I am finally back among the living. Soon after my last post, I ended up with an infection and another (somehow delayed) allergic reaction to the centipede attack. (My cousin suggested the word "attack" to describe the whole experience, and I like that much better than "bite.") I won't go into graphic detail; suffice it to say that it was not pretty and that I ended up with a lot of different drugs in my system and spent a week on the couch with my foot propped up, finding it hard to concentrate on anything more complex than petting the cat and flipping through old magazines. I've now finished all but one of the sets of drugs (I still have a few more days of antihistamines) and I feel much better and look much better, although the attacked toe is still a little red around the area of the wound. I'm grateful to still have my toe. And I was ecstatic to hack the centipede I saw in the front yard on Friday into little tiny pieces.

I spent much of last week catching up on everything that was set aside at work and at home while I was convalescing. I'm still bogged down at home with a whole lot of stuff that needs to get done, but I have the house to myself this week and am confident that all will be under control, if not finished, before the weekend. Then I'll have some time to catch up on other websites and get some sun, if the weather ever cooperates.

Just in time for me to return to work, I had to head downtown to jury duty on Monday. The pool I was in was for a criminal trial of two defendants. The charges include attempted murder, terroristic threatening, assault, and weapons violations. Over 100 potential jurors were called; apparently they were expecting a lot of people to ask to bow out or get challenged. Delay was the name of the game all morning; we finally filed into the room around 11 a.m.

I found myself concocting nicknames a la Sars (see her recent jury duty saga here, here, and here), which in the end didn't do me much good since I wasn't picked, but at least it kept me entertained.

Honorable Michael Douglas kept things moving as best he could, and wasn't too hard to look at while attorneys Xanax, Speak-Softly-and-Carry-No-Stick, and Yep-I-Know-Mine's-Guilty-As-Hell did their very best to put us all to sleep by asking the same mundane, dumbed-down weed-out questions over and over again. Judge Douglas explained at the outset that he expected jury selection to take two, maybe three days. He promptly issued bench warrants and hefty fines for the 15 or so potential jurors who didn't show up, and also made it very clear that he wasn't going to entertain any lame excuses. The only potentials who were excused via excuse were a woman who didn't understand English very well at all (but only after a lot of back-and-forth questioning to see how bad it really was), an old man who takes care of his even older father all day (but only after a few questions about possibilities of getting other family members to take care of the father), and a young guy who is going on vacation next week. It was interesting to watch a few of the more devious potentials try to come up with answers that would get them tossed. In the end, very few were excused, and miracle of all miracles, we were out of there at 4:30 with a full jury + alternates. I never even made it into the box.

I felt a bit uncomfortable with our names being bandied about with a handful of the defendants' family and friends in the back of the crowded courtroom. That's the crowd I want knowing where I live, uh-huh.
- posted by Lori @ 4:04:00 PM | permanent link | |