AUGUST 11, 2007

Oi! I was rushing out the door today, all happy because I was going to get my hair cut and highlighted and then to a Timbers game, but I made the mistake of stopping to check the mail and that instantly put the kibosh on my giddy mood. Normally, all we ever get in the mail is bills, junk mail and freelance checks, but today? There was an official and serious looking envelope addressed to me. From Multnomah County Circuit Court.

Gulp.

Getting anything like that in the mail is enough to make the average person nervous and, if you're on the weird side like me, it's more than enough to cause your life to flash before your eyes in a quick, panicked query as to what you'd done to be a wanted felon by the police who was about to be hauled off to jail to spend the rest of your life in a horizontally striped jumpsuit. And oh, the humanity, I look awful in horizontal stripes! But then Ross mentioned that the police don't hunt down criminals via snail mail but, even if they did, I had nothing to worry about since I'd done nada wrong. Yeah, that he knows about!

So, after a brief trip down nefarious memory lane, I took a deep breath and opened the envelope and what I found inside was far worse than even my demented, over-active imagination had conjured. A bill for an old, unpaid parking ticket? Nope. Retroactive charges for every law I broke in my wayward youth? Worse. A hunting invitation from Dick Cheney? Even scarier. What I found in that envelope is the same horrifying thing that causes many people to wake in a cold sweat in the middle of the night with a blood curdling scream of "no!" caught in their throat. Yep, that's right. I've been summoned...

BY ORDER OF THE PRESIDING JUDGE
"GREETINGS: You are hereby summoned to serve as a juror in the Circuit Court of the State of Oregon for Multnomah County."

Greetings? They begin jury summons letters with greetings?! That's like waking an exhausted person after only an hour of sleep by yelling "morning sunshine!" How rude. They should be more honest and realistic and start the letter with, "yeah, we know this sucks but somebody's got to do it and it's your turn to sift the turds out of the catbox we call society." Getting summoned for jury duty is bad enough without the state being perky about it. The greeting of the letter should simply be "meh" with the text of the jury summons written by Steven Wright. Now that would be apropos, not to mention take some of the sting out of being summoned for jury duty.

Suffice to say this put a damper on my mood, not to mention really made me wonder about our judicial system. Me, on a jury? That's like asking the mutant love child of Lizzie Borden and Sylvia plath to be on a jury. Although Ross saw it differently and said I'm expertly qualified to serve on a jury, what with my having majored in philosophy with an emphasis on ethics. But I'm not going to tell the court about my years studying philosophy or my black-belt in ethics. No, I'm leaving that out of it and instead plan to showcase my impressive variety of mental health issues and get excused from jury duty by pleading insanity. Because, honestly, if you were on trial, would you want your fate decided by a jury of your peers if said peers were nutkabobs? Didn't think so.

Although, if Multnomah county wanted to put tonight's ref on trial, I'd be the first one in line to serve on that jury. Muwahaha.

listening: feist . reading: ---

walk: 0 minutes . weight lost: 10 pounds

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