Not Necessarily Interesting News

Well, I did report for jury duty last week as I was supposed to. I haven’t had time to write about it until now.

I showed up at the courthouse and got assigned to a jury pool and was told to report to the courtroom at 1:30PM. Great, there I was 30+ miles from home with nearly 3 hours to waste. Not really enough time to bother with going home so I bummed around Georgetown for a while and got lunch with my massive $6 of pay I received for showing up. I did find some mud to play with the Defender in so it wasn’t a total loss.

I showed up at 1:30 and was assigned juror number 52. A good thing. They’d have to strike 40 people ahead of me before I could make the jury. By the questions the lawyers were asking it looked to be a nasty case. The defendant was charged with aggravated sexual assault on a child. The defendant was a woman and the victim her own son. Not fun. Jury selection went 2 days for which I received $12. Luckily I was not picked as I couldn’t afford the time off work.

I saw in the paper today the trial lasted until yesterday, nearly two weeks. She was sentenced to 25 years plus 10 years plus 10 years probation to run concurrently. Ouch. I’d post a link to the story online but it requires registration. Click ‘more’ to see the full story.

: Welsh Air from the album “Voice Of An Angel” by Charlotte Church

(Read on …)

The Alamo Drafthouse hosted the World Premier of Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle last night. I managed to get tickets to the opening for us and a couple friends. In standard Alamo style this wasn’t any old movie premier. They had a Road Rally to find the location of the premier. At that undisclosed location there was going to be the premier and they had also brought down 3 genuine White Castle grills and 10,000 White Castle burgers. When I heard that I just had to go. White Castle burgers are like heaven to me and I hadn’t had any in about 5 years when I got some on a trip to a funeral in Ohio. Also, my wife, Shannon, had never had a White Castle burger.

We showed up at the Alamo at 2pm ready to roll. We were given a CD and told to listen to track 1. That gave us clues to a location in Austin. Once there we called in and were told to listen to another track which told us to look for something at that location. We then called back with the answer and were given another track to listen to for directions to our next stop. We drove all over town following the clues. We went to such exotic locales as The Gas Pipe, Sugar’s, Exposé, Zilker Botanical Garden, and more. I got to ask a stripper at Sugar’s how much for a Cleveland Steamer(five bucks). I got to squeeze a white man to get an answer. We made about 15 stops in all. We were in the first 10 teams across the line out of nearly 100 teams. The finish line was at an Elk’s Lodge in South Austin.

When we arrived they were just starting to hand out White Castle Burgers from the temporary restaurant. It was all you could eat. Dear Lord, did I eat a lot of burgers. I lost count around 15. The smell of them cooking wafted over us continually as we waited for it to get dark to watch the movie. My wife actually liked them and I think she understands the obsession some folks, like me, have with them. The frozen versions you can get in the store don’t even compare to one fresh off the grill. I even took a couple bags home and am eating one as I type this. I had to take them. I know it’ll be many years before I get them again.

Now for the movie review. I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting much from the movie and came mostly for the burgers. The movie itself was actually pretty good. It is a typical road trip type movie and has a lot of gags but there were quite a few original things happening in the movie that made it fun to watch. You wanted to see what else could possibly go wrong on a trip across town to a burger stand. Neil Patrick Harris, a.k.a. Doogie Howser, was hilarious playing a debased version of himself. I don’t want to give away anything so I’ll stop here. I recommend you see it for yourself.

After the movie the actors and writers came onstage for a Q and A session which was really a lot of fun. sorry for the crappy pic but it was night and they were about 40 feet away and just out of flash range. My wife and I swear we saw Neil Patrick Harris at the back of the crowd before the movie but he didn’t get on stage. Maybe he heard there was a strip club just down the street. Some of the behind the scenes insights were interesting and got the crowd laughing.

I look forward to the next Road Rally hosted by Alamo Drafthouse even if they won’t have White Castles there.

Man, that was our busiest 4th ever.

My folks offered to watch the kid so we could take the boat out on Lake Travis and party with some friends. We met my friends around noon in Devil’s Cove. We tied off to their houseboat and hung out for many hours. We did some shots of some really good tequila, did some jello shooters, swam, people watched, saw some boobies, etc. We had to leave the cove around 5 just as things started to get rowdy because we were having a bunch of folks over to our place.

We ended up having 14 people, family and friends, over for dinner and fireworks. My wife and mom made homemade wontons from scratch. They did about 300 for the crew. My grandparents brought over homemade ice cream which was delicious too. After dark we broke out the fireworks. We had enough to keep all the guys busy for over and hour and 1/2. Lots of fun and no injuries this year.

: We’re All Gonna Die Someday from the album “The Captain” by Kasey Chambers

I got home today and found a letter from Williamson County. It was a summons for jury duty. See it there to the right, resting on my glorious Select-Ease keyboard. This is my third summons in two years. Of all my friends and family I’m the only one I know of that’s ever been summoned in Texas and this makes three times.

I believe in doing your civic duty and all and didn’t have a problem with my first Texas summons two years ago. Heck, I looked forward to it as I was unemployed at the time and thought it’d be fun. I even got on a jury. But, c’mon, when is enough enough? I get to lose at least a day’s pay to go do this and earn my 6 bucks. I make over 50 times that for a day’s pay. Six bucks doesn’t even cover gas to Georgetown from here.

*sigh*

: Quare Bungle Rye from the album “Irish Drinking Songs” by The Blarney Lads