I actually am Juror No. 1. Yesterday, when we had to initially show up for jury duty, we were shown into this huge auditorium-like room where people milled around and waited to be called up. I waited for about two hours before I was called to show up to a courtroom. There was an adjoining kitchen-type room with vending machines to the auditorium, and they were serving pretzels (since this is Philly and German-infested, I guess) and coffeecake to the folks called for jury duty. The bathroom was beyond that, and the mike of the woman calling up people’s names was wired through there. So I was using the restroom when my name was called as No. 1.
Then we were led up to the seventh floor of the municipal building where we had to loiter around for another hour before we were finally led into the courtroom. After an even longer period of time, half of us were dismissed for 2 1/2 hours. When we came back, they started questioning us one by one for the jury. We met up with the 1st half of the entire group (40 people) at about 5:15 PM, when we were told who was being dismissed right then and there and who would come back today. Incidentally the first group that was questioned (which I was not in) had to come back and wait around by the elevators on the seventh floor for about two hours because the judge and bailiff had forgotten them.
Today, 26 of us came back (they didn’t make much hay yesterday out of the initial 40, did they?) and had to hang out in the jury room for about 2 1/2 hours until the judge was ready for us. About six or seven of us had to come in at 9 AM and be questioned, and then the rest of us showed at noon. None of the six or seven got to eat any lunch and since we were supposed to be there at noon, a lot of the rest of us didn’t eat lunch either. We were thinking about storming out: a critical mass–and insisting we would be back in half an hour because there clearly wasn’t any use for us for the longest time.
After all that waiting, they didn’t question any more of us: we all came out and was told who would stay and who wouldn’t. Twelve and no alternates, after all that.
And I still am number 1.
It is an SVU-type case. More about it when it’s over.
Tonight marks the halfway point of my brother’s hell: he is in the middle of taking the bar in DC. He had a job lined up about last December and so was well-positioned when he graduated from law school in May. He has already been working on the job but has taken off for studying for the bar this summer. Gettin’ hitched to the finest lady around in October in upstate New York. It was interesting, because they decided to put a wedding announcement in the Lebanon, MO paper.
My brother’s and my step-grandmother likes to think that she is “in” with us and uses her knowledge about our lives to show all her fellow “Lebanese” that we’re all happy and OK with everything. Well, I’m not, my mother’s not, and I don’t think my brother is either. My grandmother died on July 18, 1977. My grandfather never forgave her for it and so he remarried eight months later and immediately disinherited my mother, my aunt, my cousins, and us. My grandmother’s trust, set up for my mother and aunt, was her inheritance from her father’s estate. She also had a huge number of heirlooms and antiques that went back about eight or nine generations in her family, as well as some from my grandfather’s side of the family. My mother and my aunt begged for many of these items, but rather than make them happy, my grandfather sold them for dirt cheap to antiques dealers. Then my mother and my aunt offered to buy items, no matter the cost, which my grandfather ignored and then he GAVE things away. Was he a curmudgeon? You betcha.
My step-grandmother revered my grandfather and worshiped him for 24 years. I don’t know if he indoctrinated her to his way of thinking or if she is secretly cunning, for when he died, she was not going to change any of this. Furthermore, she has indoctrinated her own grandchildren into the cult of my grandfather, and they fully expect to live in that house and have all those belongings. And, we discovered when my grandfather died in 2001 that she had had his will altered (he was so sick from Parkinson’s he wouldn’t have been able to do it on his own). So things that he had decided to specifically leave to some of his biological grandchildren, such as some Civil War pistols that he was going to leave to his Civil War-obsessed grandchild (my brother) went to his stepson and stepson-in-law instead.
His obits were particularly amusing, because they said that he left five children when he died: Nancy, Ann, Elaine, Victor, and Nancy Ann. Two daughters named Nancy! Isn’t that something? (Plus his widow would have been twelve when she had the eldest, if the cult of my grandfather held true.)
Anyway, since 2001 I don’t want to have anything to do with the steps. Neither does my mother. Furthermore, my aunt and my cousin have been forbidden to tell the step-grandmother what I’m doing or what my mother’s doing or what my brother’s doing, because she’ll just use the information to make herself look good to the other “Lebanese.” “Oh, no, there’s no problem with the estate, because look at how well we all get along, in spite of the fact that he didn’t leave a thing to a single member of his biological offspring.”
So my brother very wisely decided to stick it to her by surprising her of news of his wedding by announcing it in the Lebanon newspaper. Grrrrrrrrr. Some people really suck. (Not my brother, but my step-grandmother.)
Oh, and she was a TOTAL bitch to me when we showed up for the funeral. She talked to my aunt, my cousins, and my uncle but wouldn’t even look at me. It was my birthday, too. I don’t think my aunt and my cousins saw how she treated me but I think that it was a glimpse into a very dark side of her that other people would rather not think about. That made it pretty easy for me to permanently cut her off.
Someone very, very dear to me lost someone close. I think I am going to buy him a requiem recording. And I wish I could more openly help him.
In the meantime, this rash is still quite present. It started on my left elbow, moved up my left arm and then down it, then moved to my right arm, then moved to my knees and the my thighs and now it’s on my backside and the backs of my thighs, as well as my back. The GOOD thing about it is that it actually moves on: in other words, my upper arms are in pretty great shape now. The BAD news is I can’t fucking figure out what it is. I am finally going to get to see a dermatologist on Saturday. Today marked my last day of steroids and they didn’t do a thing to help. But I’ve been taking pics as best as I can of my rash to show them what it’s looked like all long. Luckily for you folks, I won’t be uploading them to Flickr. 
Anyway, it’s going to be prettttty interesting if I have to scratch the backs of my thighs in the jury box. I try to sneak into the bathroom and put Eucerin on everything whenever I get a chance. What an expensive fucking rash……
It probably won’t, though: the FLP has a good reputation as far as its academic-esque collections are concerned (the music library has a much better collection than most academic music libraries in the US). I’ll just keep plugging away.
