More new experiences

I've had a couple of new experiences over the past few days.

Monday morning I had to report for jury duty. This is my first time to actually serve jury duty. I was called once before, when I was in college. But, being a student and especially one studying out of state (I was a resident of Michigan, going to school at Georgia Tech), I was able to get out of serving. This time, I received a summons for a Friday in either July or August (I don't remember which), but it was for an off-Friday. So, not wanting to spend an off day serving jury duty, I took advantage of being able to postpone my date of service. Given the choice of three Mondays to report to serve, I chose 24 September. So, Monday morning I headed towards downtown.

While I'm sure the process of assigning prospective jurors to courts is more streamlined than it used to be, there's still a lot of room for improvement. I arrived a bit before 8am, about 30 minutes prior to the time I was required to show up...I wasn't sure how traffic and parking was going to be, and had to stand in line for a bit before being let into the jury room. Once I was checked in (a process that involved scanning my summons and being handed a plastic badge holder), I sat for at least 45 minutes (well, sat and read...at least I had a good book) before we even got started. After some instructions, dealing with people who wanted exemptions or postponements, swearing an oath, a few more instructions and dealing with more exemptions, jury pools began to be called. This involved the woman in charge (I know she had a title, I just don't remember what it was) calling a series of names and instructing that group of people which court they were assigned to, the location of that court and the time they were to report. The first group was assembled around 9:10 am. Some large groups were called and required to fill out questionairres and then, once those were done, they were told their court assignment and where to report (these tended to be for the criminal courts, I believe). My group was finally called around 10:30 am. We were the first group that was given a reporting time for the next day. So, we were free to go...until Tuesday. I estimate that about half of the jury pool for that day had been assigned at that point. And, with the exception of the few jurors who would be held in the reserve pool (for those requests for juries that came in later in the day), I'm pretty sure everyone after me was assigned to a court to report on Tuesday. It seems like it would be much easier to have an automated system, either telephone or on the web (or both, ideally) that would allow you to enter your juror number and it would return your court assignment and your reporting date and time. Seems like that would save a whole lot of trouble and time for everyone. But, apparently, that system hasn't become available yet...at least not here in Tarrant County.

So, I showed up this morning and the judge spoke with us at length about how serving on a jury works and the jury selection process. It was all very informative and he made it interesting as well. This is a civil court, so 12 jurors would be chosen from the pool of 31. The lawyers asked us all questions (a process known by the French term voir dire...although it was said mostly with a Texas accent this morning....I only cringed a little) and after a brief recess the jury was chosen. I can't say anything about the case until after it's over, and I'm not sure about how much I can say about the jury selection process, so I'll leave that for another time.

After our lunch break, we heard the opening arguments for the case and the testimony of the first few witnesses. So far, it's been interesting to be a part of the process. I will say that the jury box for the court room we are in was not set-up for tall people. I'm 5'5.5" and I'm very cramped in there. The chairs are fairly low and the divider that sets the jury box apart from the rest of the court room is very close. It might be better in the second row (my assigned seat is on the first row), but probably not much. I'm sure that the couple of guys are pretty cramped. Hopefully we will finish up tomorrow (the estimate comes from the judge) although a lot of that probably depends on how long our deliberations go. We'll see. I do need to get back to work as I know I have a couple of things waiting for my return. I wasn't figuring I would be away so long.
I also realized that it requires a lot of attention to attentively and actively listen all of the time. Maybe I knew this when I was taking classes regularly and it was just second nature. But to have to force myself to actively listen for hours on end (granted we do get regular breaks), I've found has left me a lot more tired than I would expect.

The other interesting and new thing that I've done this week is start a basic music theory class at church. This is something that Jacob, our director of music (or whatever his title is. He's not an ordained pastor, so I think that makes him "director".) is teaching it. It's geared towards those with little to no music background. Tonight was mostly review for me...although I'm having to dredge up information from when last I actually played music which would be elementary school, so it's been a good review. I think it's going to be an interesting class. I'm not certain what I hope to get out of it, but since it's just an eight week class, and it fits in my schedule, I thought I would give it a try. As I mentioned to the small group that was assembled for tonight's class, if you put the word theory into just about anything, I'm liable to be interested. I figure it's a good way to broaden my horizons a little bit. And, maybe it will help me learn to appreciate music more. One interesting thing that I did learn tonight was that in most hymnals that have music, the four voice parts (soprano, alto, tenor and base) are all represented. Which is why there are four sets of notes (generally two on the top or treble staff and two on the bottom or bass staff). I had never noticed that there were always four sets of notes and never connected that that would be the four standard parts. I also learned that the soprano and tenor parts (generally the two higher parts, one on each scale) are the melody while the alto and bass parts are the harmony. I had a general idea of what harmony was, but never really realized that it was written on the scales. This may be common knowledge to others, but it's new to me.

It's been an interesting week for me so far. I'm looking forward to learning more...after I get some sleep. Who would have thought that just sitting and listening all day would make me this tired?