you snooze, you lose

Jury duty today. Downtown Dallas. Not even exciting.

Instructions said to be there by 8am, so I arrived in the parking structure at about 7:45. A leisurely stroll across the street, through the metal detectors and into a waiting room with 350 or so of my closest friends. Then, wait. and wait some more.

The first set of 50 jurists wasn't called until after 10am. My group was called at about 10:30. We herded ourselves upstairs to wait in the hallway. On what amounted to uncomfortable church pews. To wait some more. And more.

Fortunately, I took plenty of reading material. Even so, I found myself nodding off at times. Finally, the bailiff emerged from the courtroom and said the attorneys had settled out of court. I'm used to this routine; of the 4 times I've been called for duty, 3 of the "trials" ended this way. I never heard a word of testimony, nor saw any witnesses, nor was eliminated through the voir dire process (where the attorneys handpick a jury of their liking).

On the way home, I stopped by Pokey-O's for an ice cream sandwich (the exterior provided by cookies!), then to Kuby's for some German potato salad, now chilling in my fridge.