April 10, 2024

I am told after 6:00am that I will go "off site" for a medical appointment this morning. I get shackled up and driven in a transport van a few miles into town where Boscobel has a small hospital. A semi truck pulls in the parking lot with a mobile MRI trailer and they set up and scan me fairly quickly. For some reason they scan my upper and lower back even though I have never complained about my lower back at all.

​The mailroom sergeant, Sherman, is training a guy to check vehicles at the gates to the prison and he is complaining while we leave and when we return. It will be upper sixties and perfect weather today. The guards that escorted me to the medical appointment comment about the life of a mailroom sergeant, implying that looking in a couple vehicles while enjoying a perfect day is a lot of work for him. When we returned to the prison, he and three other guys were just standing around talking. Looking through any vehicle takes less than a minute. I am just shocked at how little work is unbearable and grievous to some guards. Without exaggeration, if I was to guess at productive hours of work is required over a year of employment, it would easily be less than a forty hour week. And for that they are a tax burden of over one hundred thousand dollars per year. When I get back to my cell the staff distributing the new tablets cannot explain the billing and costs so I am required to refuse the new tablet by the guard, Hudson. I don't know how long the old tablet will continue to function.