I put my soda and king sized Reese's on the counter, and the lady across the counter scanned it with her little gun until it beeped and the total came up. She said something I couldn't quite make out. "I'm sorry?" I asked. "Stamps." She said. "I don't need any" I replied. What am I going to send birthday cards from jail? Then she said it. "Food stamps. Are you paying with food stamps." And with that one question, I was as close to punching a woman as I've ever come. I mean there's poor, and then there's food stamp poor, and I didn't look either. I was wearing a Polo shirt, not a cardboard house and newspaper slacks. I have never been so insulted in my entire fucking life.

A pleasant and recent first experience for me was taking the bus. I have always pictured myself as being above taking public transportation anywhere because I'm not crazy, crippled, or drunk (usually). Someone might accidentally touch me and *poof* my teeth would fall out and I'd be begging for change and smelling like urine. I waited for the bus at the nearest stop from the jail, and climbed aboard and took a seat to survey my fellow passengers. They were a fairly normal bunch, and I thought that perhaps my judgment of the system was a bit too harsh. Then a guy got on the bus and pulled out a sword.

He started waving it around. "GIVE ME SOME CRACK!" he said. Well, that's what I heard. It was actually, "LOOK WHAT I FOUND!" So now I'm on a moving bus, with this crackhead swashbuckler stumbling around, and I'm praying to God his next trick will be to swallow the sword so it ends up in his chest instead of mine. After he got off and I stopped white-knuckling the hand rail, I noticed the guy passed out in the seat across from me. He had a peculiar ring on, so I leaned over to take a closer look. It looked like it had two huge pearls embedded in the top. After a second I figured it out. They weren't pearls, they were molars. And when he woke up and yawned, I knew exactly whose molars they were. I was riding on a traveling circus, with $1.25 admission.

Well today is my last day of work release, so we have a lot of catching up to do before I - Get out on Monday / Escape / Get Shanked. This whole jail thing was supposed to be a "boo hoo learn your lesson, get down to business" trip, but these last few days have actually been... fun. I have hung out with more girls on jail work release than I have in the whole past year at Virginia Tech. Which is like, three girls. Additionally I have seen a cockroach fight off a mouse and pigeon for a chunk of bread, which you can't even find on National Geographic. So here's my basic work-release schedule:

8 AM - Let me the fuck out of here:

Noon - Lunch and drinking with Justin and hot bartender ex-girlfriend who broke up with me because I said her grammar "needs work."

5 PM - Dinner with more friends and pictures in front of jail / getting dropped off at jail.

9:00 PM - Poker under the stars in the yard.
9:10 PM - Go to bed broke.

I mean, how bad of a day does that sound like to you? Now compare this "jail" to what I have in store when I get back to Blacksburg, 15 hour days of research. I can actually say that I would rather be in jail than doing my research.

That's so sad.