Jury Duty

As the warden or whatever he is called explained to us, it is "hurry up and wait." Arrive at 8:30am, spend 2 hours listening to orientation, pep-talk, attendance, all that stuff. Then they call names for different divisions, tell you the floor of the CJC (Criminal Justice Center, aka 201 Poplar) and the judge, and you walk down the street, go into the security area then up to the 6th floor. Where there are chairs enough for about 1/3 of the people who have just arrived. And no Wifi. And we wait. And some more. And at 1pm we are ushered into the courtroom where the judge tells us they are behind, come back at 2pm. Found an awesome cajun diner place that had a great shrimp po'boy, but not enough time to do much else. Back to the waiting game (a different group still hadn't even set foot into a courtroom). At 3pm, we go in again. Judge apologizes, explains both sides want a witness who did not show up. Nobody can get in touch with him, he may be cut off by the flooding (by the way, we are not...areas of the north and south parts of the city nearest the big river are underwater, but we are fine), so....come back tomorrow at 11am. Which is great news for all of us, and we go back out and rub it in to the people who still haven't gone into a courtroom.

Today I did yardwork (pruning rose bush, putting a few plants in the ground, finding out the "dead" azalea is actually tossing out new growth, but not at the ends of the stems), then a wonderful breakfast at Brother Juniper's...finally got to see the river, which IS amazingly high. 11am in the waiting room....waiting....waiting....then at 1pm we go in again. Now the judge apologizes again - explains the case is 2.5 years old and the witness has stated both that he has been pressured, and that he was never pressured by the defendant, who is a gang member. But, since they can't locate him they will push the trial back, issue a warrant for the witness, and we can all go home. Our jury duty is done.

So tomorrow I have a teller aptitude appointment with Region's Bank. Emailed the school and reminded them that I planned a personal day between the end of my jury duty and coming back to school. Not much they can do about it. So tomorrow I will do more yardwork (prying up bamboo that is still extant in the neighbor's yard) before the pre-screening. And we will see how that all goes. Oooh...and it is Trivia Night tomorrow night, too. Makes the week go by so much quicker, and once back at school the worst kids will be getting suspensions that keep them out until school ends. Whee!