I’m writing this on my lunch break from court. Can’t get online though (that’s a whole other story), so I’ll have to upload later. Jury duty started yesterday. I was sort of looking forward to spending 3 days in the jury assembly room with nothing to do but catch up on my reading and writing. Boy, did it ever NOT work out that way. I spent all of 15 minutes in the assembly room yesterday morning and was called to a selection panel. Shortly after lunch, I became Juror #4. Of course, I can’t blog about the case, but I do have some things to say about the court house.

1. When I walked in yesterday morning, I put my bag on the scanner, walked through the x-ray, BEEPED and was told not to worry about it.
2. To their credit, I beeped again this morning and this time they made me go back and figure out why.
3. No one checked my phone to see if it was a camera phone - which it wasn’t because I had brought an older phone and left the camera phone at home, but they make a big deal about no cameras and then they don’t seem to check. Or maybe they could tell when it went through the scanner. Maybe.
4. The jury assembly room at 60 Centre Street (Supreme Court) is NICE. It’s nothing like the last assembly room I was in (in Queens, yuck).
5. They have computers here for jurors to use to get online for free. BUT if you brought your own laptop you have to PAY for Internet access. That doesn’t seem right. I was going to pay for it and I was really excited when I realized they have wireless (which they didn’t actually announce or publicize), but it turned out not to work properly after I paid for it, so I gave up and didn’t purchase it today.
6. Apropos of absolutely nothing, I realized late yesterday that it was the 16th anniversary of the day I met my ex-husband, so I called him today and said happy day-after-the-anniversary-of-the-day-we-met. We’ve been divorced almost three years now and we get along fairly well, all things considered. He’s my mini me’s dad, so of course I’m still happy that he and I met.

My lunch break from court is almost over. I have a feeling this case is going to go on and on and on. We haven’t heard much testimony yet. I guess we’ll see. If it turns out to be interesting, I’ll blog about it when it is over.