Well, today’s the day I go down to Detroit for my jury duty. I’ll be leaving in about five minutes as even though it’s only a half-hour drive, the freeway I’ll be traveling (I-96) has had construction going on it since the stone age it seems so I figured I should give myself extra time. I’m taking a nice and thick book along to pass the time with: Susan Jacoby’s Freethinkers in part because I’ve only made it half-way through the book and in part because it’ll be interesting to see if anyone asks about it.

Anyway, more later once I get back.

Update: Well, that was disappointing. I showed up about 10 minutes later than the 7:45AM time listed on the summons thanks to the construction on I-96 that I got an early start over, but not early enough it seems. That’s OK, though, as I was told that I just needed to be there before 9AM and they list 7:45AM so that everyone has time to get through security. So I grabbed my little juror info sheet and my red WAYNE COUNTY COURTS JUROR badge and sat my ass down to wait for my name to be called. At 8:30AM one of the ladies in the office—who is easily one of the happiest and sweetest people in Detroit based on how she talks—got onto the PA system to explain to us what was expected of us and how things would proceed. When she was done she turned us loose to hit the restroom or the snack shop just down the hall from the juror’s assembly room or go out and grab a smoke with the condition that we were back in the room by 9AM. Over the course of the next hour she’d come onto the PA and start reading off names that had been randomly picked by the computer to go to a specific court room. Three or four sets got called up in relatively rapid order, but I wasn’t picked for any of them. Then at around 10:30AM the nice lady comes back on the PA and explains that there’s really only one more trial today that they needed jurors for so they’re going to read off 33 names chosen by the computer and if our name isn’t called then we’d be free to leave for the day and our civic duty would be considered fulfilled for the next 12 months. Needless to say, I wasn’t one of the 33 names read off.

So I basically drove down to Detroit so I could sit in a room with 70 or 80 other people for a couple of hours while snacking on a Honeybun and a Diet Coke that sufficed for a breakfast. I bought today’s Detroit Free Press and managed to read the whole thing before starting in on my book, but I didn’t get very far before they sent me home. No judging of others for me today. Well, at least not outside the confines of my blog. Oh well, perhaps next time.