6/28/2014

William D. Linley
ID No. M-08788
Graham Correctional Center
P.O. Box 499
Hillsboro, Illinois 62049

"Annual Inventory"

Hello World!

I sent two postings since May but don't know if they were ever posted or not. A friend said an email update is sent to you when something new is up. My last one was about saying thank you and picking up our trash. If you read it, then I guess my posts are making it.

I've been glued to the FIFA World Cup, of course. How about Mexico's goalie!? Wow! Of course, after living in Brazil for nearly two years and falling in love with the people and culture of Brazil, I find myself cheering them on. Yes, yes, yes... I always root for the USA first. Always stay with the home team. In the early '90s, I was looking for work with a company in Brazil, but I guess it wasn't meant to be for me, to join the ranks of the EXPATS. Those American citizens who have chosen to live permanently in a foreign country but still pay taxes, retain citizenship, and have family in the U.S., even property.

Hopefully, I can still play some soccer myself when I'm done with this mess. During my time working at Cisco systems in California, we had a soccer team from our Santa Clara engineer group. That was great fun twice a week.

Once or twice a week, guys play soccer here during our yard time. I've only played a couple of times though. I can keep up the first 30 minutes, but then those 20-year-olds really leave me in the dust. I don't mind playing rough and aggressive. Last week, two guys ended up with badly sprained ankles, requiring crutches and one guy came out with a black eye.

What gets me is when they mouth off and disrespect their own teammates. All the prison sports events (basketball, softball, and soccer) get really vulgar and disrespectful. The idea of "teamwork" is usually trumped by selfishness, and there's always one guy eager to start fights. The common saying is to "stay sucker free" which is to avoid getting caught up into meaningless fights with the knuckleheads who will likely spend most of their lives in and out of prison.

So I'm desperately due for a haircut. I've skipped three weeks, or three chances to get a haircut, because our work schedule is too demanding. We are conducting our annual inventory and Monday the Springfield (State Capital and IDOC HQ) auditors are visiting us. Great!

7/5/2014
Yeah! We passed our audit and inventory with great praise and success. Now we're just tying up all the loose ends, closing out the year and sending all the documents to Springfield. Very busy for us in the office, but the worse is over.

Happy birthday, America!

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