Imminent arrival of my (soon to be purchased) typewriter! I am awaiting the imminent arrival of my soon to be purchased typewriter. I am looking into a Smith Corona Wordsmith 250. It has a 29KB file memory with ninety day memory protection, a spell check with 50,000 words, and prints twelve characters per second. I can order a 15 pitch wheel for it, but first I need to check if it comes with it or if I need to order it. The catalog shows dual cassette ribbons for $8.75. I trust that means two per pack. Well, I am obviously still working on logistics.

I found an inmate here who already orders from Hamilton, so hopefully he will get the new catalog soon. My first purchase will be a dictionary and Thesaurus. Then we will be really cooking.

I know I have been spending more time writing day-to-day stuff of late, but I realize that I have really been on an emotional rollercoaster since November of last year. True, I am not sure why or if the minute details will be relevant in the future, but the few prison books I have read seem to either misstate the existence or gloss over it.

Also my thought is that as long as I have the basic facts, reconstructing the emotions and feelings of the experience will be possible. It could be that I have erred on the side of excessiveness, but with the lack of timely and constant feedback due to the medium of the message, i.e. U.S. mail, it is often after several weeks when I do get a letter back from you to find if I have adequately told the story, such as my response to your TB question.

I am glad you have saved the original copies of all my letters. I thought you had ditched them once you typed them. As long as we have files on CD and I get out while CD is still an available format, that sound good to me. Gee, what a wish; that I get out of prison while a particular media format is still relevant! Ha ha.

Burning my letters, albeit copies, hmm I wonder what that might excise. "Double, double toil and trouble..."

My "To Do" list was not meant to add any burden to you. You continually write in your letters about the need to check back and review my letters to see what questions you can answer. So I thought I would save you the agony of rereading my chicken scratch. Also I purposely labeled the one column "Go to Hell."

Sure, it seems to me that your ability or desire to do some of the things I asked was related much more to your time and availability and mood and not at all meshing with when I asked the request. So I thought that when you read my letters you get the full picture of why I am asking stuff and then down the road you can easily pick up a list and say hey, now I can do this or that.

Also, since I was keeping the list too you would no longer be barraged with multiple requests since in the past I have usually taken silence as "maybe he forgot" as opposed to he is too busy or is getting pissed at me again! So that was the idea of the list.

Now with typing more likely, it will hopefully take a large burden off you and place the responsibility on me for delivering finished and edited copy to you.

I was thinking about having Mom and Dad set up a "Prison Pete" Post Office Box if they are willing. Then if blog readers wanted to send letters to me, they could do that and save you printing and forwarding all that stuff. Also perhaps they might do some of the searching stuff too. Just a thought.  ¶ 3:22 PM