Jury Duty

I thought I had left blogging behind when I got back from abroad, but I have to agree that this is a brilliant way for us all to stay in touch.

I don't think home for me is quite as boring as upstate NY, but I did have the patriotic pleasure of answering my jury summons this morning.  8 AM, yuck. Turns out the trial is going to last at least 10 days, so they excused me after I wrote on the questionnaire that I had to leave the state next week. I guess it's nice that I didn't even have to lie to evade jury duty for the first time. Of course they managed to keep us there for more than 3 hours before excusing 25 of us. The other lucky 69 get to spend the rest of the afternoon answering questions from the judge and lawyers until they find their 12 or 14 person panel. I must admit I was a little curious about the case due to the projected time frame, but having been cut in the first round I never got to hear any of the details (apparently the judge cannot talk about anything regarding the trial without the lawyers present).  On the other hand, thank god my next ten days won't be spent in  an 18th District court room.

Otherwise, I'm spending the week trying to track down the small subset of high school friends that I still talk to once in a while AND happen to be in town right now. I doubt the list will push a half dozen. I'll echo everyone's feelings of loneliness. Even though I've come home many times since leaving for college, I'm never prepared for how quite my house is without the general background noise or constant activity of a college residence.  And as great as tv-links is (and yes, I too have been spending plenty of time with it since leaving Stanford), it will never pass for the fun we all had (and hopefully will have) together.

Lastly, a quick (and I think very funny story): As many of you know, I spent the last two summers working for EPGY, Stanford's biggest nerd camp for middle and high school students (biggest both in number of attendees and degree of nerdishness). I got a message last night from one of my 2005 campers who just finished her freshman year at Brown and is working for a comparable program at the University of Iowa right now. Apparently, one of her kids (16 years old I think) secretly packed up all of her belongings yesterday-their session is only about half over-and in the middle of the night (~1:30 AM) was seen fleeing the residence, luggage in hand, to a waiting car that promptly drove off.