The Chocolate Had to Go. Since there is a holiday this week, Veteran's Day, we received the bi-weekly commissary on Monday.

We are limited to spending $55.00 for food and non-food items. There is a separate limit for postage, $18.50. Each time I fill out the sheet I carefully keep track of what I am spending since if you go over $55.00 they start taking stuff off your list.

For the last two shopping's I have spent slightly more than $55.00 and as such have been deprived of the light bulb I need to keep on hand for when the one in my lamp goes bad.

I decided to increase the amount of black beans, tomato sauce and corn to eight cans of each. This is double what I have been buying.

In order to accommodate this increase in the basics, I was forced to cut back on the number of Hershey Bars. I cut back from 15 to 10. So last night I skipped my nightly treat. I figure I would try and skip the chocolate in the beginning of the two week period.

On another commissary-related front, one of the other inmates asked me if I would switch two 6-packs of my Diet Coke with two 6-packs of regular Coke. Apparently he was supposed to buy the Diet Coke for someone and marked the wrong item on his commissary sheet.

This is one of the things that make little sense. On the one hand, why should I give up the Diet soda for regular soda. If I wanted regular Coke I would have brought it. On the other hand, as an inmate who is willing to practice random acts of kindness without any expectation of any return favor, I figured I would do it.

Now I have had a few tough weeks lately and have been drinking most of the 48 cans I buy each commissary. The deal I worked out with the inmate was if I did not drink the regular Cokes by next commissary, he would buy 2 six-packs of diet coke and trade them back to me. This way I have a built-in incentive to not drink all 48 sodas!

Little challenges along the way to help me get through the day to day monotony.  ¶ 6:31 AM