Nooks and NonGovernment

Well, kids, the Financial Reports are in.  You know, those long articles in the business section, full of statistics and numbers and so on, that you never bother to read.  I don't read them either, and I didn't make an exception just because I was gonna be writing a blog post about one of them later.  But, anyway, here's the link to the one that says that Barnes & Noble experienced a 26% drop in profit in Nook products during the third quarter of last year.  

Now, I'm not sure how they measure that, and I wouldn't claim to be the expert in counting Nooks or noses or anything else.  But I do know that this is Bad News.  I love love love my Nook.  I loved it from the moment I picked it up and I have never so much as even liked a Kindle.  But I do have a theory, kind of, about why things aren't going so well in Nookville:  They did it right the first time. 

Seriously.  I have a Nook First Edition, pictured above.  It was big and clunky and weighed a little bit more than was convenient.  It was also perfect.  The Nook 1st was the one that broke the mold.  It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a tablet, but unlike the later Nook Simple Touch and the Nook Glowlight, it did have a rudimentary Internet browser.  (Pain in the ass to use, but at least it was there, and if you had an emergency, you could tap out an SOS email on the digital keyboard.)  It also had the capability of playing certain sound files, so if you wanted to listen to an audio book, you had that option.  Later low-end Nooks eliminated this feature.  It even had a chess game, which never failed to checkmate me in about twelve moves.  Okay, I ain't Bobby Fischer.  But still.  

Later Nooks got more advanced and added stuff like color and HD and the capacity to play movies and suchlike.  Those were the high-end Nooks that were the most tablet-y.  The trouble with the tablet Nooks, though, is that they're--tablets.  And if you're going to buy a tablet, you might as well buy something that has serious processing power, like an iPad or a Samsung Galaxy or something.  In fact, I think that's where this whole e-reader thing is going to end up.  What started out as Kindle  vs. Nook will end up being two little iPad apps, dueling it out in cyberspace.  Which, when you think about it, is kind of sad until you realize that none of us actually exist, anyway, except as a sum of component parts.  

Speaking of getting it right the first time, I'm given to understand that the entire U.S. economy is going to drive off a cliff tomorrow at about 12:01 a.m.  I'm a little fuzzy on the why, because the various factions have been yelling at each other for such a long time that I've basically stopped listening.  Something about "kicking the can down the road," and/or, if they'd fixed it the first time, we wouldn't be in this mess.  That's true about a lot of things, from Carter warning us about the ultimate instability of our dependence on foreign oil to Reagan (Yes!  I'm going to say something nice about Reagan!  Nobody faint!) predicting the eventual demise of the Soviet Union through simple economics vs. nuclear weapons.  (Though I'm sure mutually assured destruction didn't hurt. And it's not like all that vacant farmland in North Dakota didn't need Pershing missile silos; I mean, what else would you do with it?  Grow crops or something?)  

I've always wondered why people vote contrary to their best interests.  I mean, if you don't have health insurance, which is pretty major, and one party's going to help you get health insurance and the other party isn't, why would you vote for the second party, just because they're also going to cut money to schools?  If you're a woman, say, why would you vote for the party that wants to take away your birth control, stop protecting you from domestic violence, send your kids to different wars all over the globe and have the local police investigate your miscarriage?  If you want your kids to have well-funded schools, why would you vote for the party that always cuts the money to the schools, instead of the party that makes sure the schools have all the money they need?  As I've said time and time again, people are strange.  People are strange.  People are strange.

I hope, when the history books are written about this weird little gridlock, the writers will point out that the gridlock wasn't the fault of the Democrats, or even of the Republicans.  The gridlock was the fault of us, the voters, who watched all this happen four years ago and sent most of the same idiots back there to do it again.  Thanks, y'all.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to flip open my Nook First Edition and do a little reading while it still works.  

Give Us A Sign, Oh Lord

Thanks to meds and lots of other things, I don't often have full-blown anxiety fits anymore.  Even when I do, they're mostly small affairs, remedied by a look at a bank statement (oh good, I didn't really do that) or a case file (oh good, I really did that).  Because, odd as it may seem, I know what I'm doing most of the time.  Especially at work, screw-ups are rare.  They happen, but they're rare, and they are usually fixable.  And in my personal life, such that it exists, I more or less Handle Things.  I'm the chief quartermistress in charge of wardrobing and laundry, the head chef, preparer of (most) meals, the balancer of budgets and the cleaner of things that need cleaning (or, to be fair, the director of persons to things that need cleaning.  We're in this marriage thing together.)  But then, it's not every day that I come home from a day-long OA meeting to a sign that looks like the one on the left here.

Yep, that's it.  The Sign, Oh Lord.  Our house is really on the market.  Somebody is really going to buy it and we are really going to have to go and live somewhere else.  Here's the MLS listing.  Below is a pic of our front door with the lock box, so that realtors can come and go (by appointment, only) to show our little Dallas palace to potential buyers.  I pulled into the driveway (so as not to block the sign from view; I don't think I can park on the street anymore) and just sat there for a few minutes trying not to cry.

And then, because of course this had to get worse, my idiot neighbor came out of his house.  (Warning:  If you buy this house, you will have an idiot neighbor.) He wanted to know how much and who was in charge.  I gave him the real estate agent's card and got inside as fast as I could.  I knew he was interested.  I just knew it.  From the second we started hauling boxes of books out of here and taking them to a storage unit, he's had his weird little eyeballs on us.  I think he wants to buy it to rent out, which is fine with us really, but I hate hate hate having to talk to him.  He kind of scares me.  

Why?  Because he's the male of the species.  Well, that and he's not safe around a chainsaw, but that's another story and shall be told another time.  At this day-long OA meeting, there was this workshop about sex and body images, and one of the speakers said something that I thought was very profound.  She said the whole time she was losing weight, and she's lost over a hundred pounds, there was this constant battle raging inside her head between wanting to be thinner, and thereby both healthier and more attractive to the opposite sex, and being scared of the opposite sex and not wanting to lose her layer of protection against looking too attractive.  She'd been molested when she was about four.  I have lost count of how many women I have heard at OA meetings say that they were molested or otherwise sexually abused when they were children.  Literally lost count.  I guess some women turn to drugs or alcohol to deal with this sort of thing, but it looks like an awful lot of us turn to excess food, and bulimia, and anorexia.  And when it was time for comments from the audience, I was waving my hand so I could say, "Me, too!  I got fat to keep men away, too!  I was molested, too!"  which is usually not something I'm terribly excited to tell people. 

Anyway.  I got inside, had my anxiety fit and went to the first thing that's guaranteed to calm me down a little: Food.  First I heated up some of the leftover enchilada casserole from the other night, and then I had a few graham crackers with Biscoff spread.  That's not really a binge--pretty close to a regular meal, in fact, and it was dinnertime--but figure this out:  Daylong OA meeting.  Brilliant insight about reasons for being fat.  And what do I do when something bothers me but come in here and eat.  Anyone who doubts the addictive power of food, particularly sugar, really needs to spend a few days with me when I'm trying to get off it. (Surprisingly, however, Biscoff spread doesn't have much sugar in it.  Only 5 grams a serving.  So I dodged a bullet, there.)  

In retrospect, it occurs to me that our idiot neighbor buying our house might indeed be the perfect solution.  He'd have himself for a neighbor, and no one else would have to put up with him.  And my anxiety fit's more or less over, so I can, I dunno, hide under a blanket with Caesar the Cat for the rest of the evening and just hope nobody wants to view the house past seven on a Saturday.

Or maybe watch a horror movie.  As if life isn't scary enough.

Death, Taxes and Real Estate

I dunno if this is true of all real estate agents everywhere at all times, but the ones I've dealt with, at least, seem to have a kind of selective hearing.  Whatever you say, they pick out the stuff that's relevant to what they've already decided to do.  So, when I say, for example, "First off, we're looking for a duplex, not a single family house, and it needs to have at least one and a half baths," they seem to hear, "xxxxx xxx we're looking for x xxxxxx xxx x single family house, and it needs to have xx xxxxx one xxx x xxxx bathx."  "We don't have any kids, so we don't need to be near all the best schools" turns into "xx xxxx xxxx xxx kids xx xx xxxx need to be near all the best schools."  And don't even ask me what "Please don't show us any more ranch houses in suburban Arlington" turns into.  It's kind of untypeable.  It may not even be audible to human ears. 

It gets worse when we're talking about money.  Mention that your absolute maximum is $175,000 and they'll somehow find a way to make that $250,000.  ("Don't worry, it will sell for $225.")  And the mortgage broker?  My friends, if you have the misfortune to have good credit, the mortgage broker will finance you well above and beyond anything you can even remotely begin to afford.  I mean, I wouldn't lend me that much money and I'm a nice person.  I can't imagine a total stranger lending it to me, even if they knew more about my finances.  Which they don't, apparently. 

When we bought the little 3-bedroom palace in Far East Dallas, we did it only after we fired three real estate agents.  We didn't have time to fool around.  We had less than two days to fly to Dallas, find a house and buy it, so when the real estate agents started jerking us around, I fired them.  To be fair, each time a new one came on board I told him or her what the last one(s) had done to piss me off ("Please don't do this, this or this.")  When they did it anyway, or found some other new and exciting way to make this whole process completely counterproductive, I fired them. 

Until we found Sondra, and she was a candidate for sainthood.  She put up with me, for one thing.  She drove us all over town in the pouring rain, for another.  She found us the perfect house, got the deal done, arranged for us to close on the house in Phoenix, Arizona while we were driving between point A and point B, and even got the gas turned on for us when it turned out we'd forgotten that little detail.  Our only regret was that we couldn't give her the commission for selling our place in San Diego, because she certainly earned it.  So naturally she was the real estate agent we wanted when we were selling our place in Dallas.  But something's happened to her and she's No Longer With The Agency.  We're meeting our new agent on Sunday.  Meanwhile, our selling agent is scaring up things we can't afford, and--oh, it hasn't been a lot of fun, okay?  At this point I'm like, let's just sell blood, turn tricks on Harry Hines Boulevard, whatever, get the ridiculous sum of money and fix the stupid pipes, already.  Except then Tracy and Tammy wouldn't have anywhere to go.  Sigh.  I guess we'll just have to plod along.

Speaking of plodding along, it's time I came out of the closet.  No, not about THAT.  About the other thing.  The scandal that's been building since August.  Okay, I confess; it's all true.  After almost eighteen years of marriage, I'm seeing this guy.

Who's a therapist.

What, you expected me to suddenly morph into a suburban swinger?  You can take the fat white Lutheran chick out of North Dakota, but you can't--yeah. 

Anyway, he's a nice guy, but he's still a guy, so not a spark of romantic interest can possibly be kindled.  Although I do catch myself trying to mother him in a put-your-sweater-on, it's-cold-out sort of way.  No idea why.  It's the same way I treat my boys, I mean my lawyers. (They're all my boys.  Even if they're girls.)  Those who have children, mother.  Those who don't have children mother their cats and their therapists.  Sigmund Freud would have a field day with that one. But, sometimes a cat is just a cat.  

About six months ago, I was in a state.  Like Texas, only even more fucked up.  I still don't know what exactly caused it--something about writing and a mid-forties crisis and I'm not sure what all else--but my unique craniobiology guarantees I'll go through the occasional low period.  I don't know if that's what it was.  I do know that between my psychiatrist bugging me and Joan worrying about me, I finally got on the Internet and looked up psychologists until I found one that looked like a good match.  We met.  He was.  (Which is odd; usually Girls Are Supposed To See Girl Therapists, but I've never done a very good job of that--I relate better to dudes, I guess).  And I started feeling better pretty fast, without the aid of chemical interference (or, I should say, any more chemical interference than I've already got--man, this condition sucks sometimes.) 

So now it's six-ish months later and I feel better and I'm not sure what to do.  With this guy.  I mean, I'm positive I still need to be there every Wednesday at six.  There's no question about it, really. I sort of look forward all week to going there.  And when I get there, I actually relax for about an hour.  As Joan puts it, to quit now would be like saying, "Oh, yeah.  I'm fine, so I don't need meds anymore." (And then she'd throw me out of the house, which, considering that we haven't found a new one yet, would kind of suck.)  I just don't know where to go from here, what to say, without dredging up a lot of gunk from my sordid past that I don't really wanna even touch much less talk about.  (I subscribe to the three-sentence method of discussing past traumas: "Yes, that happened.  It was nasty.  Let's move on.") 

I dunno.  Is it possible to do therapy wrong?  Because if it is, I'd find a way.  I'm very good at finding lots of ways of doing something that will not work.  Maybe that explains my bad luck with real estate agents.  Or maybe some things in life are merely certain.  Death, taxes, real estate agents who don't listen to you. 

Well, it could be worse. 

It could be Arlington.

Radical Acceptance

I dunno if any of you have the privilege of watching WFAA's morning news show, but if you do and you happened to see it Monday, boy howdy, what a show you got.  Monday was the day the Boy Scouts were supposed to announce whether or not they were changing their policy on accepting gay members, but they changed their minds and didn't announce it after all.  (Maybe they weren't prepared.)  Anyway, reporter Shon Gables was interviewing this pastor guy, who was all in favor of not only keeping out gay Boy Scouts but banishing gay people to the end of the Earth, evidently, or maybe even farther than that. Among other things, he said that the "radical homosexual agenda" was all about using "terrorist tactics" on good God-fearing folk.

If anybody has a copy of the radical homosexual agenda, would you send it to me, please?  I lost mine the last time I was out practicing my terrorist tactics.  And since when did organizing, protesting and letter writing become terrorist tactics, anyway?  Somebody ought to notify Homeland Security.  But enough about this guy, he had plenty of air time as it was.  Let's talk about this reporter for a second.  Right in the middle of this interview, she asks this guy if he maybe already has some people in the Boy Scouts that are hiding their "gender identity."  He allows that he probably does.  I missed everything else, though, because I was busy rolling my eyes.

"Gender identity"?!  What does that have to do with anything?  Isn't this the 21st century?  Can there actually be people who don't know the difference between "gender identity" and "sexual orientation"?  I guess there are.  Okay, here we go: "Sexual orientation" has everything to do with who you love.  As in, male or female.  "Gender identity" has everything to do with how you feel.  As in, male or female.  If you're a woman trapped in a man's body, you have "gender identity disorder," not "sexual orientation disorder."  And, okay, I'll reluctantly accept that I can't expect everyone in America to know that, but how about a reporter who's reporting on gay and lesbian issues?  Is that too much to ask?  I hope not, because every time the collective I.Q. of the United States slides down another point, I break out in hives.

And look.  I know somebody's gonna say it. "You keep making Christians out to be the bad guys."  I know.  I'm sorry.  But, ya know, I keep getting such good examples.  Where are the rest of you, the 99% of Christians what love one another like Jesus said?  Could y'all grab the microphone away from these other guys and, I dunno, SAY SOMETHING once in a while?  It'd be appreciated.  I used to run with a Lutheran street gang, I know of what I speak.  In San Diego the Christians were the ones trying to close the abortion clinics and gerrymander all the gay and lesbian folk into Imperial Beach until my gang marched downtown to protest the closing of a residential hotel that kept many near-homeless folks off the street.  We were on the news, organist Jared ringing his bell and pastor Noel demanding justice.  We got the hotel to stay open for three more months, long enough for most of the residents to make other arrangements.  And when the Westboro Babtist folks came and protested us, we protested right back at 'em, in the middle of Sunday services, no less.  So never say it can't be done.  Evil flourishes when good people wring their hands about How Things Look and then go back inside to make lutefisk.

Anyway, this blog post started out being something about trying to accept something you don't want to accept because you really, really wanted it to turn out different.  I'm not sure how we ended up in San Diego protesting the Westboro Babtists.  Trouble is, I don't know how to say it, now.  Just that, you know, if you've known someone for a very long time, and all that time they've been doing things a certain way, it's very strange that you would expect them to suddenly do things a different way, just because you want everything to turn out differently from the way it usually does.  Am I being obtuse on purpose?  Um, yes.  But I'm kind of in that sort of situation, and it's no different than expecting Fred Phelps to suddenly appear on TV with his arms around, oh, say, Ellen DeGeneris.  (Sorry, Ellen, if that gives you the creeps; I'd have one of my "He's dripping slime on me" moments, too.)  (Nice thing about blogging; you get to borrow celebrities.  Leonard Nimoy is stopping by next week and the last time Annie Lennox called to say she loved me, my page views shot into the thousands.)

In Buddhism, there's this concept called "radical acceptance."  It's when you pay attention to how you feel about a given situation and just--accept the way that you feel.  You know, just kind of sit there with it, instead of downing a beer or chowing down on several doughnuts or, I dunno, turning on the TV.  No problem doing this when you're happy or serene, and even when you're mildly distressed.  But when you're trying to swallow that the person you've known for a very long time is just basically never going to give you what you want, and you're pounding on a door that ain't never gonna open--whew.  That is some trick, brother.  Much easier to sit with how you feel about Fred Phelps and the San Diego Lutherans, or the WFAA morning show.  Or the Boy Scouts.  But for that, my friends, I am not prepared.

The Way I Feel

The way I feel is like a robin/Whose babes have flown to come no more 
Like a tall oak tree alone and cryin'/When the birds have flown and the nest is bare.
--Gordon Lightfoot

Work has been insane lately.  This whole month, Boss Jason was supposed to be in back to back trials.  All the cases ended up settling or getting kicked--that's the legal expression for not making it high enough on the docket to get into the courtroom.  It's like getting bumped from an airplane.  You have a reserved seat, but so do several other people, and only one of you can sit there, so the Airline Employees (mysterious creatures, them) determine who goes and who stays.  In court, it's the Court Coordinator who decides, and she (she's usually a she) is even more mysterious than the Airline Employees.  There's really no point in asking her why she's doing what she's doing because the answer's almost always going to be, "That's how Judge _____ likes it."  Remember, kids, the Judge is the one with the robe, the one you don't want to piss off.  But you don't want to piss off the Court Coordinator, either.  She's the one who decides if you get the nice seat at the front of the courtroom or the one in the back next to the restroom and the woman with the two screaming babies. 

Anyway, the settling of a case is usually a Good Thing, and while the kicking of a case is generally a bad thing, there's usually a little sigh of relief that goes on.  There wasn't in this instance.  I was counting on my boss to be gone for long stretches of time so I could work on the six (count them! Six!) sets of discovery that were due the last few days of the month.  We moved them all to a span of about four days because we were pretty sure that those would be the only four days in the month that Jason would actually be around to read, edit and sign.  I was pretty much counting on his being away so I'd have the necessary stretches of time required to write the things.  There's a lot of writing involved in discovery.  You use some of the same phrases over and over again (among my favorites: burdensome, oppressive and harassing; not reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence; vague, misleading and calls for speculation), but it's still writing, and hey, I like to write stuff.  The thing is, when Boss Jason's around he interrupts me a lot. Not to be a jerk; it's just the way his brain works.  From the beginning of January I had blocked out how many days I'd need to do each set, with extra time for editing and gathering exhibits, and set up a schedule based on what was due first.  Then the trials started getting canceled and I watched it all not-happen.

So the last two weeks have been sort of a mad scramble as I'm trying to get these things written, edited, over to Jason for signing and out in the mail to opposing counsel.  I mailed the fourth set today and there's only two left, but I. Am. Exhausted.  It doesn't help that I picked up an ear infection somewhere (ear infections are for kids; what am I doing with a blocked eustachian tube and thick fluid sloshing around behind my ear drum?) I put up with it for about four days before it started growing a knot on my neck, at which point I finally went in to see the doc.  I don't know if it was the delay in treatment, or what, but the sucker's taking forever to go away.  (The knot in my neck is gone, though.) 

The ear infection has kept me out of the pool for almost two weeks.  I'm in chlorine withdrawal and I'm afraid I'm gonna forget how to do the breaststroke kick at this rate.  I can't get back in the water until we confirm there's no hole in my ear drum, which won't be until next Tuesday.  I'd be working out in the gym in my office basement but, uh, it was closed for three days due to a water leak.  Then when it reopened, I couldn't seem to get down there.  I had every kind of bad luck; a deposition scheduled right before lunch.  A doctor's appointment that couldn't be at any other time. My bag's been sitting under my desk, unused, since Monday.  It's starting to look like I might finally get there tomorrow. 

Ear infection plus lots of work stress plus the ongoing fun of trying to sell a house and looking for a house, plus no exercise plus stuff that's been going on in therapy that's, well, very sad, has all combined to make Jen not a very happy camper these days.  In fact, I'm pretty darn mopey.  You know, I take my meds, I go to therapy, I do what I'm told for the most part, but it's kinda depressing how easy it is to set me off. All it takes is knocking me out of my routine, and not even for that long. It's like I hang around up here on a little four-footed stool of exercise, meds, work and good self-care (enough sleep, good food, that sort of thing).  Lose one of those and things get shaky.  Lose two and the whole thing falls over sideways. 

Well, I'm gonna do something halfway amazing and show up on time to my OA meeting tonight.  Maybe.  And maybe if I do I'll get a foot back.

Bloggus Interruptus Temporaricus

I know how it is.  You clock in here every Thursday evening and expect there to be a bright shiny new blog post.  And usually there is, unless something weird happens and instead of hangin' at Afrah with my laptop and the World's Greatest Pita Bread (TM), I end up uptown in some therapist's office talking to my toes about why I was afraid of doorknobs when I was six.  (That's purely hypothetical, by the way.  I was not at all afraid of doorknobs when I was six.  I was afraid of heater vents.)  My OA meeting, which is also on Thursday evening, is hell and gone from Cartagenia from uptown, so if I end up in both places on the same night, I'm usually driving too fast between and eating a sandwich.  As opposed, you know, to grooving to the Jordanian beat and sipping lemonade and typing up a blog post.

In honest fact, I don't think I've had my laptop on for anything more exciting than paying bills in at least a week.  Maybe two.  Oh, I've been writing like crazy, but the sentences tend to start out "Plaintiff OBJECTS to this Interrogatory in that the Defendant is a moron and has written this Interrogatory for the sheer purpose of taxing this paralegal's vocabulary." Well, that's how I'd write them if I got to choose the words, that is.  It's been insane at my office and when I'm not writing discovery I'm writing petitions, and when I'm not writing petitions I'm writing letters.  (You guys might think this funny, but it's only been in the last six months or so that I got over the notion that every letter I write doesn't have to be a shining example of deathless prose that will stand forever among American letters.  No, really, sometimes I can just write "Enclosed is a copy of something you might wanna look at.")  So my creative drought, which I thought I might be coming out of, seems to have stretched out a little longer.

Well, luckily for me I just started another class.  This one's based on a book called "Writing Down The Bones," or From The Bones, or maybe On The Bones, I can't remember.  It's very good, though.  It's based on Zen the same way that The Artist's Way was based on the Twelve Steps.  So obviously I've hooked up with the right group of people.  (Zen, Twelve Steps, whatever.  Just sign me up.)  And hanging with other writers is actually as weird as it is cool, but is worth it for the moments when it is both.  Last week we did a focused writing for ten minutes on a completely innocuous subject, and I started out not expecting it to be any big deal.  Perish the thought; all this anger came pouring out.  I did not expect that.  I knew I was frustrated and concerned and so on about the situation I was writing about, but it never once occurred to me I might also be pissed off. Well, hey, I'm an ex-Lutheran.  We don't get mad unless somebody tells us to, and even then, all we generally do is shake our heads at the offending party and say, "I'm very, very disappointed."

Huh.  That's actually all I have to say at this time.  Well, that and "Plaintiff OBJECTS to..." something or other.  It's late, I'm tired and traffic is ugly out there.  Hopefully I'll be back in pita-bread-fueled fighting form by Thursday.  If not, I'll rerun something from my wild youth in San Diego, back BB (Before Blogging.)  Either way, cheers, kids.

Losing My Jury Box Virginity

Well, I had this nice rant all fired up and ready to go.  I was angry, and I do some of my best writing when I'm angry.  The issue was the treatment of pregnant women, a perpetual issue with me, and something that happened in Alabama, and this court case, and--oh, never mind.  I'll just have to get all fired up about it next week again, because while all that was going on, I got picked for jury duty and everything just spiraled out of control.

I can't figure out what lawyer in his or her right mind would want me on a jury.  I'm jury box poison.  I'm mouthy, opinionated, sarcastic and I won't shut up.  On top of that, I'm a paralegal, and somehow anybody who knows anything about the law isn't anything you want on your jury.  Why, I'm not sure.  I guess they confuse ignorance (of the law) with malleability (they'll vote my way).  Well, this much I've learned from the other side of the bar: Juries may be ignorant but they are not stupid, and if you treat them like they are, the outcome may not be pretty.  Last time I was on jury duty, the guy next to me leaned over and whispered, "If the state loses this case, it'll be because their attorney pissed everyone off."  Kinda not the best way to start out.

Well, this one started out with me feeling safe because I was Juror No. 34.  I mean, they never get up to 34.  They start with No. 1 and skip the ones they don't want until they have twelve.  So they'll call, "1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8..." like that.  First they ask lots of questions of everybody, such as, in court, please rate where you take the word of a police officer from a 1 (least trustworthy) to a 5 (most trustworthy). At one point they asked if we could think of any good reasons why a defendant might choose not to testify.  They called on me fourth.  All the good answers were taken by then, so I said, "He might have a girlfriend."  The attorney turned an interesting color and said, "A girlfriend?"  "Yeah," I went on, "and maybe while he was supposedly robbing the liquor store he was actually with his girlfriend, and if he testified on his own behalf he'd have to admit being with his girlfriend."  "And why would that be a problem?" the attorney wanted to know.  "Well, it'd be a serious problem to his other girlfriend."  "And then we have a murder trial," said a guy behind me.  Everyone, including the defendant, laughed at that one.  Except the defense attorney, who looked powerfully unhappy.  I thought for sure I didn't need to worry about getting on this jury, but when they started calling numbers it was "1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 31, 34..." And I blinked several times.  I mean, this does not happen.

Fifteen minutes later I'm in for another shock.  The bailiff shows me to the jury lounge.  I sit down at the head of the table and upon realizing I was at the head of the table I quickly said, "Just because I'm sitting here does not mean I'm in charge."  A big black man, whose name was Vincent and whom I came to like very much, said, "Honey, we all know you goin' be in charge."  A few minutes later I was elected jury foreperson.  Talk about adding insult to injury.

So we listened to testimony and we reconvened in the jury lounge to vote.  It only took about half an hour.  For this guy to be guilty, the state of Texas had to prove three elements.  It proved the first two, no problem.  We got stuck on the third element.  For about 20 minutes we went around the table.  I said, "Here's my problem with this element," and laid it out.  "Somebody explain it to me."  Somebody did.  And after that I was ready to vote with everyone else.  Nobody was rude.  Nobody shouted.  It wasn't Twelve Angry Men or anything.  Everybody was respectful and we got the job done.

We found him guilty.  I wasn't happy about it.  I don't think anyone else was either, but the way the law was written, there wasn't a choice.  It was just a stupid charge.  It was like getting sent to prison for driving without insurance.  Fortunately the Judge came back after the trial and told us she was giving him probation.  He wasn't going to jail.  That was great.  Bad enough my name's on that verdict for all of recorded time.

So after that, I went home to get a bite to eat and maybe lie down a little while.  Instead I ended up falling asleep.  As in, I didn't go back to work. Until the next day, when I had 68 emails and 8 phone calls to return.