So This is a Friday. Well, here it is another Friday.

Friday is the start of the freeze zone. The outgoing mail leaves here at 8:00 AM with the shift change. That is the last time mail goes out until Monday morning. At 4:00 PM we have the last incoming mail call till Monday.

Two letters that I mailed out last evening were returned to me today. The prison personnel were kind enough to let me know that the envelopes each needed an extra 23¢ postage. One envelope had five sheets, the other had six. The rule is that you can send up to seven pages and still be less than one ounce. I doubt they actually weighted the envelopes. Certainly the five page envelope is less than one ounce.

I am asking the recipients of the letters to get an official weight for future reference. If by chance the weight was over, I will be surprised. The point is that I pushed to make sure that the letters would make it out into the free world this week, and they did not.

[Editor] The letter weighed 1.2 ounces. USPS first class postage required is 60¢.

I did not get any other letters, but I did get two PC Magazines, two Electronic Musician magazines, and one Inc. Magazine. I need to send the new address to the publishers.

Lunch today was a plateful of macaroni and cheese. They serve a side of stewed tomatoes. You dump the tomatoes on the macaroni and you get a very tasty treat.

Now playing for your uplifting of spirits, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. It is a live recording of the Minnesota Symphony. They have a new conductor and when asked why he started his tenure with the 5th Symphony, he mentioned how he went back to the original score and decided to follow Beethoven's original notation.

I do not pretend to be expert enough to notice any differences between this particular performance and any other performance; plus, I am listening on very cheap ear buds and in mono to boot.

The music is really doing a great job of lifting my spirits. It is hard not to want to stand up and shout!

As far as I can tell, I am the only one listening to the music. All the inmates in my immediate vicinity do not even have headphones on. Well, I am sure I will be able to hear this piece again, once I get a better radio and headphones.

The movie tonight was another typical Friday night dumb flick, typical for prison so far. It was an R rated movie and there was about thirty seconds of female breast exposure, which is the longest breast exposure I have seen in way too long. I actually missed the now infamous wardrobe malfunction at the 2004 Super Bowl.

But to be honest, it is not worth sitting through ninety minutes of stupidity to see thirty seconds of female breast. The hard part for me is to listen to the guffaws of my fellow inmates at the lame ass gags, both visual and verbal.

(As I write this the last movement of the symphony is playing. I feel like I am soaring free high above the trees. Music to free the soul even for few minutes this evening is truly a gift. I am so thankful to the supporters of WNED for giving me this gift. Bravo! It is finished. The applause is incredible. Some Swedish record company is going to record Beethoven's entire Symphony as played by the Minnesota Symphony. That should be great.)

Back to the movie. The rest of the inmates thought it was funny, but alas, this is another of those minimal plot, no character development wastes of film. The good news is that Saturday's movie is Troy and on Sunday we have Ray! I have been hoping to see that movie; surprisingly, it is still in movie theaters.  ¶ 3:20 PM