Well, that was painless.

I had jury duty yesterday. Morris County has called me three times to jury duty, and this was the first time I was able to go (the other two times happened while I was in college, and it's tough to get to court in New Jersey when you're attending classes in Ohio). I know a lot of people don't like the idea, but you're talking to someone who sees nothing wrong with a twelve-hour train ride to Canada so long as she has enough books and a supply of her own food. I sent the jury summons back with my name and profession on it and showed up at the county courthouse yesterday with three books.

I was a bit early and parked in a public garage for which I would have to pay, because I had lost the little stub with the phone number on it that I was supposed to call to make sure it was really my turn. It happened when I got there that they had only wanted up through juror number 207 and I was juror number 296, but the jury manager said I could still serve if I wanted to instead of just going back into the general pool. I said sure; I was already there, I had my books, and I didn't want to go into the office. Besides, despite everything I've seen of gov't behavior in the last three years, I still harbored a small spark of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington-itis and felt very strongly that jury duty was of tremendous civic importance. Even if it was just sitting around while two morons sued each other for moron things, at least I'd be there and doing my part. (A similar attitude informs my blood donation; sure, my blood might be going into someone who'd gotten themselves into a horrible health situation who'd die immediately after the operation, but at least the blood was there.)

I got my little juror badge and sat down to read, starting with my copy of 1421: The Year China Discovered The World, by Gavin Menzies. Fascinating book, although I'd feel more comfortable about some of his conclusions if the authorities were more in agreemend over the Vinland map. (No, it's not out in the States yet. Amazon's British affiliate doesn't particularly care where the books get shipped to as long as you pay.) I had to put the book aside for a bit for our orientation video, "You, The Juror". I get the feeling I probably ought to have started with a different book, because it's a bit hard to get excited over being 'the cornerstone of our justice system for over 200 years!' when you're reading a history of a nation something like twenty times older, but I watched anyway. It went through all the procedures and possibilities so that we'd know what would be expected of us, and informed us that 'despite what you may have seen in the movies, it is not the juror's job to investigate or visit the crime scene'. That made me smile. Eventually the video ended and the jury manager told us the three judges were meeting with the various lawyers to see if cases couldn't be settled before getting the jurors into the courtroom, and then the day began.

I finished 1421 around about lunchtime. When they released us to go eat, I phoned up condotierre and asked her if I'd get in a whole lot of trouble for desecrating graves in China - since the answer was yes, I scratched 'hunt down tombs of Ming ministers who canceled all future exploration and jump up and down on sacred areas whilst wearing cleats' off the list of Things To Do When I Visit China. Ah well. After lunch I went back and ran quickly through two trashy magazines, then read Jespersen's book (the one I got from the used bookstore) and started on a third. At three-thirty the jury manager came in and said all the cases had been settled out of court, and we could go home.


I had no problem with this. I'd been there in case I was neeeded. I wasn't needed. Sure, I didn't get much pay - the pay for a New Jersey juror has been $5 since 1927, per day - but so what? I did what an American is supposed to do, even if it was only a small thing. And I got my books read, which is always good. I liked it. Doesn't mean next time I won't try to bring some kind of DVD player so I can watch Iron Monkey like one of the wiser juror candidates, but hey - it was still cool.

At last at last at last!

I finally got off my miserable bum and finished another Chinese History Update!

( Gimme a bit, I gotta check one or two names in the Sun Pin bit before I post this to my web site. It'll be up by midnight EST. )

As if my response to jury duty weren't enough

to remind me how little I actually have in common with most other people, today I was thumbing through the entertainment/comics section of the office newspaper. It was yesterday's copy, which I had not really read at home, so the article on the second inside page caught my eye. Shaolin: Wheel of Life is going to be performed at the Beacon Theatre in New York on 27 November. Real monks and everything. I went looking for my celphone to see if I could call a friend who might want to go (his number's programmed into it, rather than memorised), but I'd left the phone home. So instead I went to look for one of my office-mates. I thought perhaps if I ask about people who might be interested, she might mention some kind of interest or curiosity instead - whatever works, right?

Wrong-oh. When I ask about whether she knows anyone who'd be interested in seeing a bunch of Chinese monks kick ass on Broadway, the response from both the askee and the other person in the room was phrased as follows: "I don't think it would be possible for me to get farther from interested in that."

They were laughing and all, so I smiled and laughed back, but... well, it was just a little stunning to realize that I'd once again found a point of Not Being Like The Other Children. One of the women is old enough to be my mother's aunt, and the other is only a little older than me. Somehow I would have thought... I dunno, maybe that the younger one might've thought it might be interesting. Or something.

I made a comment about how there was a time when I thought I had a snowball's chance in hell of growing up normal; they told me that they'd never thought that, not for a minute, and I felt a little better. Let's face it, when I was in grade school I decided my favourite muppet was Gonzo, and I've never looked back since. It's just that I don't always realise exactly how far from the majority I tend to skew.

Oh well. Better chance at a good ticket for me, then. I'll see if I can reach Kin-Hon when I get home.

First Blood Part II

Some of y'all may remember that last year I was the first in my karate class to draw blood. It was an accident during an overhead strike/sidestep drill; I clipped an orange belt's glasses when he didn't sidestep far enough, and drove them into his nose by mistake. Well, today I was on the receiving end. We were practicing a similar drill, but the idea was for the other person to do a high block. In my case the other person was Jacob. He's my height, but he's a good deal older than me - he's mostly bald and what's left of his hair is graying. This does not mean 'no danger' to me; this means 'even if he only started training when he was as old as I am, HOW MUCH OF A LEAD DOES HE HAVE???'. Jacob's a yellow belt in our school but that means jack diddly squat. He's trained in other arts, to the point where I called him the Old Snake today - his strikes are that fast. After several rounds of practicing punching at the nose, but not hitting it - the idea was to get a feel for the length of our strikes and get used to our classmates coming close but not hitting - we did drills of trying to tap the other person's head while they tried to block.

A few rounds of that were eventually followed by 'not only do you have to block, but I want you to shuffle backwards as well, so that the striker has to move forward to try and hit you'. That was going swimmingly right up until:

1. I moved to strike.
2. Jacob started to shuffle back.
3. I lunged in faster than I'd done before.
4. Jacob's hand came up in the block faster than it had before.

I've never actually been seriously hit before, except for the time I ran into a concrete barrel with my face, which is not the same thing. It was startling, to say the least. The impact zone seemed to be from just above my chin to the top of the soft bit of my nose, and everything in that area hurt at once. I put my hand up immediately to see what was bleeding, thinking it was my nose, but it turned out to be my bottom lip (and possibly my top, but mostly the bottom). Jacob's block had slammed my lip upward into the second incisor, but nothing was broken or knocked out, and my nose was as firmly in place as my teeth.

We only had a few minutes left in class anyway, so I went to rinse out my mouth, then came back in and grabbed a paper towel. The instructor had me get a cold pack to try and take down the swelling but that didn't really work, as the pack was designed for arm injuries and was one of those liquid ones. Wouldn't stay put. I bowed at the end with the rest of the class, and Jacob and I worked out exactly what happened. I told him that as long as all my teeth were OK the rest of it was nothing, and he grinned at me. The instructor had asked earlier if we had been brother and sister in a former life or something because of the way we were practicing the tap-and-block drill (stepping out of line, feinting with one hand and striking with the other when we weren't supposed to yet, etc.), so I just said 'Brother and sister indeed'. We both laughed, I went to shower, and that was that.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to figure out how to hold the ice cube on my lip.

There, it's done.

Lesson 11: The Warring States

I feel so much better now.