Two Less Ball Breakers. I received your letter today! Always a great day when your letters arrive. Such a suck up I am, but truly it is an honor to receive your letters. The letter was date stamped by our mail room six days after it was postmarked (the same day you wrote it), so I am not sure what took it so long.

I was greeted with various greetings by the staff members down in Maintenance this morning, but no different than I would have expected. As luck would have it I am scheduled to meet with my counselor tomorrow morning, so I will see if she can shed any light on my current state of unease.

Along with your letter, which was the only letter, I received six New York Times, one INC magazine and the October Playboy! The papers will take a while to read to be sure. I to still try to get them all read and clipped by Sunday.

Although we have a memo on our wall that clearly states that a special commissary buy will be arranged when you are out of the facility on your normal day, the next day, should have been tomorrow. I did not get the commissary sheet today and will not get it now till Monday evening for next Tuesday. They are closed to regular shopping on Mondays. On the one hand I guess I should be thankful since they are currently out of octopus, but they usually get a batch of missing items shipped in each Monday.

The strike became a non-issue as far as any demands being met. The "leaders" were all busted and are spending six months to a year in the special housing unit for organizing. I don't know if I had mentioned it, but the previously discussed "village idiot" that gave me such a hard time a while back was one of them, and he was led out of this dorm in handcuffs and was shipped out of here to serve his "box" time at another location. Good riddance.

I will double check my last few letters since there may indeed be a few things that I never did commit to paper but am thinking I did.

The staff member that worked in the tool room is now gone also, and the replacement seems to have a more positive attitude.

I think most of the ball breaking is just due to my hard work ethic and my desire to question things and want to do things as best as I can. Not just "good enough for prison." And yes there is also the fact that I will get the job done right.

As I have said before, it is not easy being me, but I certainly understand that better now than ever before. It does not mean I do not vent about it once in a while.

But what I have learned is that it is not worth complaining directly back to the ball breaker. I do drop (or make) some comments once in a while but have managed to not let the commenters get direct feedback from me in the form of a whiny response. I save that for you and my faithful blog readers. Ha Ha.

The old TV show Hank does not ring a bell. But back in those days we were not allowed to watch TV. Friday nights we would watch the Don Ameche Circus and maybe another show on after it but at this point I am drawing a blank. We would get some occasional Saturday Morning TV if Mom and Dad wanted to sleep in.

The only other TV that we watched back in the 60's was when we were at Grandma's on Sundays. We would watch Ed Sullivan, The FBI, Bonanza, and The Ted Mack Amateur Hour.

Hamilton has a bunch of the old cartoons like Popeye for real cheap on DVD: 30 shows under $10.00. Any interest? I could send you a list of the ones they have. They are also beginning to have some of the older movies on DVD. I will just send you some of the listings.

I will work on The Prison Pete FAQ and perhaps that might have a side benefit of having people put forth questions they would like me to answer. I will even keep a copy of it, and then from time to time reorganize it. It will be a good project for me.

As mentioned before, the lack of pen pal mail continues.

Damn it already 9:00 and I setter start the proof and print stage. I am just going to have enough time to get this printed before 10:00.

I love George Carlin! I have to get his latest book. Hamilton has it for $7.95 I think.

I have to type a post for Maggie. That will hopefully occur in the next week (or two).  ¶ 8:32 AM