Hangin' Marty

Jury duty is a drag. Yes, yes, yes, I know how important of a right trial by jury is, although I'm not that sure how many of the people I sat with in the jury room yesterday I would want on a panel where I was in the dock. But so it goes...

The coffee was free but weaker than a skip's sweeping. The magazines were about what you'd find in a doctor's office: I read a Golf Digest article about whether Rory McIlroy would win the Masters...in 2014. And as if jury service wasn't tedious enough, the movie they had us watch was Maid in Manhattan. I tried to doze, but that's difficult in a room with the least comfortable chairs imaginable. It was a long six (or so) hours.

Still, they paid us cash as we left, so that's something. We were given vouchers as we left the jury room, presented them to a cashier down the hall, and got forty bucks cash money on the spot. I never imagined that. Sure, that forty is already long gone. But at least I didn't have to wait eight weeks for it. And I didn't have to hang anybody for it either.