Jury duty was surprisingly not terrible.
I had to get a slightly earlier train this morning than usual, and to Brooklyn instead of to Manhattan, but that wasn’t too difficult. True, I’ve only ever been to Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn once before, and that was well over a year ago, and by mistake. But I didn’t get too lost, mostly because I asked someone in a ticket booth for directions, and I wound up at the courthouse sometime after 8 o’clock. (I couldn’t take my cell phone in with me, so I didn’t bring it at all, and it’s the only working watch I own.)
I went upstairs to the jury assembly room, checked in and grabbed a seat, and read for a little while — though for much less of a little while than I’d been expecting. We had a short information session about the whole selection process and about the federal court, some questions and answers, and before long they started calling people to go upstairs.
I was in the first group. We went upstairs to the thirteenth floor, all twenty or thirty of us, where the judge, his clerk, and the US attorney were waiting. They were selecting replacements for the grand jury. And, you know, under those circumstances, had I been selected, it might not have been so terrible. It’s one day a week, unlike a trial jury; and because these were replacement spots, filling in for jurors who, for whatever reason, couldn’t finish their service, it was only scheduled to run until the end of January. (Normally, while still only one day a week, members of a grand jury can meet for several months, or even a year.)
But I wasn’t selected. After a brief interview with ten people, they’d filled all the spots they needed to, and the rest of us were dismissed. We went back downstairs, got the paperwork saying we’d been there for the day, and then were free to go. I don’t know exactly what time I left — again, no wristwatch, no cell phone — but I quickly caught the subway back to Atlantic Terminal, then another quick LIRR train to Jamaica, and from there the 11:55 back home. So it was less than half a day, whatever it was.
I’m still on telephone standby for the next two weeks, which means I have to call each evening after 5 to see if they want me back in. But this morning they said that was unlikely, given the relatively small number of cases they had to fill, and I’m not required to be there tomorrow.
That doesn’t mean I’ll be in the office tomorrow, though, since it is Tuesday. And Wednesday, I have a number of campus visits scheduled at Hofstra, so I won’t be back into Manhattan until Thursday. But I actually managed to get some work done this afternoon, which was a pleasant — well, pleasant-ish — surprise.
And then this evening, kind of on a whim, I decided to watch Moonraker, Roger Moore’s fourth outing as James Bond. It’s not exactly what I’d call good, but it’s reasonably entertaining as ridiculous camp. (It might be tough to appreciate if approached at any other level.) Like jury duty, it wasn’t nearly as painful as I had been expecting.
Oh, and meanwhile it was like 60 to 70 degrees and sunny today. I don’t know what’s up with that.