MORE
Jury duty has befallen Rusa and even Lori in Korea.

DON'Ts
Other things jurors may not do:

~ Hold an inept attorney against his/her client.
~ Finish an attorney's sentence for him/her, no matter how obvious a word is.
~ Pay attention to the court clerk playing PC solitaire, to the exclusion of testimony.
~ Giggle.
~ Lose yourself in trying to understand the Court Reporters crazy keyboard.
~ Make noise while passing those new citrus Altoids to other jurors.
~ Laugh audibly at the unflattering caricature that Juror # 11 has drafted of Plaintiff's counsel.
~ Sneak into Family Court on breaks and listen to people fight over child support and alimony.

BLOGGERS BEWARE
Today Evan got his jury notice. Last week, Meg got hers.

Is the SF County Clerk a blog browser?

(Oh, please, please , please let them sit on the same jury. It'd be the finest he blogged/she blogged since... well, I only know of one other )

ALWAYS THE BRIDESMAID
I'm an Alternate Juror. I am there for the whole trial and I'm understudying the real jurors, in case they... something... can't be a juror anymore.
As I said before, I can't mention any details, but it was sounding pretty boring ...
... until they mentioned the sex!

JURY SELECTION
I'm in the selection process right now. Not allowed to talk about the case, but Juror #3 is quite possibly the most amazingly annoying in person San Francisco county. The judge keeps asking her questions to get her disqualified.

I want her to stay. She's like Kathy Lee Gifford or the socket after wisdom-teeth removal - you can't ignore them, though they're painful to deal with.

MILEPOSTS
We were talking about important moments along one's path to adulthood. We reminisced about not being carded for the first time, wondered if we will (or do) make more money than our folks, and considered the right time in one's life for marriage, kids, home-buying, etc.

Then she said, "Do you remember when it was that teenage girls stopped checking you out?"

My answer was, "Noooo...." My thought was, Wha? Did highschool girls stop checking me out?

SATURDAY NIGHT
My girlfriend got a couple of free tickets to see Natalie Merchant and Chris Issak last night. You couldn't call me a fan of either, but free is free, I haven't been to a concert in a while and it was in a nice amphitheater in the East Bay hills. It shouldn't have surprised me that the crowd was alarmingly white and thirtysomething - but it did. They sold carafes of red wine at concessions.

Give Natalie Merchant a fifth of Southern Comfort, and she's Janice Joplin - but alive. Natalie was barefoot and bouncy, neverminding that the crowd was clearly there to see the hometown boy Issacs. She's clearly taken some African dance classes in her recent downtime and she's got to be sore today.

I have a new found respect for Chris Issacs. A Stockton boy who mocked himself for wearing a bright pink suit so close to his farmbelt hometown. The crowd was behind him and he put on a great show. I couldn't help but wonder where in the crowd his Mom was? It must be something to see your kid in front of 9,000 fans.

JC
I had no idea I liked Chiristian rock.
I'm clearly not a guy who listens carefully to lyrics.

TERRY
My good friend Josh Cagan has written an open letter to Terry Barton.
An excerpt:

"The flame proficient Forest Ranger Terry Barton looks like what my father would never refer to as, "A tough ol' bird." Drinks her coffee black. Enjoys a fifth of Gentleman Jack every other night or so. And probably really, really digs Bonnie Raitt. This is a woman who misses memos by the metric ton, and still does her job better than you could, providing you weren't a highly qualified Forest Ranger."

He has a thing for fire.

CENTENNIAL
My folks no longer live in Littleton, Colorado. Since the Columbine High School shooting, there has been some real baggage associated with saying that you're from (or still live in) Littleton.

So, the half the city has seceded. My Dad says it for strictly city tax issues, but I really think that the Eastern side of the town wants to dissociate itself with the Western, gun-toting side of the town.

There - now everything is just fine...

FIRE
I visited my folks this weekend.
If the wind was from the north, it was the most idyllic summer weather imaginable. If the wind was from the south, it was like you were standing in a campfire. The entire front range of the Rocky Mountains was shrouded in what looked like dark rain clouds, but were actually the smoke from hundreds of thousands of burning trees.

TIDES ARE TURNING
From SFGate, today:
"It is a time of stern warmongering and a renewed macho kick-ass American attitude in which this country will no longer stand idly by like some pansy doe-eyed wallflower, pretending to be a nation of rationality and peace and warmth and good microbrews and open-heartedness and caution and careful consideration of our military actions and reactions. That is just so, you know, wimpy. "

(Excerpted from "Let Us Now Crush Everybody".)

HEROS
A great article in the Morning News: The Bastards of Baseball

MORE PLAUGES
I was just reminded of
-- Locusts, and
-- Pop-up Ads

Thanks, Jenn

PLAGUES
On our way to see one of Chicago's finest entertainments, The NeoFuturists, we were trying to remember the Ten Plagues. We thought of:
1.) Frogs (I love frogs)
2.) Drought
3.) Flood
4.) Snakes
5.) Rivers running with blood
Then we were stumped.

Jeff, Peter and Lane submitted:
6.) Dial-up
7.) Decaf
and
8.) Dot Matrix

I now have the other two:

9.) Ice - We went on a hike this weekend that Jason kindly called a Hiketacular! We lost the trail about 30 times, due to...HARD PACKED SNOW! It's damn June here and we're trudging through ice and snow. A ten mile hike turned into a fourteen mile(ish...who knows) trek in a snowy wonderland. (OK, it was pretty beautiful, and everyone was surprisingly civil.)
I'm sore. [ photos]

10.) Fire - I'm taking my girlfriend to see where I grew up this weekend. Mom's been sweeping layers of soot and ash off the back patio and coming up with activities that don't require us to go outside or well... breathe.

Please visit b-may.com for more reports on the Rapture.

WEED
Riding the train this morning I sat across from Bleeding Gums Murphy. I came in half way through a rant:

"Medical marijuana is American Gold. Why don't pharmaceutical companies want in on this? I ain't saying legalize growing it -- well, yes I am, but not right now -- what I'm saying is that medical marijuana sells for $360 an ounce. AN OUNCE!

You can't plant GOLD in the ground and watch it grow. But medical marijuana you can!"

Then he reached in his pocket and took his medicine.

MAN HAIR
As I get older I get less picky about my hair cuts. Today, I decided I didn't need a salon, but rather a simple barber. I found a barbershop on a walk downtown and got my haircut. It looks great, it was cheap, and it was pretty quick.

And, what's more, it made me feel like a man. There was a poster on the wall with "Official Haircuts for Men and Boys." Seven styles and all of them look like my Uncle Mike's hair. The barber said five words to me, and hye spent as much time collecting Lakers bets as he did cutting my hair. The hair cut was $8; I watched him collect $95 in Lakers winnings.

RESIGNED
The best resignation e-mail ever:
..........................................................

From: Kevin Fox
Date: Fri May 31, 2002 02:00:45 PM US/Pacific
To: XXX@yahoo-inc.com
Subject:

petal wafts from rose
drawn by dreams of mastery
cedes post june thirteenth
.........................................................

via Heather
Kevin today

CHICAGO ATHLETIC CLUB
Looking for a Chicago venue for last week's Adaptive Path event, I found this place. We wanted a good location, affordable rooms and some character.
Holy crap, did we get character.

The C.A.C. was built in 1893. They've renovated one floor a decade. If you get a '40s floor, you're set. If you get a '70s, you're screwed.

My favorite amenities included:

• The pool - Looks just like FDR's White House pool. Though they let the ladies in (since '74), some members have yet to get used to it. There were lots of members hanging out.


• The Cherry Circle Bar - All mahogany card tables, walls covered in paintings of formerly wild game, and, unlike the dining room, you didn't have to wear a jacket.


• The boxing ring - I did what I could to get a Veen vs. Merholz match on the ticket - they had to answer email.


• The Wall of Dead Guys - No mention of who the hell they are.

Things I learned:

• Despite his 6'5" stature and 100+ miles a week cycling, if Veen says he sucks at basketball, believe him. (Congrats again, Peter.)


• Girls love sneaking into Men's rooms.


• These guys love aftershave, pomade, and tonic (all free, most made since1930).

It was only half as snobby as you might imagine, and worth every penny.