Runaway Jury

Jury duty. About 200 of us spent last Wednesday answering questions, making excuses, trying to get deferral for our civic duty, and waiting to find out if we were chosen for any of the 5 trials scheduled this week in Coffee County. Correction: other potential jurors tried to bail out. I was secretly excited to be picked for two drug-related trials. It was like being picked first for dodge ball, a Sally Field moment, "you like me, you really like me!" I'm worthy! And, hopefully, still getting paid at my regular day job?

I arrived at the court room a few minutes before 9:00 (time I normally leave for work? 6:30 a.m.!) and spoke with two of my co-jurors. Always one to look for patterns, the similarity with Colleen, a redhead from Pennsylvania, whose ex-husband is an Apache pilot, was obvious. Also there? My next-door neighbor, someone I've never spoken to, asked "aren't you Patrick's mom? Where's he been? He's such a good kid..." Yeah, it always catches me off guard, too.

The case was dismissed when the State's one and only witness failed to show up this morning. I'm hoping for a little more drama on Thursday - a surpise visit by John Cusak wouldn't hurt, either.

Upgraded!

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who paint over wallpaper, and those who spend an entire weekend scraping twenty-year old adhesive (and duct tape?) off walls, prepping for pale yellow Venetian plaster. My new i-Mac deserves the latter.

I donated my old Hewlett-Packard to the local Goodwill after reformatting it (turns out Patrick has a propensity for changing security settings/passwords), though they couldn't even bother holding the door while I carried in the monstrosity. I can't say that I blame 'em.

It also snowed today in Southern Alabama - has hell officially frozen over?