My Civic Duty

The county of Riverside has my number! I get a summons for jury service every year. This year is no exception, and this is my week to call that 1-800 number everyday this week until they need me. It is incredible how they think you can drop everything and leave work at the drop of a hat. You would think there was a better way to find jurors.

I have been called in 4 times. I only had to sit in a jury once. I hung the jury, but not how you would normally associate a hung jury. I thought the guy was guilty. I actually got one person to see it my way, so the final tally was 10 not guilty, 2 guilty.

Sitting through the trial I thought this was going to be a no brainer. It was just this simple.

The guy on trial was a convicted drug dealer. He was serving his second sentence for dealing drugs. $5000.00 worth of black tar heroin was found in his locker at the local penitentiary. The drugs were hidden in his deodorant bars. The drugs were found during a routine search by the prison guards.

The guy’s only explanation was that –
A) The guards didn’t like him and must have planted it in his locker. And….
B) He never locked his locker! Anyone could have put it in there!

OK, I am a firm believer in if it looks like shit, and it smells like shit, it probably is shit.

One other thing, the judge instructed us that we could use the defendant's drug dealing history against him in this trial.

To me it sounded like we would deliberate for about 30 minutes, give the guy his third strike, and be home before lunch. Wrong! I guess I could have just gone with the consensus and that would have happened, but I was not having any of that. The defense had given me nothing more than what I stated above as a defense, common sence told me this was shit.

Basically the rest of the jurors believed the convict and thought the prison guards lied. Why the guards had a reason to lie I don’t know. Why they would use $5000.00 worth of drugs to frame this guy I don’t know. $100.00 would have worked just as well. What I do know is that 4 jurors had relatives in jail and said they could make an unbiased judgment in this case. Every single one of them was leading the argument against the guards. Why the idiot D.A. let them be on the jury I don’t know. One of them actually called me a Nazi because I would not see her point of view. At that point one other juror change his vote to guilty.

After the trial, the lawyers wanted the jury to hang out and talk to them about how they could possibly do things different, or if they should even bother. The jury was never polled, but the assistant D.A. knew exactly who voted guilty. She asked me flat out, “What the hell happened?” I told her how the guards were scrutinized more than the convict, and that they should have never let family of convicts sit in this kind of trial.

Oh man, I just checked the county web site. My group reports at 7:30 tomorrow morning. Who knows, maybe I’ll have a juicy entry tomorrow. If not, I’ll have to write about why I have to stop now and clean up the puke my dog just spewed on the carpet.

Naked Brothers

What the hell is my kid watching? The Naked Brothers Band? What is a parent supposed to think with a name like that? Oh, I know, its something you can see on Showtime at two in the morning. WRONG! It’s a new show on Nickelodeon, and Alissa (my 6 year old) loves it. Here is a conversation her Aunt Val had with her while watching TV.

Alissa- Ooo look it’s the Naked Brothers Band.

Val- What’s The Naked Brothers Band? Are they naked?

Alissa- No silly, they try to dress all hot so the girls will like them! And you know what, it works. I really like Ned!

My life is gonna suck in about 6 years.

Meager Attempt

About 1:30 Saturday afternoon I was driving to my in-law's house, with tears in my eyes. I had got a call from Sherri telling me that her mother no longer wanted to be left alone with John because she didn’t think he had that much time left. This had come on real quick, I was there last week watching football with him and he seemed ok, we had a good time. He was sitting up, talking, and things weren’t that much different than the last 3 months.

I had a good idea what I was going to see when I got there because of my father’s death from cancer. This would be no different for me now. I consider John my father just as much as my birth father. He has always treated me like his son, and I believe he loves me like his son. I love John like my father. This visit was going to be tough.

Just immediate family was there, Mary (wife), Sherri and Shelly (daughters), and Phil and myself (son-in-laws). No kids were there.

Seeing John was like seeing my father a few weeks before his death. Up until now you could talk to John and he could talk back. He no longer has the strength to do so. He will fade in and out of consciousness and occasionally whisper a word or two. This was very hard to see, I had to leave the room a couple of times to recompose myself.

We decided that Sherri would spend the night with Mary. I would go and pick up the kids from the babysitter’s, then take them home. We would then come back in the morning to see how things were.

I now have to pull it all together and try to say good night to John. I stood over him with tears in my eyes, but couldn’t speak. I bent over and hugged him and kissed him on the forehead. As I started back up I could hear him softly say, “good-bye buddy.” I smiled and squeezed his hand, and went home to pick up the kids.

Sunday morning I got the call from Sherri. It was over; John had passed away in his sleep.

Everyone seems to be doing ok. Even though we knew this day was coming, it still hurts when it actually happens. John touch the lives of many people, he was a father to more than just me and his immediate family. My meager attempts at writing can’t truly describe how much John will be missed.

Please Pass the Beauty Cream

Looking at the past can be tough.

I got my copy of Bleak Future out the other night. I really hadn’t seen it since it was reedited and put out on DVD. The DVD had extras like most DVDs these days. I had more fun listening to the comments and watching the outtakes than watching the movie. I was invited to go to the recording of the comments and be included in that part of the DVD, but stuff going on with Sarah kept me from making the trip to the studio that night. It would have been nice to touch base with the young adults that made up the cast of Bleak Future. I was the old guy in the cast. I think I was 33. I will be 43 next month. Everyone else was a teenager or in their early twenties.

When I clicked to the comment section there was a picture of all the actors that attended the recording. They had all grown up! They all looked like parents. Most of them were parents! It made me feel old. Did I always look like a parent to those kids? I spent a lot of time with them, I felt like one of the gang. When I clicked to the rehearsal clips and saw myself, not in make up, reading lines with the other actors, I realized the big difference between early twenties and early thirties…ugh!

Who would...

... send their kid to a school that only teaches math and english? I do. I only just found this out at our last parent teacher meeting. Austin's 4th grade teacher informed us that because the school has done so poorly on state proficiency tests, they only teach math and language arts. What the hell is that! No history, no geography, no art. They also do P.E. a couple of times a week. Whoopie! I guess until those test scores go up, that's what the cirriculum will be. That bites. I may have the option of sending Austin to another school in the district, one that is doing better on the state tests, but that would invovle a lot of transportation. I just can't believe the school district could just eliminate so many subjects without parents knowing. They only inform you about the school's performance on the tests, but not how they are going to deal with it.


Over/Under
Only about 100,000 people died in the first 4 hours of 24! Jack Bauer was only resposible for 2 of them.