I've decided that despite the jury duty that is consuming my life and the fact that I have little structure in my daily activities, I really need some. So I am creating artificial deadlines and goals into my day so that I can feel more structured. So far, I don't think it's working that well. But I did managed to finish a couple of loads of laundry yesterday and ALMOST empty out my inbox. Now, if I could only get to that pile of papers that I brought back from the office . . .

I meant to mention this, but I totally forgot . . .

Friday when we were listening to evidence, I started feeling sleepy, REALLY sleepy. And I don't mean the kind of sleepy that you get when you are bored; I mean the kind when you are completely exhausted. This has happened to me before, and this time I knew exactly what it was--my blood sugar had dropped. I'm not even sure why it did--I had just eaten lunch about an hour before. Nevertheless, it happened. I was getting kind-of worried because we're not allowed to eat in the courtroom. Luckily, the judge let us have a break about 15 minutes later. I had a chocolate chunk cookie in my purse and bought some milk to go with it. I started feeling better and was able to get through the rest of the afternoon without incident.

I hate being diabetic! Honestly, most of the time I have to worry about my blood sugar being too high, and then all of a sudden I have a stupid low? People who think that having diabetes just means you can't have dessert would be surprised to know things like this.

*sigh*

So, as I mentioned before, I reported for jury duty last Wednesday. After sitting around for most of the day, my number was called for a panel at around 2:35. I was asked to wait so that I could bring up our group's paperwork to the courtroom, and I did so. While I waited, I learned that nearly everyone--except one lucky guy--had been called from our jury room. Upon arriving upstairs, I saw the previous group still waiting in the hall--including the guy who had talked to me all morning and Mr. Ian Ziering.

We were asked to enter the courtroom about 20 minutes later, where we finally saw the judge, the district attorney, the defense attorney, the defendant, the bailiff, the court reporter, and the court clerk. After being sworn in, numbers were chosen for the jury box. Twenty people were chosen--and I was among them. Honestly, how come I never will any of the sweepstakes that I enter, but I seemed to "win" on this jury thing?

We had to answer several questions about ourselves, first asked by the judge and then the attorneys. It was a long process that lasted for the rest of Wednesday and all of Thursday. I found myself irritated because people kept feeling the need to answer every question by telling the judge how "important" their job was and how "inconvenient" this was to their life. The judge tried to explain to them that no one is any more important than any other and that everyone is inconvenienced by jury duty. But they felt the need to continue to waste time on it. Eventually, most of those people were let go, and we empanelled a jury at about 3:00 on Thursday afternoon. Then we spent a little over an hour choosing the 5 alternates.

These were sworn in on Friday morning, and we were finally off to the races. We heard the opening arguments and began to hear testimony from the first witness. Sometime in there we had lunch. I was asked to lunch by a couple of girls, and we walked to Starbucks in the heat. I had a sandwich and a tomato-mozzarella salad and an iced tea. Quite delicious. Oh, we also saw a guy that we THOUGHT was Steven Weber, the actor. Isn't L.A. great?

The afternoon was more of the same, until we were finally allowed to leave. *sigh*

Thoughts: 1) We are not allowed to talk about the case, but I am allowed to say that it is a murder case;
2) I missed Phil Specter walking up and down the hall sometime on Thursday. Bummer;
3) This case is expected to last 10 days, which I am NOT thrilled about;
4) People really shouldn't think that their lives are more important than others, because they're not.

I received a summons for jury duty last month and promptly forgot about it. I put the dates in my calendar and figured I'd show up when it was time. I didn't notice that the summons said I was supposed to register by phone within [some number of] days of receiving the paper. Oops. I finally figured it out and registered by phone a couple of weeks later. I was a little worried that I would get in trouble, but I didn't.

So, my instructions said to call the given toll-free number the weekend before I was scheduled to serve and to follow the instructions. I was scheduled to start this past Monday, and it was supposed to last all week. So I called last Saturday. Yay! The instructions said I did not have to report on Monday and to please call on Monday after 5pm. I called on Monday. Yay! The instructions said I did not have to report on Tuesday and to please call on Tuesday after 5pm. I called on Tuesday. So sad. The instructions said to please report to the courthouse on Wednesday at the ungodly hour of 7:45am. Yuck.

I was very unhappy that the assigned parking lot was 6 blocks away, some of the walk being uphill (and some of it downhill--which means that the old "it was uphill both ways" actually rang true here). With my sciatica, this was NOT a good way to start the morning.

I arrived at the courthouse and found the appropriate room. I've been through this a couple of times before, and the procedure is pretty much the same, so I expected a lot of sitting around and waiting. As we waited for the person to give us our original instructions, a guy sat next to me and started talking to me. He talked and talked and talked and talked. He was nice enough, but we had absolutely NOTHING in common, and I couldn't figure out why he would want to talk to someone that obviously was the complete opposite of him. I mean really, he started off the conversation with, "So, I went to OzFest last weekend." And it went downhill from there. Anyway, he talked to me for most of the morning until he put himself to sleep, and I moved to a table so I could work on my math book.

We were given a short break so I could make some phone calls and grab a snack from the snack shop. How funny was it when I walked back into the jury room and saw that Ian Ziering was sitting and talking on a phone. Apparently, he'd been called for jury duty, too! I spent the rest of the morning watching TV and working on my math book. The funniest part of the morning for me was when the local news aired a story about next season's Dancing with the Stars, and they showed a picture of Ian Ziering for about 2 seconds. I was like, hey, I'm in the same room with him!

Soon it was lunchtime, and I pretty much stayed in the same place after grabbing a couple more things from the snack bar. Those of us who were in that part of the room became pretty involved in All My Children. Stephen called me, and I was telling him about my day. Someone came by and asked if he could have the Car and Driver magazine that was on the table in front of me. I nodded yes and kept talking. He asked if it was mine, and I shook my head no and kept talking. I looked up, and it was Ian. He then sat on the couch that was essentially right next to my chair and read his magazine and watched TV. Then he moved to another part of the room where I could see him. By then, the show had changed to One Life to Live. Someone on the show had some hilarious line about "your rapist, stalker, psycho boyfriend." (It was actually funnier than that, but that was the idea.) I looked at Ian, he looked at me, and we exchanged a smile because it was such bad dialogue. After a few minutes, he sat on the couch next to me again.

Soon thereafter, he was called to a panel. They called his name, and when he left, he said, "It's like being called to the principal's office." I was called to another panel about an hour later, and when looking for the appropriate courtroom, I saw him waiting in the hall for his court to start. I was hoping that he would be there again today, but I had no such luck. Oh well.

I'll tell you more about the panel some other day when I have more time, as this post is getting rather long.

Sorry I haven't posted for a while. Things have been rough for me lately. I've been struggling with a depression that the universe seems to be supplying with things for it to feed on. I'll be posting some stuff soon.

According to this article, Pope Benedict has declared all non-Catholic Christians as defective and that they cannot attain salvation except through the Catholic church. So sad.

Let me explain that, no, I'm not Catholic. Neither am I one of those anti-Catholic Christians, though I've encountered more than one person who is. I worked in Catholic education for many years, and I've even thought about joining the Catholic church in the past. I love the liturgy and the history of the church, but it is things like this that have stopped me.

When he was known as Joseph Ratzinger, the current pope took issue with the reforms of the Vatican II Council. He apparently still has problems over 40 years later, because this week he went out of his way to try to bury those reforms.

*sigh*

For the record, Pope Benedict, Christ did not found a church when He was on earth. Christ was born and lived. Christ died, Christ rose, Christ will come again. The fact that there is a Christian church now doesn't mean that Christ founded "one true church" or any other church for that matter.

In addition, Pope Benedict, salvation does not come from the church--any church. Salvation comes from Christ. Freely.

I just got this in my email. It's the new TV commercial for www.SaveDarfur.org. Warning: It is terribly sad and disturbing. I promise that all of my posts won't be sad, but I think this is important.

Today I found out that last month one of my former students died in a motorcycle accident. It's not the first time that one of my students has died, but it really never gets any easier.

John Samuel was in my geometry class, probably around 1999. He was a good student who worked hard. He was competitive about his grades, which was sometimes annoying but also helped him get the grades he wanted in my class. I remember him hanging around my classroom after class to talk to me, not just about school but about other things as well.

After high school John eventually ended up at UCLA. He graduated on June 17th of this year. Hours later, in the early morning hours, his motorcycle went over an embankment on the 405 freeway. John sustained fatal injuries in the accident.

I hadn't seen John at all since we both left Alemany. I was shocked and sad to hear of his death. Please join me in praying for his family and friends.

Yesterday I attended a delightful baby shower for my cousin Janet. It was hosted by her sisters Joy and Liza at the Chado Tea Room in Pasadena. It was a very nice time. I didn't get very good pictures, so I hope I get some from Joy and/or Liza and/or Doreen (hint, hint). The place is very nice, not terribly big, and off the beaten path while still being in the heart of Old Town. The food was absolutely delicious. We had four different kinds of sandwiches, scones with marmalade and cream with strawberries, two kinds of cake, and cookies. YUM YUM!!! Oh, and the tea was delicious as well. The tea menu is about 40 pages long--no kidding. I chose a nice fruity tea--iced, because it is beastly hot in L.A. these days. There were games (I won both, but I tried to play it off--really, you oughtn't ask me to play word games) and gifts, of course. But the best part was the company. Let's see . . . starting at my right there were . . . Joan, Jennifer, Judy, Michelle, Tracy, Elaine, Janet, Liza, Doreen, Katherine, Mollie, and Joy. It was really a very nice time. Can't wait until the next party!

!

Stephen, Chris, and I went to see Tranformers on July 4th. First of all, I don't know why we always end up going to see movies on their opening day or their opening weekend. Chris and I both hate the lines and the crowds. Besides, it's been terribly, terribly hot in L.A. for the past week or more, and we practically melted in the heat--despite the Ruby's milkshakes we bought beforehand.

The movie? I'll give it a D-. The special effects were the only thing that kept it from an F. I'll admit that I didn't watch this cartoon when it was on TV. But that was a cartoon, and this is a big-budget movie. Doesn't that mean that you are supposed to spend money on more than just the special effects? You know, things like a story line, good acting, and palatable dialogue? Honestly, this was a very, very bad movie that is going to make a ton of money despite itself. That was 3 hours of my life I'll never get back. Don't make the same mistake.

Welcome to my new blog! I decided that Yahoo 360 didn't give me enough control over things, so I decided switched over here. I hope I get some readers. I'd hate to be all alone out here in cyberspace.

I thought I'd start off by explaining where the name of my blog comes from. It's one of my favorite songs from the musical Dreamgirls--the show, not the movie. (They actually didn't use the song in the movie.)

Some words of explanation, no, I'm not having an affair with a married man. I just really like the line that I used above: "Even though my man throws confetti in my face, it still don't make it no party." I won't lie and tell you that my life is bad, but some days--yeah--I'm still waiting for my party.

Yes I knew you were married when I met you
Told myself "That's the way it's got to be!"
But for all these years, the best of my life,
My life has become a catastrophe

Sitting here waiting on a man who ain't comin'
Ain't no party, no, no, no
I'm sittin' there wishin' I had some ambition
To get me through; there wasn't always you

Don't I give you good lovin', sweet daddy
Anytime she let you slip away?
You're gonna tell her now that you love me
And you're gonna tell her today

Sitting here waiting on a man who ain't comin'
Ain't no party, no, no, no
I'm sittin' there wishin' I had some ambition
To get me through, but it wasn't always you

Where's my party?
Where is my party?
Where's the champagne?
Where's the flowers?
I'm all dressed up in my party dress
And I've been sittin' here for hours
This ain't no party
No, no, no, no, it ain't no party, baby

Now, it's been seven years, and it don't take a smarty
To realize that even though my man throws confetti in my face
It still don't make it no party

This ain't no party
It ain't no party, baby

My mama wants to know when you gonna marry me

If you want me in your life you better make me your wife

My daddy's comin' to town I can't be messin' around