn the heat up for 40 seconds until you can smell the rice toast at the bottom, then it's perfect.

Cook's note: The ideal paella has a toasted rice bottom called socarrat.

Remove from heat and rest for 5 minutes. Garnish with peas, parsley and lemon wedges.

Spice Mix for chicken:

• 1 tablespoon sweet paprika
• 2 teaspoons dried oregano
• Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

Combine ingredients in a small bowl. Rub the spice mixture all over the chicken; marinate for 1 hour, covered

If it weren't for the onions which would give me vicious heartburn, I think I could eat my weight in this stuff.

Thanks Coup!

Wednesday is going to be Something On A Stick Day.

And ya know, when you have Something On A Stick, what else do you need?

Contraband

Contraband. It's been the bane of prisons since day one. Inmates are forever wanting the things they can't have or aren't allowed to have in prison and there is always somebody somewhere who is willing and stupid enough to try and bring it in to them.

A couple of our main concerns are drugs, cell phones and cash money. The other two things they crave other than their freedom is sex and real edible food.

But I'm not going there. Not tonight, anyway.

We don't "search" the visitors when they come in. They have to take everything out of their pockets and pass through a metal detector before they are allowed in the visiting room. It's about all that we are allowed to do. So sometimes things do get through that way.

Though the other day a visitor was escorted off with the investigator and a couple of local deputies for questioning. Apparently there had been a tip of some sort that she might be bringing in drugs, but they didn't find anything on her. But then, without her actually being arrested, there's a limit on how thoroughly they could search her then, too. You never know.

This afternoon when we came on shift we all had to go through the visiting room and get searched ourselves. It happens now and then.

I bitch and moan about it and consider it an affront, but I don't take it personally. After all, it's people I know going through my lunch box and patting me down and I've taken part on the other end of a few staff searches.

And it seems like at least once a year someone ends up getting escorted out of the institution after being caught smuggling in something they shouldn't. We all shake our heads and say "Really? What a freaking idiot!"

We spend a good portion of each and every day searching the inmates and the buildings and grounds for contraband. They found a "shank" or prison made weapon in my house on Friday night while I was elsewhere. Usually what they find when they search is extra clothing and tattoo guns.

But occasionally they score something big and it makes us all look and feel good about our jobs.

And the search goes on.....

Tuesday is going to be National "Joe" Day (Hey, Joe!), Quirky Country Music Song Titles Day, Viagra Day (evil grin) and National Spanish Paella Day.

Whatever the snap a Paella is.

On Why The Goat Danced

I just want to touch briefly and pay my homage to that wonderful bean, without which very little would get done in this world.

At least not early in the morning.

Between the building both inside and outside the perimeter fence there are probably a minimum of fifty coffee pots here in Raccoon City. Very few places you can go into and not get a cup of coffee at almost any time of day or night.

If I could corner the coffee market here I'd be rich. There's a handful of people who don't drink it, but a snapload of them who do.

Notice I made up a new word there. Snapload. I'm hoping it will catch on.

Even the inmates, or should I say especially the inmates are crazy about their coffee. The stuff they get in the chow hall at breakfast is weak and tepid, usually. It's barely even brown water. And all they are allowed out on the hill is instant, which they heat up in the microwaves.

I have seen inmates do some amazing, startling and sometimes disgusting things for a "shot" of coffee, which is about enough to make two cups. Won't go into a lot of details there. I'll let you just imagine.

But like I said the other day, we caught some little wobblehead spitting out his psych meds to sell for coffee. I've seen that happen more than once.

Of course why you would want even good drugs if they had already been in someone else's mouth is beyond my comprehension.

Yuck.

But I digress. I always bring in enough grounds to make two pots of coffee every day. I don't always drink that much but it's been known to happen. Especially if I have help. Tonight I sat in my office and drank the better part of a pot by myself, just because no one else showed up who wanted any.

That was fine with me.

In my younger years I could drink the stuff right up until I went to bed. It was nothing to brew up a pot after dinner, empty it out and set it up again for the morning. Nowadays I have to moderate myself and stop drinking it around 8:00pm if I want to get any sleep at all.

Getting old sucks, just in case you were wondering.

But it does beat the alternative.

Anyway, I just wanted to say a belated thank you to Kaldi the goat herder back in the ninth century who supposedly discovered the stuff. The story is probably a bunch of snapwash, but I like the idea of it.

Another new word there. Whoo hoo!

Three cheers for coffee!

While I'm here, I might as well give you the celebrations for tomorrow, eh?
Monday is going to be Make Up Your Own Holiday Day and Spinach Festival Day over in Chester, Illinois.

And when you get to make up your own holiday, what else do you need?

Go crazy with it!

Gotta Stay Flexible

Working in a prison can really test your mettle sometimes. Whatever the frack "mettle" may be.

Some things are set in stone and treated like they were Commandments handed down from the mount, eternal and unaltered for all time.

Then you come in after your days off and find they have changed everything.

To survive at this job you have to learn to go with the flow or you might get swept away.

Sometimes I get a little resistant to change and sometimes I don't mind it. Depends on my mood, I guess.

I have heard about some of the things going on down in the Hive which I don't like at all. Especially dealing with rec, which is what I used to do. In my mind, it's going to get someone off in a wreck and possibly hurt if they are not extremely careful.

And some of these things we had tried in the past and found out later that they were not so good of an idea, after all. But when I voice my concerns nobody listens. So all I can say is "Watch your a*s and cover your butt and be careful." It's the best I can do, I suppose.

But an occasional change-up isn't a bad break now and then. I got to start work early today and relieve one of the day shift Sergeants for an hour so he could go home. So I got to work a house I don't get to see anymore. Talk to different people for awhile. That was nice.

And since I started early they gave me the choice of getting an hour of overtime or going home an hour early. Since there was nothing going on in 25 house tonight I took the option and burnt out an hour earlier than usual.

That was a nice change of pace.

And it was a good thing that i was in a mellow and flexible mood, because I got stuck listening to Tilt tell these two long interminable and ridiculous jokes. They were horrible. And way too long to tell here.

Even though I was sorely tempted to smack that grin off of his face or travel back in time and drown him at birth both times when he was done I just turned and walked away, shaking my head.

He was lucky I'm so easy to get along with. I'm just saying.....

So Sunday is going to be Pecan Day and Waffle Day (and I'm assuming pecan waffle day as well), Old New Years Day (really?), Slave Trade Day (umm... what?) and Tolkien Reading Day (sweet!).

More pecan waffles over here, please!

Celebrating Quietly

After a four and a half year hiatus, my wife got her job back with the good old Umbrella Corporation and will be coming back to work here in Raccoon City again! Yeah!

I am stoked beyond all repair. Even though she is doing a pretty good thing with her online scrapbooking stuff, it will be great to have that extra paycheck coming in every two weeks. And I'll get to drop that $300.00 a month I was paying to keep her on my insurance.

And even more than just the money, it was something that she really wanted to do and it was making her sad and angry when things weren't happening. But she worked her butt off and got it done and was very very happy when she passed the physical and they said she could come back.

I was so happy I could have toted her off and married her all over again.

Anyway, that's my great news for the day. She gets to come back next week for "job shadowing" which is supposed to show the new hires what working in a prison is all about. But she already knows all of that so i guess she'll just be hanging out getting reacquainted with old friends.

The week after that she starts the Academy again. Since it's been over a year she has to go through all six (?) weeks of that all over again. Most of those classes are going to be exactly the same as they were the first time, nine years ago. Wheee...

I don't envy her that.

But hey! My baby's back at work! Whoo hoo!

On a lighter note (grin), Saturday is going to be National Chocolate Covered Raisins Day, World Tuberculosis Day and the National Day of Unplugging.

What?!? Unplug what? I don't think so....

Just Imagining Things

I've written before about how this place is haunted. And it is. I've seen things.

I mean, how could you build a prison on the grounds of an abandoned mental hospital and expect it to NOT be haunted for criminy sakes? That's like throwing a sponge in a swamp and expecting it not to get wet. Don't be thick.

Some of the original buildings are well over 100 years old. And they are heated with steam, and you know how noisy that gets. The pipes clang and clonk and move around on their own all the time. It is never quiet, especially when the heat is running.

So I went down into the 10 house basement the other night, looking for something. I don't remember exactly what it was but I remember not finding it. I'd looked around some down there before but hadn't covered the whole place so i decided I'd go ahead and poke around and see what all was down there.

What it was, was junk, for the most part. Broken furniture and leftover stuff. Three whole rooms full of old files from years past, mouldering away in dozens of filing cabinets and probably being dined on by small paper eating critters. Bathrooms with all of the fixtures removed and used somewhere else.

I'd covered north wing and it was uneventful and I found my way into south wing. When I first opened the door I heard a noise like a piece of paper falling to the floor. I looked where it sounded like it came from and saw nothing.

Going from room to room I saw nothing (but more junk) but hear that same noise several more times, each time it got on my nerves just a little bit more. And each time I looked into the room that it sounded like it came out of, there was nothing.

By the time I had made my circuit of the wing and went back out the door the hair on the back of my neck was standing up and every time I heard that stupid noise I was ready to jump out of my skin.

I finally locked the door behind me and gave a shiver of relief.

I know it was just my imagination messing with me.

Even so, I don't think I'll be going down there again any time soon.

Frack That.

On a lighter note:
Wednesday will be Buddhist Day, Fragrance Day, Memory Day, Common Courtesy Day and National French Bread Day.

Thursday will be National Goof-off Day, As Young As You Feel Day, World Water Day and Coq Au Vin Day.

And Friday of course will be National Organize Your Home Office Day and National Chip and Dip Day as well as National Puppy Day and Near Miss Day and National Melba Toast Day.

Many excellent reasons to celebrate. Go wild!