Hugs and Kisses. Well it is Wednesday evening, and we actually worked all day. On Monday there was no work from 10:00 AM till 3:00 PM, and on Tuesday there was no work from 7:30 AM till 3:00 PM, so I did some of the necessary paperwork today and have more to do, but thought I would go ahead and write you a letter.

I am feeling sort of emotionally adrift after writing to you, doing the list for the web site and the turmoil with the "job". Well, I do have some defenses, junk food (M&M’s and Hershey Bars), plenty of Diet Coke, and books.

But there are plenty of times that a warm cuddly hug would do more than all of the preceding items can begin to do. Of course one might ask how I know a hug would do any good, having had so few in the last eight years.

One major one from girlfriend Karen while I was still doing the pre-trial county jail shuffle down in North Carolina, Mom and Dad hugs received at the start and the end of each of their visits, and one in the middle of the walkway back to the units the night my friend Dave was being transferred, and one the last Sunday service that Chaplin Bartel preached here.

Yeah, it’s a pretty poor life when one can account for all of the hugs one has had in the last eight years.

Kisses, they are another thing. One sisterly kiss from Karen. She was supposed to be my sister since only immediate family members were allowed to visit in the county jails in North Carolina. All the visits were done behind a glass window, but this one time I needed to sign some paperwork, so Karen and I were in this small office with a female county sheriff officer.

Oh yeah, there was one other Karen hug late one Sunday night in the hospital parking lot while I was wearing handcuffs and leg cuffs after being treated for an asthma attack. I was escorted by the male county sheriff. I had been locked in the county jail for over three months and could not see the outside at all. So this trip to the hospital was the first time I had seen the real world in over three months.

That was very weird. By the time I was being returned from the hospital it was close to 11:30 PM on a Sunday evening. The town we were in was one that seemed to roll up the sidewalks at night. Well as we were returning back to the jail, the officer asked me if my "sister" was married or had a boyfriend. As we were about to enter the jail building he parked out on the street for a bit so I could soak up the "outside", a random act of kindness!

Although I was in a county jail, I was technically in the custody of the U.S. Marshals. Well, before I could be taken to the hospital, they were supposed to call the Marshals for permission. They reached an answering machine, and after leaving several messages, the highest ranking officer in the jail said the hell with the Marshals, take him to the hospital.

The hospital was weird since the deputy knew all the staff, and several others coming and going were talking about their next golf date, etc. There I was handcuffed to a gurney, watching Mayberry RFD go about its day to day existence.

So here I sit at the typewriter and typing out "woe is me."

I did disassemble the Wheelwriter, popped all the keycaps off and let them soak it in some Simple Green. Now it is cleaner, there are no extra parts left over, and it still works. I did not end up with the memory being cleared. I was going to rearrange the key caps, but all the "code" keys do not change when I select the alternate Dvorak keyboard layout and there is one part in the "merge" process where you set the field values for record selection where it also ignores the keyboard layout. I suppose if you ordered the typewriter with the Dvorak layout all the functions would be consistent.

So it is 7:00 PM and I am not typing this in the memory so I think I will type some more and then head back into the unit on the 7:30 PM move. But my fingers are really not under operating control and it is almost time for the recall.

Saved by the bell so to speak.
  ¶ 7:18 AM