Archive for the ‘Nonclassified Nonsense’ Category

I got a summons for jury duty a couple weeks back. I was excited. Then Berck said, “It’s not during our trip to New York, is it?” We’re leaving Tuesday night and coming back on Monday next week.

Sure enough, my date was for today. If I got selected for a trial, it would probably conflict with our trip. Not only that, but the way I think it works here is, you call on Friday evening to see if you show up on Monday morning. If you don’t have to show up on Monday, you have to come on Tuesday, and if you don’t come Tuesday, you have to come on Wednesday.

Fortunately, you get one chance to change the date of your jury duty. So I signed the affidavit saying I had conflicting plans and put down that I was available after we got back. I got a call from one of the court lackeys asking if Monday, July 30 would work. I didn’t have anything going on then, so I said sure.

Berck says I’m the only person in the country to get excited about jury duty. Of course, I wouldn’t possibly get picked because my occupation is “legal assistant,” and one side or the other in a case is going to want people who know as little as possible about the law.

Berck found out a perk of not being hired anywhere else before the end of his employer’s contract: he gets to fly one of the planes they use back to the leasing company in Rockford, IL. He asked if he could take me along, and his boss said, sure, why not. A trip of a lifetime, cross country in a small, slick, top-of-the-line plane… can you imagine? All we had to do was buy me a plane ticket from O’Hare to Denver. It’s terribly exciting.

We’d leave Wednesday, August 1. Then I realized, I had jury duty scheduled that Monday. And I’d already used my one chance to change the date.

I called on Friday, but apparently, they aren’t in the office on Fridays. I left a message and worried all weekend. Surely, I wouldn’t get selected for a trial, but it wouldn’t matter if I had to show on Wednesday. A trip of a lifetime and all that was keeping me from it was the threat of jail time. I felt horrible.

So today I called again at 9:30, hoping the morning rush would be over and I’d actually get someone on the phone. After listening to the five minute long message, selecting the right numbers to push, and waiting on hold to Baroque music, a human being actually said, “Hello?” I recognized his voice. He was the same guy I’d talked to the first time I changed my date.

I didn’t mention that I’d already used my one chance. I told him my name. “I’m calling to see if I can change my date for jury duty.”

He either remembered me or had some pretty efficient software, because he said immediately, “You’ve already switched your date once. Why do you want to change it again?”

“I really want to serve!” I said, “But the strangest thing happened. My husband is a flight instructor, and he has to fly a plane back to Illinois. And they said I could go with him!”

“Well,” he said, “Okay. But you can’t change it again. Will August 20th work for you?”

Nothing cool had better take place on August 20th.

I removed the air conditioning from my car yesterday. Today, I made a simple air/water heat exchanger out of the condenser…1

It’s reasonably efficient, but it doesn’t exactly make the room cool. The water coming out of the tap is 52F. Depending on the amount of water I pump through this thing, I can get the air right in front of it down to about 74F when it’s about 82F in the room otherwise. Standing in front of it feels like standing in front of an open refrigerator. But it’s free. I spent a total of $8 on garden hose. And we don’t pay for water:)

On my way home for work the other day with my top down, a lady in a car with California plates tried to get my attention. I turned down the Field Mice and she asked, “Where’s the nearest Starbucks?”

“I have no idea.”

“What??? You don’t drink coffee??????”

“Uh, I do, just not Starbucks.”

She sped off, with a look of disbelief.

I feel sorry for the Gores, but I had to laugh out loud at the title of this article.

The best part?

The 24-year-old son of former Vice President Al Gore was arrested for drug possession on Wednesday after he was stopped for speeding in his hybrid Toyota Prius, a sheriff’s official said.

Al Gore III was driving his environmentally friendly car at about 100 miles per hour on a freeway south of Los Angeles when he was pulled over by an Orange County sheriff’s deputy at about 2:15 a.m.

I didn’t even know Priuses could go that fast.

Apparently, women don’t talk all that much more than men do after all.

Researchers set out to challenge the findings in a recent book written by a noted neuropsychiatrist that “a woman uses about 20,000 words a day, while a man uses only about 7,000.”

In a series of studies conducted over six years, they recorded the conversations of nearly 400 U.S. and Mexican male and female university students.

The results: women spoke a daily average of 16,215 words during their waking hours, versus an average of 15,669 words for men.