I almost – but not quite – had jury duty last week.
I was at the courthouse early on Monday morning and got through security and checked in at the jury selection room early – armed with a Sudoku book and plenty of paper for the wait. To my surprise, people kept coming in well after the appointed time – a few folks were as much as a half hour late. Really? This is not like missing your reservation at Applebee’s, people.
And quite a few people couldn’t figure out if they were supposed to even be there. There’s a group number, a color code, and a phone number. Not exactly rocket science.
The staff had us watch a video and we settled in to wait to see if we would be called. Around 10, a judge came in and explained what was going on. He was retired and from another county, but had been called in by the Feds to hear a case that had been pending since September – a case where the defendant had just changed his plea to guilty.
The judge went on and thanked us at length for being there – if there wasn’t a jury ready to be seated, the case couldn’t have moved forward and things would not have come to a head.
So, we were essential – but we could leave.
Even though we didn’t get into the courtroom, there was still a certain amount of satisfaction to having been a part in the justice system. It was a deeply… American thing.
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I’ve been trying to get back into swimming regularly and it’s sort of working – though the pool has been less regular than me. It’s swim team season and the pool is usually mostly full with only one or two lanes open. I’m not a fast swimmer and can’t really keep up with the circle swimming so it only really works if I can split a lane. When I’ve got plenty of room, though, I can swim forever. Did a couple miles in the pool one day last week after work.
Yesterday was a rough day in the office and there was only one lane open when I got to the pool – and it already had two people in it. I had been so looking forward to a swim and the idea of having to navigate around 2 other people was too disheartening. I just headed back to the locker room, got dressed and went home – grumbling all the way. Then ate dinner and went to bed early. I was done with the day.
But if I can swim, well, I’m a different person. I got my laps in today and I was calm and collected on the drive home. Read Alice in Wonderland while eating a mostly sensible dinner. And even the hordes of shrieking children at Target couldn’t set me on edge. And I do literally mean hordes and literally shrieking. I get that kids sometimes act up, but… wow.
I gotta figure a way to hang onto that vibe. Or maybe even swim in the morning before work to improve my… no, that’s so stupid I can’t even consider that. There’s no earthly way I could train myself to get up and swim before work. D-U-M dumb.
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I usually cruise at 85 to 90% geek, but this past weekend I was at full, 100% geek. My folks had bought a new laptop and asked for my help in getting it set up and transferring files from their old laptop over.
We went from the “unboxing” to installing anti-virus, setting passwords, setting up a wireless printer (which was only slightly less terrible than my own wireless printer), and then transferring files. Of which there were a lot. And they were huge. It took a while to get them onto the flash drive, but then from there it wasn’t too bad to get them to the new machine.
We took a break in there for lunch, then worked some more on the set up and did a Windows 10 tutorial. Then a trip to the bookstore and an early dinner.
I was glad to be able to help and while they could have handled this themselves I think they appreciated having a geek cover all the bases. And it was nice to just sit and visit as well.
Later that evening, I helped Jim get Office set up on his laptop.
‘Cause that’s how this geek rolls.