Oh ya know, just grazing

Walking home from jury duty today, this is what I passed by in my neighborhood. Like, literally – in my neighborhood! As usual, my real camera was out of batteries, and these cell phone pictures are really pathetic. I must have been about 10 yards away from them!

Civic Duty

Have you seen "Flightplan"? It's a mediocre 2005 movie starring Jodie Foster. I saw previews for it back when it was new. I never really wanted to see it. I knew what it was &ndash I knew it was chock full of action and suspense as Jodie desperately tried to find her missing daughter on a trans-Atlantic flight. Surely she's onboard somewhere. We saw her there. But is Jodie's character crazy? What's happening? I could have written this script. All I wanted to know was how it was going to end. The whole point of this movie is, of course, how do they resolve it? Is the little girl, or is not the little girl, really missing on that plane somewhere?

I never really wanted to see this movie. I never thought I would. Not worth renting, certainly not worth seeing in the theater. But I kinda wanted to know what happened to that little girl.

So there I was, early this afternoon, sitting in the Juror Lounge at the Moultrie Courthouse in Washington, D.C. I was summonsed for jury duty. I arrived at 8, and by 12:30, there had been three jury panels called and I was not on any of them. Lunch was promised at 1. I was struggling with a faulty wireless network, trying to get some work done during the brief intervals of Internet connectivity I could grab. And "Flightplan" was showing on the TVs throughout the room.

Fast-forward to 12:55. I'm starving. It's almost lunch. I've finished the last piece of the membership newsletter and I'm just about to get the wireless to work so that I can e-mail it to some awaiting coworkers so it can be sent out. And "Flightplan" is just about to resolve itself.

And they call a new jury panel. And they call my number.

So I missed the end of "Flightplan" and still have no idea what actually happened. And I was late for lunch, and the members had to wait a few hours for their newsletter.

But – I finally was called to sit on a jury panel. I've loved the idea of jury service since I covered the courts for the Deseret News and fell in love with our judicial system. I finally get to see what happens behind the scenes.

It was a long day. Lots of sitting and waiting and 15-minute breaks and then sitting and waiting some more.

At the end of the day, I made the cut. I was one of the final 14 people still sitting in the juror box after all the attorneys, the defendant and the judge had had their say. I am a juror for a criminal case. It may sound strange, but this is a dream come true.

I am in love with our American system of justice. I know that a lot of people bemoan their mandatory summons for jury service. I got the hunch that most of the other people who were called to jury duty today were annoyed by the meticulous, detailed, step-by-step intricacies of today. Waiting for their number to be called. Waiting for the judge to repeat the exact language of the juror qualification questions for a third time. Waiting for the precise procedure to play out.

I know that most people think legalities are trifling and excessive. I am really in love with it. Its exactness. The way it carefully and cautiously ensures a level playing field for defendant and accuser. Of all of America's ingenious systems, our judicial system is the most genius and the most amazing.

When I used to sit in courtrooms as a newspaper reporter, I usually had an opinion. I tried to remain as unbiased as I could for the sake of fair reporting. But I knew the cases' backstory. I heard the lawyers' chat in the hallway. I knew what the judge and the attorneys were talking about in the courtroom when the jurors were safely tucked away. I was impossibly biased, and I usually had a hoped-for outcome. I always wanted to be a juror, to see what that blank-slate feeling was like, to see if I could actually enter a trial completely free of preconception or bias. And here I am, about to be one-fourteenth of a panel deciding what will hereafter be considered the settled truth about what did and didn't happen in a specific case. And I can honestly say I have no idea what the outcome will be. I know nothing about the facts of the case, nor of the accusations or allegations. I don't know the defendant. I don't know the backstory.

I know I will make the right decision.

I know American justice is the final word in justice. I love this system – and now I'm part of it!

Hey lazy! Buy a bike!

My Top 25

So I normally don't do anything when someone tags me with something in their blog - I kind of hate coming up with "25 weird facts about me" etc. etc. But it's been so long since I've posted anything, and this one is kind of fun and easy (and interesting for me, even though it probably won't be for anyone else), so I'm going to go ahead and do it - and I'll tag anyone else who reads this and wants to be tagged.

MY TOP 25 MOST-LISTENED-TO SONGS, ACCORDING TO MY iPOD PLAYLIST:

1. "Apocalypse Please," Muse
2. "I Was Young When I Left Home," Antony with Bryce Dessner
3. "Thoughts of a Dying Atheist," Muse
4. "Time is Running Out," Muse
5. "Sing for Absolution," Muse
6. "Hysteria," Muse
7. "Butterflies and Hurricanes," Muse
8. "Choose Me For Champion," Rasputina
9. "You and Moon," Adem
10. "Falling Away With You," Muse
11. "1816, the Year Without a Summer," Rasputina
12. "A Retinue of Moons/The Infidel is Me," Rasputina
13. "Blackout," Muse
14. "Launch Yourself," Adem
15. "These Lights are Meaningful," Adem
16. "Sleepless," The Decemberists
17. "Cage in a Cave," Rasputina
18. "The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid," The Decemberists
19. "Stockholm Syndrome," Muse
20. "Incident in a Medical Clinic," Rasputina
21. "The Giant of Illinois," Andrew Bird
22. "Train Song," Feist and Ben Gibbard
23. "Knotty Pine," Dirty Projectors and David Byrne
24. "Annan Water," The Decemberists
25. "You Are the Blood," Sufjan Stevens

Kinda surprised myself there a little with a few of those... OK, your turn.

Spring

Little D Hatching Out of the Egg from Class 1-208 on Vimeo.

Dishsaster

When I started this blog a year and a half ago, the idea was that it would primarily be for, you know, keeping people up to date on the exciting happenings of life in D.C. And life remains exciting, if a little too busy for me to regularly update you all on the exciting stuff. Sadly, there is one kind of excitement that I regularly find time to blog about.

Domestic problems.

You know, like exorbitant electric bills, mold, dysfunctional heaters, and leaky walls and ceilings.

That last one — the leaky walls and ceilings — isn't just a post from the past. It's tonight's post, too.

This evening, on my way home from work, I got a call from one of the guys who lives upstairs. He told me that one of the girls who lives up there had been washing dishes earlier this afternoon and wandered off somewhere else in the house to do ... something. Something that made her forget she was doing dishes. Forget she had water running in the sink. Forget that water running in a full sink has to go somewhere, and usually goes downward, to the floor.

So one of her roommates gets home and steps onto a very wet kitchen floor. He suggests I check my walls and ceilings for leaks when I get home. I do so. I find some. I'm wet-housed. Again.

I'm at the point where I think not in terms of "oh my gosh I have water leaking through my ceilings and walls!" and instead think in terms of "hmmm how bad is this round of wall and ceiling leakage as compared with other rounds?" And this time — not so bad. I was able to find three points of leakage: the ceiling right in front of my bedroom door, the point where two pieces of drywall meet on a wall in my bedroom, and through the vent fan in my bathroom. The floors are a little wet but not swamped. Just a little localized splashage. A bucket catches the drippings in my bedroom, and a few rags sop up the wetness on the bathroom tiles. Within an hour, the regular dripping has stopped and there's just the remaining wet spots on the drywall.

I check with the people upstairs. They've let the landlord know, but the good news is that one of the guys who lives up there is a contractor, and he's already doing a bunch of work elsewhere in the house (probably for a rent discount or something). So he's going to replace the damaged piece of my ceiling and wall and take care of it all tomorrow. Not too bad.

But seriously. Who has a dish-washing emergency?!

Apparently...

...I'm not the only one.

Also, sorry you've waited so long for a blog post, and this is all you get. It's been busy, and I've been brain-drained.