In a departure from the daily grind, I got to spend today participating in the judicial system and helping to carry out a small portion of the Founding Fathers' vision. Is that overbilling jury duty? I mean, it's just a 2-3 day trial at the Yolo County courthouse, but still. The Constitution. I think it's pretty cool. Plus it's so different from anything that I do at work that I get really excited about seeing the processes. And who doesn't get all quivery about all that Latin? So the whole thing probably was a little tedious, with all the waiting and the instructions and the more waiting and the more instructions, but they had wi-fi in the jury assembly room, and I had my knitting, AND I was excited about this, remember? Plus, it made for pretty good people-watching. Well, mostly just watching people unable to follow directions or possess any sort of listening skills.
We had to wait for almost an hour and a half in the jury assembly room before we got ushered into Judge Katherine White's courtroom. As an aside, every time I've had jury duty in Yolo County before, I've gotten assigned to Judge Timothy Fell's courtroom, so I was kind of bummed to get someone else. Judge Fell is amazingly articulate and logical, and he can be either thoroughly compassionate or piercingly callous (when he thinks you're being rude or trying to game the system). It's pretty fun to watch. I have to say that Judge White was pretty cool too though. She definitely has a sense of humor and was very down-to-earth. She actually was much less focused on trying to determine whether or not people were trying to evade jury duty, so that was kind of nice.
Anyway, I filed in at about the middle of the pack, but there weren't many chairs in the gallery, so they were almost all taken already. I managed to find a seat in the middle of a row, and, in lovely fashion, was ignored by the lady I had to get by to get to the seat. I pretty much stuck my butt in her magazine that she refused to move. I hope the close view of my butt creeped her out. Anyway, they called up 18 people to be the first pool, and I was number 12. (Got to stick my butt in Magazine Lady's face again. Ha.) After about an hour of questions, we hadn't even gotten to eliminating anyone yet, so we broke for lunch. I wandered over to Woodland's Main Street and had a tasty portabello caprese sandwich at The Savory Cafe. I always feel a little awkward eating at a restaurant alone, but I got to text, knit, and listen to a podcast, so I felt fairly accomplished by the time lunch was over. I didn't manage to photodocument the cafe or my lunch (too hungry), but I did remember to take some pictures of the courthouse and the lovely blue September skies:
After lunch, it was back to more questions--pretty much the same ones as before but put in 20 different ways, by the judge, the prosecutor, the defense attorney, and posed to different people whose initial answers were apparently of interest. I think it pretty much turned into a mini-therapy session for each person as soon as they got their chance to talk about themselves. People seriously enjoyed publicly psychoanalyzing themselves. Unfortunately, that made the whole process take twice as long. Anyway, to make this long story short, the Judge crammed a whole lot of juror selection into the next 3 hours and we managed to select one by a little after 4pm. I stayed Juror #12 and have to report to the jury room at 9:15 tomorrow morning. And yes, even though the day was kind of exhausting, I still think it will be kind of fun.
Well, this has gotten more than a little rambly, so I'd better go to bed. As a final note though, we did a 3.5 mile course today, and I ran a mile of it straight! It took me 16 minutes to run that mile, but I ran the whole way. Well, in my world, run = jog = slower-than-some-people-walk. BUT, it was a big step for me, so I am pretty pleased with myself. Also, I'm pretty sore already, so it may be a bit difficult to walk tomorrow.
