Jury duty has been an exercise in patience. It feels a bit like trying to join your big brother's sekrit boyz klub, or maybe like being a spy. You're given instructions in the mail: phone this number between the hours of 5:00 and 7:00. You phone, and a recorded message (in what might just be a disguised voice) tells you to go to this address at that time tomorrow. You show up. You are given a secret number and told to listen for it. They call it, and tell you to go home but to phone another number between the hours of 9:00 and 10:00. You do, and are told there is "no information for you at this time." I feel like I'm on assignment, but I don't know who my contact is.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it...
So, yes, I was one of hundreds of citizens ordered to show up at the Santa Clara Superior Courthouse this week. I was told to report at an ungodly hour of the morning, one apparently designed to put me into the heart of Silicon Valley rush hour traffic. You know how I feel about single digits in the morning at the best of times; picture me driving on little coffee and less sleep to an appointment I don't want to keep in an unknown part of town where I will be deliberately left waiting in a nasty lounge for god knows how long just in case they need me. Can we say snit?
They dismissed me after two hours and sent me back into phonecall limbo. I suspect I won't have to return, and I'm very glad because I think it means they've already got the jury pool they want. This is the week they're picking jurors for a murder trial involving Bert Kay, a Stanford resident who was beaten to death by teenagers when their attempted robbery of him went wrong. The trial is expected to last seven weeks. There is no way I could have been gone from work that long, nor would I have been impartial. The kids said they did it, witnesses said they did it, and that man did nothing to provoke or deserve the beating. It would be sad to send a teenager to prison for a long time, but it's a lot sadder that Kay is dead, and I'd vote for jail in a heartbeat. I've been following the case in the paper quite closely. We have friends who live in his neighborhood. We've looked at houses in the area the teenagers come from. It's too easy to picture me in Kay's shoes, walking my dog alone at midnight. So I'm glad to escape that particular trial. I'd rather keep making phonecalls at odd times.
Meanwhile, I have purchased three small chrysanthemums in brick red and bright yellow hues. I didn't get out of the garden center unscathed, obviously. But hey, all three were only five bucks so it was fairly restrained of me. I confidently planted them in the container that used to hold the antique violets. I've seen no signs of Dixie trying to step in the various pots I have out on the patio. I haven't planted the bulbs I got last week because as any ful kno you can't just stick bulbs in the dirt and expect them to pop up next spring. Actually, you can, but they tend to bloom precisely once and then taunt you year after year by developing leaves but no blossoms. No, if you want strong, vigorous blooms annually you have to feed bulbs in the fall. I confess I wimped out by purchasing pre-enriched soil instead of getting separate boxes of bone meal, blood meal, etc., with which to fertilize my soil. It was more cost effective because I'm only planting a few containers instead of a giganto yard like Xeney's. Anyway, the chrysanthemums are beautiful, evoking a pleasant autumnal mood whenever I look at them. I'm happy I bought them.
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