2006-01-11 - 10:46 a.m.

..ladies and gentlemen of the jury...

I came home last night expecting an exciting package from Amaz*n...only to discover a jury duty summons instead. I'm a "telephone juror" which means I have to call in to see whether or not I need to report to the courts the following day. And it's scheduled for, of all times, the first week of classes.

This is the first time I've been summoned, but a straw poll indicates that most people I know are dismissed. We academics tend to have well-developed opinions that make us unsuitable...(in one instance, a friend was dismissed because the lawyers decided that they didn't want to have a homocide researcher on the jury...go figure...)

In my case, I expect I'll either be dismissed right out, or they will love me because I am so uninformed (i.e., I don't watch television or listen to any radio other than NPR, so I'm woefully ignorant of local goss - yes folks, we've found the one person who HASN'T seen the news of XXXX...).

Am staying home today to finish entering some data and to write a paper. I'd better get on it.