At 8am on Saturday, the officer doing headcount informed me that I had to submit a urine sample. It's never happend to me on the weekend before. The previous times, I had to submit it just when I arrived from work, which involved a strip search as well. Not this time, fortunately, and I really have gotten used to all of this.

Now that I'm awake (pinching off your morning leak so that you can fill a small vial will do that to you), I proceeded to clean the room as I do every Saturday for inspection. During the noon headcount, the officer comes through and surveys the room, and although at first it was much more thorough than it is now, I still like to give everything a good swab-down to make sure that nothing accumulates.

After the Saturday noon inspections, the inmates are allowed to go outside for two hours for recreational time. Half of the guys that go out play basketball (as I did: grabbing a few boards and scoring a few buckets along the way) while the other half play horseshoes. Ladies go outside, too, but they go out in the park where visitations are held; guys are sequestered to the back where the basketball "court" is. My hyperextended knee is feeling better, though I still can't run and jump and full strength.

I finished Solitude and decided to take a small literary breather by reading a Drew Carey book (published in 1997 before he got ridiculously popular), which I polished off in a day. I'm now headfirst into Don Quixote, which is actually quite similar in writing style to Tom Robbins and Denis Diderot. It's make for quick reading as well.

Somewhere around Friday night, the rains caused the fire alarm circuitry to short. And so basically, every half hour or so for the next two days would consist of the fire alarm sounding off for three seconds, followed by the sound of the fire doors slamming, and then after the fire alarm terminates, the sound of an officer on the loudspeaker say, "False alarm; do not evacuate." All weekend long. This continued even as I walked out the door to head to work this morning.

Because of the rains Saturday night, all of the Sunday visits were cancelled. This sucked for two reasons: one, I was subjected to furlough food the whole day (I decided to nourish myself solely on coffee, bread, butter, and lettuce: they can't screw those up that badly, can they?) and two, the whole day progressed much much slower than any normal Sunday.

What made the Sunday really worthwhile, though, was the Red Sox game. Because of the headcounts, we were all forced to retire to our rooms at very opportune moments. I was in my room, hunched over my radio, struggling to get a Los Angeles AM station that was broadcasting the game, and I barely heard over the static the fact that Dave Roberts had stolen second and then scored. Mariano Rivera had blown a save!

Everyone in the facility were cheering for the Red Sox, with the exception of a handful of Yankee fans (one cheered for both the Yankees and the Patriots; let me guess, do you cheer for the Lakers, too?). There was so much euphoria when David Ortiz hit the game winning home run that the control center shut down the TV room because of the ruckus we caused. It didn't matter; the game was won, and it felt good to be cheering for the winning underdog.