The Jury's Out

So today I was called upon to do jury duty in my county's general district court. We check a call-in line the night before, and my panel was called for today, so I let the folks at work know and packed my trusty bag with two needlework projects, two books and change for the Coke machine. God forbid I should be bored or uncaffeinated. I had to leave the scissors at home, since they wouldn't have passed through the metal detector, but I packed a retractable seam ripper (probably in itself a weapon but it wasn't specifically excluded) since as usual, I can't find either of my clovers. I've done jury duty before in this county, and it can be grueling and unpleasant. The docket is crowded in our booming county, and trials can run to midnight or more. Another gentleman and I actually had to argue with a couple of people on a past jury that simply not liking the accused or his lifestyle was not enough reason to convict. Plus for me, jury duty is unpleasantly like work, even though I work in the transactional end of law rather than in litigation.

After checking in and receiving our jury numbers and our $30 in cash, we waited around until we were sent home, as there were many more of us than were needed to fill the jury box for the two trials, as during the voir dire, apparently no one was dismissed. So that left me free at 11:30 to go spend my $30, which Big Law does not demand we turn over to them. And you know what I spent it on, I'll bet: Country Cottage Needleworks' Gingerbread Cottage.

Tomorrow I've been called to serve again. I am hoping for the same result.

I had a chance to start it this afternoon:

And I worked a bit more on the Christmas Cardinal ornament:

I'm enjoying the cardinal theme a lot, so I bought another one. This is by Imaginatings. I'd love to finish these three projects in time to have them framed for Christmas. But you know, the jury's out on that....