Thursday, October 18, 2007

Jury Duty and Fixing the Frame

Yes, I got Jury Duty... on Monday, I had to report so I decided to bring my Lorna's Lace free and easy shawl to work on - I have my handy dandy chart and it's really easy to work on... so I knitted away for about 4 minutes in the jury pool (a collection of a few hundred people who had been called to report that day) before I was called to be part of a jury veneer. (the veneer is the group of 50 people that are gathered for jury selection in a case)... the first selection from our group was brought up and they were questioned for hours... this was going to be a 12 day case... eek.

Then, we broke for lunch - and I worked on my shawl a little more, after eating something strange that was supposed to be bbq chicken and rice from a sushi place..
Walking back from lunch, I spent a moment or two at the museum of contemporary art's gift shop, then took a few photos of now famous Disney Hall (which is where I parked!) it's an awesome building -

once we got back, and defense had done their cross-questioning, a total of 7 people were thanked and excused from that group of people - which meant 7 more people had to be pulled from the remaining group and more questions would need to be asked. I was one of the 7 selected. The plantiff's lawyers asked lots of questions, but we weren't able to be questioned by defense so they asked us to return again on Tuesday at 10AM - which we did...
When we got to the courtroom the next day, at 10AM, we were brought into the courtroom, quickly thanked for performing our civic duty, and everyone was excused. We don't know what happened exactly, but most of us believe that they decided to start over with jury selection for one reason or another. All in all, I think the whole experience was interesting, and I like the idea of serving on a jury - and if it weren't so financially burdening, I believe most people would be proud to be part of this system. Unfortunately, because our employers aren't forced to pay for days missed resulting from jury duty, and because we are legally bound to perform this "civic duty", it seems to make people not want to take part...
Something else that happened this weekend - I worked on repairing the antique frame that came with the print that was destroyed - it's all part of a process I'm attempting to save the piece... here's the frame as I received it:

lots of the paint and moulding has chipped off... I went to the crafts store and bought some paints - found a gold almost identical, and some browns and umbers that mixed well to conceal the parts that are missing. I worked on this with a tiny brush for about 45 minutes or so - and I'm really pleased with the result!



It's not perfect by any means - but it does look a lot more "together" now - and will be beautiful when it's back up on the wall. The next step is to get the print put back in it... maybe I'll get to do that this weekend...

4 comments:

Eric & Tony said...

I would love to be on a Jury. Too bad OK laws prohibit me from ever being a juror.

Great work with the frame.

And what is with the yarn theiving grannies?

Renting babies? OMG!! lol.

I'm sure that Tony and I will probably visit LA before ya'll ever visit Oklahoma. I'll make sure to bring some bread.

Eric

Anonymous said...

Nice job on the frame.

I've never been called for jury duty. After reading Helter Skelter I don't think I ever want to be called.

I guess if you sit and knit and read from a chart, the perception might be that you're not really paying attention.

loopykd said...

I have always wanted to be called for jury duty and I never had been until I was about 40. Then I was sole daytime caretaker for a 5 year old! Go figure! I couldn't go. Maybe I'll get called when she is in college! Ha!

Josiane said...

I've been called for jury duty once, and I had to go every time a new case would open during a four month period (if I remember well), which meant about four times. The first times, I remained in the jury pool; I have been called to be part of the jury veneer only the last time. The judge only had enough time to ask me a few identification questions before one of the lawyers quickly used one of the peremptory challenge he had left to reject me. It was quite funny to see how I obviously didn't fit in the ideal juror profile he had in mind!