On Sigalert today 08-07-09 and letters to inmates.

I was writing to an inmate in a prison (ok, now I have two of them because the first one has a good buddy who doesn't have many people to talk with and wanted to know if I could write to him and do you REALLY think I'd say no???!!!), so I was putting screen shots of the traffic from Sigalert.com into a letter, saying "Welcome to my world" and I scrolled over on Sigalert, checking out traffic and saw what looked like a neat motorcycle ride, even though tonight seemed a bit 'yellow' to me...

...check out the name of the area...look closely at the top of the pic.

do you see it?
"South Nowhere".

Works for me...so I sent it to my inmate penpal "Mark" (not his name).

I dunno, does anyone ELSE cry when they open up an inmate's letter, a letter that the inmate had to pay 75 cents for because they have to pay not only for the postage, but the envelope AND the paper, does anyone else get teary when the inmate says that they're so very grateful the positive motivational letters (and some of you guys KNOW how wordy I CAN GET, right?) ?

Mark writes, (and I've kept his spelling in)
"I wanna thank you again for all of the positive read stuff. I'm working on my third month in this program (he's in prison, not jail, but PRISON for 3 years, eligible for parole in 18 months) and I use your reads very often and they help me through rough days. I have a friend that doesn't have many people to talk with and wondered if you would kinda of pen pal with him. He's an awesome dude. I told him to wright a little something down. "

My inmate pen pal was nice enough to put the other inmate's letter into his envelope so that the other inmate wouldn't have to spend 75 cents of his 'book'.

The other inmate Stu (not his name) writes,
"Ok, so I hope this doesn't come off to weird. I'm good friends with Mark and he's told me alot of good things. How you've been a very supportive friend sending him so much positive stuff. I was wonderin if you yourself or you had a positive friend that would be interested in being a pen-pal. if not I totally & completely understand. Thanks for your time."
Stu
USP #12345
(the USP is his prison number-this one's fake)

LIKE, how can I NOT write to him? I'm getting teary just thinking about it.

I send Mark pics of the bikes, stuff from this blog, some of the cute stuff I get from others online, a lot of motivational stuff I pick up from the internet that is sometimes inmate/prison specific.
Now I'll split my writing between the two of them, because I know they'll compare notes and let each other read their stuff.

Now you know what I do sometimes after work in my office, or when I have spare moments or breaks during the day, besides work on aerobics choreography/combos or working on this blog.

NOTE: Even though a friend may seem really together, sometimes a call or something can make them feel even MORE together. Because at times, sometimes, things aren't what they seem.