Sacrifices. Yes, I know the sacrifices you have made for me and I think you know that I am very appreciative of all your support. Hissy fits are not always under the owner's control, but I have been duly chastised and let us move on.

The ironic thing is that many times my requests are already on the way to me and you still get hassled about them. Hence the attempt to keep better track of what I ask so I only ask once!

Yeah, I know I have been locked up for almost nine years; you would think I could handle it, but one last time, the Feds (specifically Dr. W, boy do I miss her) taught me all kinds of coping skills dealing with life's ups and downs. Then I get tossed in a black hole with no access to any of them save the US Mail and your address.

OK, I think your postcard said my missing letter turned up. If it is the one I am thinking of, it was my move to and initial processing at Downstate.

I do not know if you have gotten any return-to-sender envelopes lately, but the zip code is not even an issue. They key in the first three or four letters of the last name of the addressee and the first four letters of the street. This is why they have begun to renumber the rural route addresses. The zip code only comes into play if they want to send an envelope to a local post office to see if they know who it is. But that is not usually done.

Once I had switched two digits on a PO Box for one of the guys at Club Fed on a letter going to a small town in North Carolina. In the old system, the sorters would have looked at the zip code, tossed it into the proper bag, and delivered it to the proper post office. At the local post office, an employee would hove seen the name and tossed it in the correct box, no problem. Another example of how humans can handle mistakes better than machines, even if machines do the repetitive tasks more efficiently.

Regarding Alisha's comments, this dual letter system should take care of part of it, and as soon as typewriter is picked, all others will be solved too.  ¶ 3:44 PM