One of my uncles came to visit me! He brought his wife and two kids. His kids amaze me. They're so charming and smart and filled with love. It's obvious my uncle has done a good job of guardi_

Woke up at 4:18am. Lay in bed thinking. At 6:00am I opened and read all of my Christmas cards. At 9:00am I called home and talked with family for the allotted fifteen minutes, then walked to the chapel. It was beautifully decorated: poinsettias, wreaths, an eight-foot-tall Christmas tree...

I received a visit today. It will probably be my last visit for at least the next year, as the prison where I will be transferred to receive the training is way up in Northern California. It will be a six hour drive from everyone I love. 

Sacrificing my visits for a year may sound extreme, but the training I'm going to receive will help me fulfill my calling. My loved ones understand that and they're supportive. Honestly, I think I'll be so engrossed in the training that the time will fly by before I know it. They might keep me so busy that my journal entries dwindle...

At AA tonight they said something very profound: "If you don't give it away, you don't get to keep it."

Woke up early and finished reading Wayne Dyer's Wishes Fulfilled. In it, Wayne talked about the power of making "I AM" statements. In his own way, he's talking about the power of faith and prayer, giving thanks for things before we receive them. It's about focusing on our dreams/prayers and disregarding all the negative reports and naysayers. It's also about love.

The friend who loaned me the book said I can have it. It just so happens that I have another friend who at this moment needs to read it, so I'll pass it along. Good books need to be read often.

My father didn't pick up the phone when I called, so I called my mom. She told me my Grandma fell down two days ago while stepping off the bus. Somehow she managed to limp home, then she had my aunt Agnes drive her to Kaiser Hospital. You don't know how concerned and helpless I felt when my mom told me what transpired. My Grandma helped raise me so I wish I had been available for her.

Me and my aunt Agnes haven't spoken in a while, but now I feel so grateful to her for taking care of Grandma, that now I'll definitely send her a Christmas card and write something special in it. Maybe that overture will help heal the petty rift between us.

I stayed up late listening to Delilah on FM radio. I like Delilah. While the radio played I began preparing to pack all my property for the upcoming move to the prison where I will receive the OMCP training. At this stage I'm compacting what I will take along and discarding what I don't want to take with me, because I'm only allowed to take six cubic feet of property when I move. 

There are specific limits on the quantity of certain items I can have: Six bars of soap, two bottles of lotion, four tubes of toothpaste, four deodorants, two toothbrushes, three photo albums, twelve CDs, ten books, and two magazines. 

Imagine if that was all you could have. For someone like me who writes a lot and reads a lot, I tend to accumulate good books and every time I move I'm forced to give some away.

After work today I made it my mission to address and write in all of my outgoing Christmas cards. Sending out a lot turns out to be a chore. I usually procrastinate and then agonize over what to write in them, because I want to write personal messages in each one that will be appreciated. This year I sent out twenty-one cards. I must have been in the zone because I accomplished it all in one evening.