My Civic Duty...

Believe it or not, it had been over fifteen years since I last had been summoned for Jury Duty. I'm not exactly sure how or why that happened... I decided to keep a diary of the happenings over the course of my day of service:

7:20 am - leave home for the Ventura County Courthouse.

7:55 am - arrive at the courthouse.

8:03 am - enter the waiting room...

8:45 am - begin having a conversation with a 50-ish woman named Sarah... we first talk about how a self-employed person was unable to get himself excused from the panel the last time she performed her civic service... after that, the conversation with Sarah was thoroughly enjoyable... we first talked about travel and our respective airport experiences - she spent over six hours in an airport in Brussels, Belgium... I kind of just smiled and then told her about my 12 1/2 hour odyssey on April 26th at Reagan airport in DC... And of course, I just had to whip out my wallet after that to show her my pic with Miss DC, Kate Michael that I had taken the day before... as bad as the airport experience was, the rest of my trip to DC much more than made up for it! Sarah and her husband literally have travelled all over the world and that very much fascinated me. She spoke very fondly of her times in Africa, France, Italy, Australia and many other places... Just as I was about to share my Nashville trip and second trip to DC experiences with Sarah, the first panel of jurors was pulled about 9:45am - my friend had been picked! I hoped I would go with her so we could finish our conversation, but that didn't happen, so I was left to try to make new friends and/or read...

10:20 am - second panel called... I missed the cut again... a 20 minute recess then followed during which I called my Mom and sis...

10:40 am - I quickly go through the Sports section of Sunday's L.A. Times, paying particular attention to T.J. Simers' column and wondering just what someone like him is doing writing for one of the nation's largest newspapers... He never adds anything of value and you never learn anything you didn't already know from his columns. Off the record, I'll say that the Times Sports section probably has the least professional group of writers I've ever seen in a newspaper...so what was Simers' main topic of conversation? Same one as it's seeminlgly always been: Kobe Bryant and new ways to pick on him. Sad and pathetic... I almost feel sorry for Simers and his good buddy Bill Plaschke.

11:00 am - After tiring of the repeats, I decide to pick up my latest book purchase, the Reagan Diaries. Reagan was arguably the greatest President of the 20th century. As I would soon find, his daily account of events while he served in the White House makes for very interesting reading... The first entry that REALLY struck me was the one for March 30, 1981 - the day that he was shot by John Hinckley... Amazingly, he began journalizing again within two weeks of the assassination attempt...

11:35 am - A third list of names is called and once again, mine is not amongst them. They send us all to lunch recess for an hour and twenty mintues... we're to return at 1pm... I go to McDonald's to grab a quick bite and actually ran into my old friend Crystal from work - she left my employer a few years ago to become a full-time Mom... Crystal winked and wished me luck and as she left... those of you that know me well probably know just why she did that... I then caught up on reading my emails from my cellphone and relaxed to some music while in my car with roof open and windows down.

1:00 pm - back to the waiting room... after the time in the sun, I'm suddenly getting a little sleepy... I vegetitate for the next half hour or so.

1:35 pm - I feel recharged enough to break back open my book... I spend the next 90 minutes doing nothing but reading. I find it very interesting, especially when Reagan talks about places he visits... he spent a lot of time in California and also of course in many different places in the District... Since I've been to our capital twice now, I find the latter partcularly fascinating... I end up at page 80...

3:05 pm - call over the loudspeaker... everyone to the courtroom...

3:10 pm - Class dismissed!!! Lovin' this part of it as it's a full three hours earlier than I would have left from work... and believe me, I need ALL OF the free time I can get my hands on at the moment! Yesterday was such a breeze, it almost makes me wish I could do it all over again... Eight hours of pay for only about six hours of my time with none of the normal stresses of work... oh well...

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