"black or yellow or brown or normal"

According to the comments, that one was a cracked.com parody.

Ceiling still leaking. Seems likely that it's from the shower, rather than the roof. I am not particularly calm about this.

Home from the hospital WITH the DH. They were worried it was a floating clot and would have needed a filter to keep it from migrating to his lungs. They looked at it with sooper seekrit machines, but it turns out it is a stay-put kind of clot, so all is well. They upped his Coumadin and he goes back to the doc on Friday, as he will be doing on a regular basis for the next few months. Whew!

Oh, thank goodness, Scrappy. Will continue to carry you guys in my thoughts.

Good news, Scrappy.

Things I learned today: you can get lost in the old post office turned courthouse. It's a fucking maze. Classic, but a maze.

Their elevators are slower than... I don't know what. I waited 10 minutes for one. I was only on the fifth floor. We weren't allowed to use the stairs.

If you hear that the plaintiff is represented by the Peter Angelos firm, settle in for a loooooong wait.

Don't forget your brother is in the medical field. Specifically, cancer research. Remembering that long after the question is asked= annoyed judge. And lots of whispering attorneys.

There are people too stupid to breathe. Like the one who came in from lunch and made a call in open court. Judges take your cell phones.

If you've got a reason a case this long would be a hardship, make the argument. Even if it yields confused looks from the judge and attorneys because your lingo is not their lingo. Namedropping probably doesn't make a difference. Use of the expression "drop dead date" gets a snicker from the hot attorney, even though he too looks confused by "hardware architecture" and even Linux. The judge won't cut you any slack, but she didn't to the homeschooling mother of 8, either. Who frankly, looked about to cry. But maybe the attorneys wrinkled their noses a bit.

I wish judges wouldn't try to be funny. Friendly is ok.

I really want to know what the juror's issue was that meant she was unsuited to serve that cracked the whole bench up in rueful sympathy, and she was sent off with an audible "Oh honey, I'm sorry, that is embarrassing. I'm sorry you had to share that with us." Young woman, too.

Half the 100ish jurors stood when asked if they'd been a primary caregiver for a terminal immediate relative. That was sobering.

More women than men in the Baltimore jury pool.

Quiet room still smells funny.

Jury commissioner is a bad ass. I like her.

Good news, Scrappy! Now you can tell him he's on rat poison! My neighbor was on the same, and there were all sorts of bad jokes I shared with his wife about going down to Home Despot... Made even funnier by the fact she accidentally gave him double doses of his antinausea and none of his painkillers after the surgery that caused all this.

Good news, Scrappy!

Sara, you're really lucky not to be on an asbestos trial. My friend was on one that took months and was apparently both boring and horrible. Yikes.

On the accidental racism front, when I was working at the day care center, one time I had to deal with a kid who didn't get black and white as descriptions of skin colors, and described himself as "plain." Yeah, no, kid. Sorry. I know it doesn't make sense when you're just learning colors, but still.

Glad for good news, Scrappy.

I am emphatically not displeased to not be on that jury. And I've almost finished a Julia Alvarez, which was surreal to read in court (Saving the World- about vaccine campaigns and do-gooders. I always manage to pick'em.)