Jury Duty

Got my last prize today from the big blog win in December.
This cute apron!

I believe I left you all hanging (more than once this week) so I wanted to tell you about jury duty. I called twice over the weekend, hoping the message had changed. It hadn't. I still had to report on Monday morning at 8:30 at the Matheson Courthouse. I moped around all weekend until my sweetie finally offered to drive me downtown and pick me up again when it was over. (I told you I married a good one!)

Monday morning dawned bright and early and I dragged myself out of bed at 6:30. Jury duty didn't get me out of the carpool. After my sweetie ran the kids to the high school. we dropped off Sport at band and Prima Donna at the middle school for her meeting with the band teacher. As a special treat my sweetie and I stopped by McDonalds for breakfast with my BOGO free coupon, then we hit the road.

We arrived about 25 minutes early so we parked at a grocery store until it was a little more reasonable time to check in. He dropped me off at precisely 8:15 in the park lane dedicated for jail vehicles. Then he drove to work.

I walked around the side of the courthouse and entered from the front. It only took a couple of minutes to get through security and they directed me down the hallway to the jury room. There were about 15 people in there, roughly half of the group that was supposed to respond to the summons. I took a seat on the edge.

After about 2 minutes it dawned on me that I might not get another easy trip to the restroom so I gathered all of my stuff back up and made my way back to the secretary's office. Just as I was about to ask, I spotted the signs.

Five minutes later I was back in my seat. The secretary entered a few moments later and called roll. I was the first one on the list! After a bit of instruction, she turned on a video about the court process and left us alone. Unfortunately the machine had a bad cord and we only got about half the sound.

When it was over, she returned for a few more last minute details and told us the bailiff would be down soon to escort us to the courtroom. I pulled out my book to distract myself during the wait. It was about 10 minutes before the judge herself walked into the room. She explained that the lawyers were ready, we were ready, and everything was in place except that they couldn't find the defendant. That made it difficult to have a trial.

Jury dismissed!

I immediately called my sweetie so he could come back and get me. I think he was expecting to get a little more work done before he made the trip, but he dropped everything and showed up (in front this time) within about 15 minutes.

I even got home in time to give Curly a hug before he went to preschool! I was afraid jury duty was going to swallow up my whole week, instead it was only about half a morning. And you know what? I even made $18.50 just for showing up. Not nearly as bad as I was expecting.