The Justice Squadron

Greetings citizens,

As a white, middle-class American male, I'm no stranger to hardships.  I have fruit trees that need pruning, craft beers to sort through, and an abundance of pink plastic garbage cluttering up my house.  It's a daily struggle to weed my way through such trials and tribulation, and the last thing some poor schmuck like me needs in his life is a summons.

A summons, dear readers, for Jury Duty.

Yeah, I got summoned once again.  Summoned back to the Justice Squadron:

One of the greatest seasons of the Simpsons. . .

And this time, unlike two years ago when I was last summoned to the Municipal Fortress of Vengeance, there was no way getting out of it:  I was Juror No. 283, and they were summoning jurors 1 - 513.  I was screwed.

Hey, where did this guy go?

Now, as you may or may not recall, I happen to work full time.  I'm a history teacher at a public school, that's how we roll.  This summons of mine consequently fell on a weekday (a Wednesday), and this meant I had to get the time off of work in order to perform my sacred, civic duty.  This ended up not being a problem, though, as my employer - the government - is somewhat cool with me missing work for jury duties.

Hooray for me.

Being a resident of Orange County, I had to drive into downtown Orlando to the Courthouse. . . which sucked.  Driving down I-4 into the downtown area during morning rush hour traffic is like trying to evade the bulls of Pamploma in a wheelchair.  Drivers down here in Central Florida might as well be a gaggle of liquored-up chimps as far as I'm concerned - none of them can drive for crap.

And they all listen to shitty music.  But let's not fly off on that tangent, shall we. . .

Orange County Courthouse

Anyway, the Orlando Courthouse (at right) is a pretty impressive municipal building, for those of you who aren't familiar with it.  The Ninth Circuit Court has definitely done it's homework, and the room they set aside for jurors is pretty bitchin' (judicial term).  Plenty of vending machines, chairs, coaches, TVs, tables, what-have-you. 

They even have a computer lab and office center, and free Wi-Fi. . . which meant Yours Truly got to bring along his laptop to work on lesson planning and grading screw around on the Internet.

My trusty sidearm. . .

I showed up around 7:10am, and immediately staked out a coach next to a wall outlet so I could work on my laptop throughout the day.  First and foremost, however, I wanted to finish up George R. R. Martin's saga A Song of Ice and Fire on my Kindle.

As seen on HBO's Game of Thrones

I had started reading the acclaimed series in June, and had quickly hacked away at the first four books in a manner of weeks (yes, that's how I spent my summer vacation - reading that series whilst smoking a pipe and tanning in the sun. . . jolly good time, that.) Alas, the last book - A Dance with Dragons - had taken me nearly three months to read. . . more or less because I can never find time to read with a full-time job bitching and whining for my immediate attention.

(stupid job. . .)

Back to the 'Duty:  they began calling pools of jurors around 8:30, following a short (and pretty self-explanatory) orientation film.  Usually jurors were rounded up twenty or thirty at a time, then a half hour or an hour would pass before they called another pool forward.  After a couple hours, I had managed to finish off the series (and now I get to wait around impatiently for Martin to finish writing the 6th book - damn it), and killed a little time on the Internet (writing, shopping, reading the news, screwing around, etc.) before they allowed us an hour or so for lunch. 

Pretty much.

When we reconvened to the juror pool room (or whatever the hell it's called), we sat around for a few more hours while several more pools of jurors were called forward.  By 2:30pm, I had yet to be called.  Not that I was complaining - so far I had been a pretty big fan of jury duty.  I was being paid by the State of Florida and the school district to sit around and read books, write, and mess around on my laptop.  I'm cool with that.

Then, around 2:45pm, I was finally summoned to deliver justice onto my peers.  The hammer was about to striketh down, and Yours Truly was more than ready to deliver his civic roundhouse to the countless faces of evil.

Murder your child? Don't worry about it!

But, as luck would have it, my judicial kicks were never truly in need.  As we prepared to enter one of the courtrooms, the officials notified us that our services were no longer required:  the parties inside had settled once they had received word that jurors were prepared to enter the courtroom to try the case (or whatever it is we do).

So, by 3pm, I was on my way home.  After a grueling day of sitting around on my ass in a municipal building, staring at a computer screen, I was looking forward to a relaxing evening of sitting around on my ass in the comfort of my own living room, staring at a TV screen.

Slainté,

- Juror 283

Election Day

hi readers.

now, while florida has been known to suck on occasion since we’ve been down here, it has also proven to be quite awesome from time to time. take the weather, for instance. when not bracing for a hurricane, one really can’t beat the tropics. palm trees and 80 degree weather in november? yeah, i’ll take that over the cold drizzle and grey overcast skies of snowless michigan right now. and being this close to all of the theme parks, ocean, and beaches? slightly more stuff to do here than in clare. granted, you have to pay $1200 a month in rent, and you do run the risk of being shot at or killed in a car accident via one of the many, many stellar drivers we have down here... but, that's the price you pay for location.

what i’m getting at, folks, is that florida has a tendency of surprising you with little flashes of awesome when you’re least expecting it (of course, this also swings the opposite way, but let’s try to stay optimistic here). the hough family was recently made aware of yet another one of florida’s perks: the ability to vote early.

florida isn’t the only state in the union that does this, i know, so i’d urge you to look into whether or not that’s available to you in your own backyard. here in America’s Penis (if you look at a map of the continental united states, this is what florida looks like… seriously, people), kris and i decided to take full advantage of this and ‘get our vote on.’ as its somewhat still frowned upon to leave babies unattended down here (apparently the ol’ 'leave-the-baby-under-an- upside-down-laundry-basket-with-a-brick-on-top' trick doesn’t "fly" anymore), we had to take the cannonball with us to the local early voting location – the nearest branch of the orange county library.

expecting a four-hour stand-a-thon, the hough family geared up like we were setting off into the serengeti. parking was terrible, and we had to fight our way through hordes of volunteers out supporting their candidate of choice (mostly local positions - county commissioners, stuff like that - no mccain people about... though there were plenty of obama people to be seen). the circus ended up being a little easier than we had anticipated, and running the entire gauntlet ended up only taking about an hour. i had alayna strapped to me in a harness, and she only started acting up when i was in the voting booth.

the people around me most likely did not appreciate this.

anyway, the moral of the story (if there even is one) is this: vote early. do it. get it out of the way. seriously. regardless of whether or not you’re voting for the erratic old guy/bat-shit crazy lady combo or the socialist/foot-in-mouth combo, save yourself the trouble of standing in line for hours and hours on november 4th and make that crap happen.

if you don’t, you don’t get to complain about anything for the next four years. and complaining is an american right.

fight for your rights, america... fight for your rights.