Call me Pauly Shore, 'cause I've got...
...no, not scabies -- Jury Duty!
I had to go in this morning, and I viewed it as a welcome escape from a Monday at work -- Monday being, I suppose, my worst day of the week considering which classes I teach and for how long [we have a wacky schedule, where classes meet for different lengths of time each day, and half of the classes only meet 4 days/week; and on Mondays, I see my "bad class" twice, which kind of sucks].
They began with a video that began as awesome, with dramatization of Olden Times [I believe that's a country bordering Yore on the east and Days Gone By on the west] and trials by ordeal, which I have studied as part of a college degree (well, one class toward a minor...), so I thought about being pretentious and dreaming up ways to improve it. But then it turned into some boring lecture on demoracy and crap (hmm, I'm pretty sure I majored in that...), so it went downhill. After that, and lots of time spent on instructions to make sure nobody messed up it (of course they did anyway, silly people), I sat in the jury room for a long time, with my ipod [decemberists, rilo kiley, and radiohead most of the morning] turned down low so I could hear them call people into jury pools. They hadn't called my name by lunchtime (12:30, come back by 2pm], which -- me being me -- makes me worry that maybe they lost my card as we handed them in and I'm being marked absent. Of course, there were tons of people in the room, and tons that hadn't been called, so whatever.
Sadly, at 2:30 my name was called. Crap. There were maybe 30 of us in a jury pool, and we were taken to the 21st floor (excellent views of manhattan), and eventually into the courtroom. The case was explained to us, they let people come up individually to explain why they couldn't be impartial (I couldn't think of anything - drat!), then they picked 18 of us to sit in the jury box for questioning, first from the judge, then from the attorneys. I had nothing of interest to answer, and they didn't direct any of their not-that-specific questions at me. I figured that meant they weren't thinking of picking me, because you'd probably want to question the folks you're about to select, no? After some tedium there, they sent us back into the hallway while counsel conferred with the udge, then brought us back in. The 12 members of the jury were already chosen, we were just in line to be alternates. They announced the names of the 6 alternates...
... and I'm #2. Crappity crap.
Did I mention they expect the trial to last 8-10 days? yeah, crappity-crap. I have lots of things to teach my kids, and the term ends in three weeks -- so for most of two of those, I won't be there. Which I feel bad about. I also feel bad about not having a freaking clue what to leave for the substitutes -- "I know you don't know anything about math, but would you mind completely teaching these topics? Oh, the students have never seen this before; either that, or they're just not quite bright enough to learn things autonomously." Meh. So tomorrow I don't have to be at the courthouse until 11, so I'm going to school to talk to my boss about how to handle my classes while I'm gone. GAH.
And oh-by-the-way, I'd already been giving myself ulcers about things that I know I can't change and that might not end up being problems anyway. The Mets are in a big playoff series, and I bought game 7 tickets two weeks ago. Game 7 is being played on parent-teacher conference night. The game starts right about the time conferences end, which means that the two hours it would probably take to get from school to the stadium would leave me with a $120 ticket (plus I'd probably take a cab to make things quicker) for maybe 1/3 of a game. GAH. So I wanted to try to talk my way into getting out of conferences early to get to the game not quite so late. With this jury duty happening, now I don't know if I should try to get out of conferences entirely, or if it means that it'll be harder to get to leave early. GAH. Of course, the Mets could just win the next two games, finishing off the series without getting to a game seven, which makes my life easy...But we wouldn't know about that until the night before.
I'm sure everyhing will work out just fine.
[That was not to be read in a confident tone of voice.]
I had to go in this morning, and I viewed it as a welcome escape from a Monday at work -- Monday being, I suppose, my worst day of the week considering which classes I teach and for how long [we have a wacky schedule, where classes meet for different lengths of time each day, and half of the classes only meet 4 days/week; and on Mondays, I see my "bad class" twice, which kind of sucks].
They began with a video that began as awesome, with dramatization of Olden Times [I believe that's a country bordering Yore on the east and Days Gone By on the west] and trials by ordeal, which I have studied as part of a college degree (well, one class toward a minor...), so I thought about being pretentious and dreaming up ways to improve it. But then it turned into some boring lecture on demoracy and crap (hmm, I'm pretty sure I majored in that...), so it went downhill. After that, and lots of time spent on instructions to make sure nobody messed up it (of course they did anyway, silly people), I sat in the jury room for a long time, with my ipod [decemberists, rilo kiley, and radiohead most of the morning] turned down low so I could hear them call people into jury pools. They hadn't called my name by lunchtime (12:30, come back by 2pm], which -- me being me -- makes me worry that maybe they lost my card as we handed them in and I'm being marked absent. Of course, there were tons of people in the room, and tons that hadn't been called, so whatever.
Sadly, at 2:30 my name was called. Crap. There were maybe 30 of us in a jury pool, and we were taken to the 21st floor (excellent views of manhattan), and eventually into the courtroom. The case was explained to us, they let people come up individually to explain why they couldn't be impartial (I couldn't think of anything - drat!), then they picked 18 of us to sit in the jury box for questioning, first from the judge, then from the attorneys. I had nothing of interest to answer, and they didn't direct any of their not-that-specific questions at me. I figured that meant they weren't thinking of picking me, because you'd probably want to question the folks you're about to select, no? After some tedium there, they sent us back into the hallway while counsel conferred with the udge, then brought us back in. The 12 members of the jury were already chosen, we were just in line to be alternates. They announced the names of the 6 alternates...
... and I'm #2. Crappity crap.
Did I mention they expect the trial to last 8-10 days? yeah, crappity-crap. I have lots of things to teach my kids, and the term ends in three weeks -- so for most of two of those, I won't be there. Which I feel bad about. I also feel bad about not having a freaking clue what to leave for the substitutes -- "I know you don't know anything about math, but would you mind completely teaching these topics? Oh, the students have never seen this before; either that, or they're just not quite bright enough to learn things autonomously." Meh. So tomorrow I don't have to be at the courthouse until 11, so I'm going to school to talk to my boss about how to handle my classes while I'm gone. GAH.
And oh-by-the-way, I'd already been giving myself ulcers about things that I know I can't change and that might not end up being problems anyway. The Mets are in a big playoff series, and I bought game 7 tickets two weeks ago. Game 7 is being played on parent-teacher conference night. The game starts right about the time conferences end, which means that the two hours it would probably take to get from school to the stadium would leave me with a $120 ticket (plus I'd probably take a cab to make things quicker) for maybe 1/3 of a game. GAH. So I wanted to try to talk my way into getting out of conferences early to get to the game not quite so late. With this jury duty happening, now I don't know if I should try to get out of conferences entirely, or if it means that it'll be harder to get to leave early. GAH. Of course, the Mets could just win the next two games, finishing off the series without getting to a game seven, which makes my life easy...But we wouldn't know about that until the night before.
I'm sure everyhing will work out just fine.
[That was not to be read in a confident tone of voice.]