12 Angry Birds

Last Friday I had to go to jury duty for first time in my almost thirty years. (More accurately, in my twelve eligible years.) I was prepared to be there for a large portion of my Friday.....before the holiday....that I didn't get off anyway.....yeah. I promised myself that I would not get my hopes up that they wouldn't need me. That we would be let go early. That I would get to Skype justice in from home in my pajamas. Instead I packed a bag full of panic attack reducing meals and snacks, five bottles of water, four layers of clothes, one fully charged and podcast filled iPod, one fully charged Nook, my phone charger, and a book I got for Christmas in the event all electronics failed me.

I promised myself I would go into this with a positive attitude and with the intention to be as honest as possible. After going through the metal detector twice since they made be take my camera and eye glass repair screwdriver back to my car, I found a table near an outlet and waited for the employees to arrive to check us in. Slow moving line, but I've suffered worse. I was mostly concerned about losing access to an outlet, but victory and the last outlet was mine.

The nice lady next to me, whom I mentally classified as my new bunk mate, asked me if I had a dime she could swap for pennies. She wanted to avoid having to go to her car and subsequently be patted down by security again. I didn't need her pennies and the dime got her enough for her breakfast diet Coke. It was a small investment of good will. She watched my stuff as I used the restroom.

I thought books would be my way to kill time and I forgot that I need near silence to concentrate. For me reading cannot be done when you have a guy clearing his messages on his cell phone on full blast two seats away. On the other side, we had two women shooting the shit while the rest of us are trying to be lost in our own person spaces. It didn't even have to be a loud conversation because it's essentially a library where no one is trying to maintain a quite environment. Any sound is grating. So I gave up on my attempt at reading and brought out my podcasts. 

Wow, I'm spoiled. The cell phone guy was so loud and I did not want to destroy my future self's hearing so I gave up on the Sklar Brothers. (Temporarily. More on that later.) By this point I was already two hours into my day and trying to figure out what to do to get to lunch break. Then it hit me. When I was on a plane to Japan for eleven hours, I gave into my mostly denied inner gamer and played Bejeweled. Oh man, without even thinking about it, I had burned three and a half hours getting the shiny things to match up in shiny rows of three or more.

So in this waiting room of law and order (or I guess just order if you go by Dick Wolf shows) I got my phone out, found Angry Birds and attempted to catch up on my back log of uncompleted levels. It was only a blink of an eye to me, but twenty minutes later an announcement that our services would not be needed and we were free to go. I must state for the record that I understand how damn lucky I was that jury duty was such a breeze for me. Rather than return to work as a zombie and knowing that I would have to be there on the holiday on Monday......yeah.....I went home and took a nap. I would need my energy for my next adventure only a scant nine hours away......