Well, today was my first day of Jury Duty. Had to be to the downtown criminal court building at 7:45, for check-in and all that good stuff. Got a good amount of reading done on a book I've been wanting to start on for a few years now - "Snow Crash" - then at 10:00 a group was called for the first case.

I managed to get out of it on a claim of financial hardship. It would have gone 7 to 9 days (of which I'd have to use my precious vacation time for all of them, since the Hospital doesn't pay for jury service days), and there's no way I can miss work for that long without setting stuff up beforehand to have people cover for me. The case was a harsh one, too - some guy had two counts of "lewd misconduct" and one count of "aggaravated sexual assault" towards a 14-year old girl.

Creepy.

So, I got out of that case. Did a bit more reading (180 pages down, about 300 to go), got lunch, then at about 3:30 (an hour before we were to be dismissed), got called into a second case. Not bad, only going 2 to 3 days, but juror selection wasn't finished by the end of the day, and I need to go back on Monday for the completion of it.

After that, I stopped by work for a little bit, got some last-minute stuff out of the way before payroll closes on Monday, then headed out to Santa Monica to meet up with Jen and Berek. Had a good time, went to the Pig for coffee afterwards (and some very frightening Coca-Cola... see Jen's journal for the story of /that/ one), and came home to bed.