Oh, Dear.

It's never dull in this house.

Sweetie got another jury duty notice a couple of weeks ago.  He was not pleased.  He served for the Federal Court for the first time ever just a few months ago, but this is the District Court that calls him up every two years and hasn't called me up in forever.

(Of course, now that i have pointed that out, i will be called up soon.  Just watch.)

As we got closer to the date, he got more agitated about it.  Sitting there all day and listening to lawyers makes him want to go to sleep and he just knows someday they are not going to dismiss him and he's going to have to go through days and days of it.

Of course, Bigger Girl also had a crisis at that time.  Two crises, actually.  The first was that after she finally got signed up for her courses this semester (for the second time, a computer glitch had erased her first registration) and paid the tuition, the computer sent her an email threatening to drop her if she didn't provide certain documents that the email didn't list.  The college, of course, was closed for the weekend and they wouldn't open until Monday at 1pm.

The second was that she again has a tire that is going flat on Cicero.  She almost always has a tire that is going flat.  So i promised to take Little Girl to school Monday, then take Cicero in for the tire, hoping to get done before work.  That way she could go up to the school at noon to get in line with everyone else who is trying to get in for the semester while i could go to work.

If you want to hear G-d laugh, make some plans.  Especially some complicated plans that rely on timing.

Sunday evening, i came out of our church prayer service to see the truck parked behind me was being given a jump start by the truck next to it.  Once they were done, i got in Humphrey the Honda (Little Girl had taken the Jalopy to work) and, in sympathy or because it was a bug that was catching, Humphrey also refused to start.

Another church member with jumper cables came to the rescue.  The positive terminal was covered with corrosion, so it took several tries, and the owner of the cables told me i had to get it taken care of, it wasn't making a good connection at all even after it started.  We still thought it would be fine for me to make it home.  Then i lost power going up the ramp to the interstate.  Of course, it was at a point with no shoulder and i couldn't stop, i just had to hang on, pray, and get on the highway anyhow.

Two more times, on the interstate in the middle of traffic, all the electrical systems in Humphrey went down -- radio cut off, lights went out, gauges went down to zero -- then came back up.  It all happened in an area where i couldn't get off unless i wanted to just stop on the side of the highway, which i did not just as it was getting dark.  When i finally did manage to get off the interstate i made a call to Bigger Girl to meet me at Kevin and Lenny's shop, praying i could make it that far.  No way could i risk going home and not being able to get Humphrey started again and up to the shop, especially as he kept going down even after i got off the interstate, so Bigger Girl met me and brought me home from there.

Thus Monday morning turned into take Little Girl to school and then drop Sweetie off for jury duty and then go to work, as Bigger Girl's Cicero would have to wait until today.

It all did work out, of course.  Humphrey just needed a new battery and those connector cables that hook up to the battery thoroughly cleaned.  Bigger Girl found out that the threatening email was an empty threat, she is signed up and registered and paid and now has all her books and can quit worrying.

As for jury duty, Sweetie was called in as a potential juror in a civil lawsuit case.  The lady had been rear-ended and was suing because of whiplash and other injuries.  The guy who hit her worked -- get this -- for an insurance company, and was in the company car when it happened!  He and his insurance company attorneys were trying to say she wasn't hurt.  They wanted people on the jury who would believe that the speed of the crash would be a better indicator of whether or not someone was injured than MRIs and CAT scans and her doctor's testimony.

Sweetie told the insurance company attorney that MRIs and other such objective tests don't lie, if they show damage there is damage, and he was dismissed.

And yes, i'm hoping to get Cicero in for her tire today.

It's a good thing Kevin and Lenny like us, and make good coffee.

Today is:

Bad Poetry Day -- Wellcat Holidays suggests you get back at your high school English teacher for making you read all that "good" poetry; get together with friends, write some truly awful stuff, and mail it to him/her!

Long Tan Day a/k/a Vietnam Veterans Day -- Australia

Mail Order Catalog Day -- the first one was published by Montgomery Ward this day in 1872, and was only one page (Do yourself a favor and opt out of the doggone things, save a few trees: www.catalogchoice.org )

National Ice Cream Pie Day

National Science Day -- Thailand

National Soft Ice Cream Day

Parsi New Year/Shahenshahi -- MH, India

Serendipity Day -- and it's here serendipitously! begun by writer Madeleine Kay, it's the day to step out of routine, do something you've always wanted to do, and see what happens

St. Agapitus' Day (Patron of Palestrina, Italy; against colic)

St. Helena's Day (Mother of Constantine the Great; Patron of archaeologists, converts, difficult marriages, divorced people, dyers, empresses, nail smiths, needle makers; Birkirkara, Malta; Helena, MT, US; against fire and thunder)

Toge-Pogling Season begins -- Fairy Calendar (Toges are normally pogled in groups of five or six, depending upon the size and strength of the individual Poge)


Birthdays Today:

Andy Samberg, 1978
Malcolm-Jamal Warner, 1970
Christian Slater, 1969
Edward Norton, 1969
Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, 1962
Madeleine Stowe, 1958
Patrick Swayze, 1952
Elayne Boosler, 1952
Martin Mull, 1943
Robert Redford, 1936
Roberto Clemente Walker, 1934
Roman Polanski, 1933
Luc Montagnier, 1932
Rosalynn Carter, 1927
Shelley Winters, 1920
Greta Garbo, 1905
Max Factor, 1904
Meriwether Lewis, 1774
Virginia Dare, 1587 (first English child born in the Americas)


Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Private Lives"(Play), 1930
"Iphigénie"(Racine's dramatic tragedy), 1674


Today in History:

Founding of the oldest known Roman temple to Venus, BC293
Rome is occupied and plundered by Visigoths under King Alarik I, 410
Death of Genghis Khan (fell from his horse), 1227
A Portuguese ship drifts ashore in the Japanese province of Higo, 1541
The Boston, Massachusetts Evening Post begins publishing, 1735
Eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, 1834
Pierre Janssan discovers helium, 1868
German engineer Karl Jatho allegedly flies his self-made, motored gliding airplane four months before the first flight of the Wright Brothers, 1903.
Mayor of Tokyo Yukio Ozaki presents Washington, D.C. with 2,000 cherry trees, which President Taft decides to plant near the Potomac River, 1909
A Great Fire in Thessaloniki, Greece destroys 32% of the city leaving 70,000 individuals homeless, 1917
19th US Amendment ratified (gives women the vote), 1920
Premier of The Wizard of Oz, 1939
The first commercially produced oral contraceptives are marketed, 1960
James Meredith becomes the first black person to graduate from the University of Mississippi, 1963
Steve Biko is arrested at a police roadblock under the Terrorism Act No 83 of 1967 in King William's Town, South Africa. He would later die of the injuries sustained during this arrest bringing attention to South Africa's apartheid policies, 1977
Massive power blackout hits the Indonesian island of Java, affecting almost 100 million people, 2005
Columbia's Chiribiquete National Park expands to 3 million hectares from 1.2 million hectares, becoming one of the Amazon's largest protected zones, 2013