I may go over to Ontario and check to see what is going on with Joel. There is not a lot of anything else that needs doing and the weather looks good.

I left around 8:45 and got some money off to Michael and Nolan. I stopped for some quarters and headed to Pilot to gas up. I made all the rest stops and at about 30 miles out I remembered we went back to Mountain Time so I hit the prison about 1:30 MST. The check in went okay and I was soon in the visiting room talking to Joel. He seemed glad to see me and I was glad to see him. He looked okay because I was worried that he had been beaten up. He told me that when he was in the hole he asked to go back to his old unit but since his offense(?) was in a different unit they released him to that unit. Apparently there were some inmates in that unit who had a beef with a group that they thought hadf some connection to Joel. There was a confrontation and I guess one guy left and soon came back with a friend who held him while the other guy was pounding his face. He finally got some help and the other guys left. As soon as he was seen he was questioned and he told them he was doing push-ups and hit the stool. They moved him back to his old unit and he was celled up with some guy who seems to be a native American wannabe that turns Joel off. He has worked out a deal to switch his cellie out for a friend he gets along with better. He felt that the fight sort of helped his status and he said that it was called "heart check". Apparently he passed and that is important. The word gets out that he may be small but he will resist bullying.

He said he was out of money and his mother was going to send some Monday. I told him I would send some tomorrow and he could write checks on it. I guess he will be ordering on Sunday and he should get his stuff on Thursday. He said that his girl friend is knocked up and his mom tends to bad mouth her which helps nothings. He was thinking he should take off on her and we sort of agreed that that would not particularly help anything. He said that conventional wisdom felt that if you had a kid with a woman you probably had not lost her but just "lost your turn".

I hope I kind of pumped him up with The Secret and gave himself some hope that all of this can end at any time. He has some interesting ideas. I am sure that he is maturing in his own way but it is taking time. We had a couple of Mountain Dews and is was over too soon.

I made pretty good time to LaGrande and had some spaghetti and got home about 6:45. It was a good day and I am glad I decided to go.

The Memorable Positive Moment of the day was seeing Joel's face when I walked into the visiting room. I don't think he was surprised - he was just glad there was some diversion.