Jury Duty

I get to go to court fairly often as an attorney. But this week I had jury duty. I had had jury duty before, but never even been taken up to a courtroom for jury selection. Either some of the jury cases settled, or they simply didn't need all the people they thought they would. Now that I'm an attorney, I figure there is almost zero chance of me serving on a jury. I know a decent number of civil attorneys, a few criminal attorneys, and there are certain kinds of cases where I would have a hard time being impartial. I always thought it would be cool, though.

So this week when I went to jury duty, I took a bunch of work with me, and I expected to sit in the jury services room pretty much all day. My number wasn't very close to the beginning of the numbers they listed, so I thought I had little chance of being called up to a courtroom again.

However, this time, after the usual dead time while people show up late, and after the silly video about jury service, two or three marshals were already at the front of the room. They immediately lined up fifty or so people, gave them some instructions, and led them out of the room, up to a courtroom. The next marshal lined up another group, slightly smaller, and took them upstairs. Then a third. I was still sitting there, working, and surprised that three trials were actually going forward that day. The jury services coordinator assured us that more of us would be going upstairs soon. I thought that was unlikely, but noticed I was about thirtieth in line at that point.

Then another marshal came down to jury services and they called the next sixty numbers. So, I lined up behind a Kenny Rogers impersonator and went up to the courtroom. With fourteen people in the jury box and another fourteen or so people ahead of me, I thought chances were slim that I would move up and get into the jury for questioning. However, as people ahead of me were excused or challenged, the judge told us the case was simple and would last to noon the next day at the longest. It was a criminal case, and I was the third civil attorney to make it to the jury box. I was questioned about what courses I had taken on criminal matters, and I was not challenged as a juror. After the Kenny Rogers impersonator told a story about being robbed in a bar and the owner shooting both robbers, killing them both, he was excused. He ended his story by saying "There was no need for a trial." He seemed surprised to be dismissed.

The jury was set, and I was on it.

The case was a criminal case about gun possession by an ex-felon. The defense presented virtually no case. No witnesses, no evidence, and what seemed like a half-hearted closing statement. The jury had been selected just after noon, and the entire case had been presented by 3:30. The other attorney on the jury was randomly chosen as an alternate, so I was nominated to be the jury foreman. I half expected it and didn't fight it. We deliberated for about an hour and found the Defendant guilty. I felt bad having to be one who made the decision, but it was pretty much the only decision we could make.

After the verdict was read, the judge told us more about the guy and his circumstances. He was not a good guy in a bad situation, and he has enough other charges against him that this one didn't really make much difference.

I was glad to have the one-day version of complete jury duty, and to be able to see a real trial from that perspective. I had done mock trials that lasted almost as long, though without the jury selection part. It seemed identical to the mock trials I've done, and even in the jury room, the attitudes were just what I expect to see in a setting of less significance. I wish I had some great insight to share, or some amazing story, but it was very short, mostly boring, and anything I could say about it would be the same kind of things I would have said about jury service before.

Oh, you mean this gate key.

A couple of days ago, Holly came home saying she got to go to a separate class for part of the day. She said it was her and a couple of the other smartest kids in her class. Kelsea and I weren't sure what she meant, so we kept asking her about it. Holly was the one who said the other kids were really smart, and said they were all kids who got all As or only As and Bs. We figured it was GATE, or whatever they called that program now, but we weren't sure.

Holly said they went to a different classroom with a new teacher at a specific time, and got to do different kinds of lessons. I asked what kind, and she said they were things to help them pay attention and follow directions. That made me think it might have been a remedial-type class, and I began to doubt that the other kids were all that smart, and I thought maybe Holly had some kind of behavioral problem that we didn't know about. Either way, Kelsea and I were kind of annoyed that we hadn't been informed of whatever this special class was.

I started thinking it was GATE again as Holly said how excited she was to go back, and said that they would get to go every week. I just didn't think that a remedial class could inspire that kind of enthusiasm. Then Kelsea and I began to wonder if you have to take a separate test to qualify for GATE, and neither of us could remember for sure. But we were even more convinced that if Holly was in GATE, we should have been informed, and if it was a remedial class, we really should have been informed.

I went to the school's website and found that this special teacher is the GATE teacher. So we think we have our answer. We haven't had the chance to ask Holly's teacher directly, but we're pretty sure she's in GATE. I'm not trying to brag, but Holly's pretty smart. Also Mia. I will brag about Mia another time. I specifically chose to blog about this so I could brag about my kids in a place that no one will read about it. We'll tell family about it individually. If we can ever confirm it with a teacher.

It is time.

Name the movie.

We've had a handful of birthdays int he last month, and Mia started kindergarten. I was violently ill on my birthday, and we went to Chuck E. Cheese's for at least two other birthdays. The kids also enjoyed library story time recently. They made disguises for a spy-themed story time.

We are a happy family.

Back by popular demand

And by popular demand, I mean that one person asked about this a couple of months ago.

Though we don't have a true "before" picture of our backyard, here is what I took right before the cement/grass project.:

Ah, our backyard in all its glory.
I really like this next one because the kids were running around in circles when I took the two pictures that got stitched together in a panorama, so it looks like we have five kids.

 Not the best "after" shot, but the one with the garbage can and the wheelbarrow in the background instead of the foreground. The kids love their tricycle/bicycle path. You can see our vegetable garden off to the left there, but it hasn't done as well this year. We always get some peas, but have trouble with most everything else. I think the soil is terrible, and I'm going to do some serious work on it. Eventually. Hopefully before next spring.

 On the fourth of July weekend, we went to Mt. Charleston and took a little hike to Little Falls. The kids were amazed that there was still some snow. I was a little amazed too. It was a good time.

I suppose I should blog again.

I'd like to take this opportunity to update you all on our lives.

All spring, I'd been half-heartedly getting the backyard ready for grass. Our long-term plan when we bought our house was to have some grass in the backyard, and what we keep calling a tricycle path around it. This was important so the kids would be able to play outside in the safety of our own backyard. (More recently, they've enjoyed playing outside by digging in the dirt, as though our entire yard were a large sandbox. I've wanted to get the grass in so that the kids would get less dirty.)

I'd only been half-hearted about it because I decided I needed to get sprinklers in place before laying sod. I'm more than competent at installing sprinklers, but it's fairly difficult to dig trenches for sprinkler lines. So I'd occasionally get motivated and work on it, but then I'd get tired of it and wouldn't do anything for several weeks. (Or we'd get caught up in another project, like our laundry room).

So, about halfway through May, I finished with the sprinklers, and then said to Kelsea, "Now we're ready for grass," and we both laughed. Then we thought, wait, maybe we are. Could we be? Can we? So we called around and found out Lowe's and Star Nursery had plenty of sod waiting for us. A few hours of tilling and raking the next morning, and we went and picked up some sod and laid it out. (We had to get a little more a couple hours later).

Suddenly, we had grass!. The kids were amazed. The next step, of course, was the "tricycle path." I had designed the sprinkler spray pattern to coincide with where we wanted the tricycle path to be. To make this part of the story shorter than the first part of the story, and to bore you slightly less than you expected, I'll summarize. We put in the sidewalk "tricycle path" on Saturday. It was harder work preparing than actually putting it in, despite the use of wheelbarrows. So now the major part of our backyard is done, and the kids can race around on their bikes, trikes, and scooters.

That's not really the most important thing going on right now. We're actually expecting a baby in November. Mia has drawn at least one picture of the family, including a "baby in mommy's tummy." It's pretty fun to talk about changes and a new sibling with Holly and Mia. We told Jay about it, and he laughed and said "no," like we were telling a very good knock knock joke. He might start to believe it if Kelsea ever starts to show.

Other than that, and to further bury the important updates with the mundane, we got a new (to us) minivan recently. It was Kelsea's parents, and the transmission is supposedly going bad, but it's been fine so far, Kelsea likes it, and the kids enjoy the extra space when we go places. Jay generally begs to go places in the "blue car," but yesterday he realized the van was kind of blue too, and called it the blue car. That's progress.

That should do it for at least a month or so.