Jury Duty

I had it.

That's the news! Bye!

Just kidding. I totally had Jury Duty today. Everyone is always griping and trying to get out of it, so maybe I'm missing something. I had a total blast!!

It was a bummer to have to get the children up and ready so early and shovel them off on someone else, plus it was a bummer to have to drive through the construction site at Parker and Arapahoe Roads. That was the worst part of the whole thing, besides the intense coffee stench in the Jury Waiting Room. I deliberately didn't take anything extra into the courthouse, so I breezed through security. I thought it was funny that knitting needles and crochet hooks are specifically forbidden, but then they freely hand out pens, which can not only poke people, but can also give you an accidental tatto if you get poked just so. Plus, like I'm going to commit "A Time to Kill" by poking someone to death with a tiny knitting needle 2 mm in circumference, right there in the courthouse with all those officers of the peace around. I brought a book instead of knitting.

It's all really well labeled for Jurors. You just go in the line, which moves quickly. The employees are way nicer than the DMV people. After check-in, you just wait until your name is called. There were six jury trials today, with 65 potential jurors for each, so there was a large crowd of us. They asked us several times to scootch in and let the late-comers have the empty seats, but my main point is, a) I have crowd-a-phobia, so there's no way I'm deliberately scrunching right up next to a total stranger, and b) the latecomers can come right into the aisle and sit in the empty chairs if they want to sit down so bad. Then it was just a bunch of reading and waiting. I closed my book every time they would call jurors for a trial; my name was finally called for the fourth trial, the civil trial. The others were criminal.

The part that was really cool was when we went up to the courtroom. I was juror #9 for our trial and they seat you by number, so I was in the second row in the jury box. I got a big comfy chair. I expected the courtroom to be sterile, modern, and ugly, but there was lots of wood paneling and it was fairly respectable. Plus on our way up, I made myself laugh by doing that "gun-gungggg" noise from Law and Order. There were people "Yessir-ing" the judge. The case turned out to be about two people suing each other about a commercial property mortgage foreclosure. I was so proud of myself, because when they read the complaints back and forth, I was unable to come to a snap judgement about who was right and who was wrong. I was ready to make a fair and impartial decision based on the prepoderance of evidence.

They only needed 6 jurors, though. Only the popular potential jurors got picked...so you can guess why I'm at home blogging about this now. I stopped for lunch in the courthouse cafeteria because, When am I ever going to be in there again? They start the trial right then, the instant they release all the unnecessary extra jurors. They took a lunch break pretty soon after that; I heard one of the defendants and his lawyer talking behind me on my way out to the parking lot. He was saying how there were already too many theatrics from the other counsel and how the judge seemed tired of it already. I agreed, actually. The other lawyer was hamming it up just in juror selection, trying to influence us to his point of view.

Anyway, I'll gladly serve on a jury in the future. It was a cool experience and everyone should stop grousing about it and be thankful they live in a country where you can get a fair trial, for cryin' out loud in the night!

Friday Adventure Day

Well, this last Friday we had a big adventure day. We didn't have one big adventure, but we had constant adventures for the whole big day.

First, I woke the children up "early" and we went to the museum first thing. We bought a membership last month: we tried to go to the zoo and buy a membership but the parking lot was so packed we went to the museum instead. So Friday, we used our membership to get in free and we also used it to get reduced-price tickets to the planetarium show. We usually go in the Space Odyssey exhibit first, but for some reason it was all packed, so we went in Gems and Minerals first. When we came out of Gems and Minerals to go to our planetarium show, I realized why Space Odyssey was so packed: the dang historical last space shuttle launch. We were right there, and they had a whole big thing with tv cameras and special exhibits and tv crews, and we were next door in Gems and Minerals. DANG IT!!! Oh well.

Anyway, we wandered onto the roof, where we discovered they had a sun telescope set up. We each took a turn looking in and saw sunspots AND solar flares. The solar flares were SUPER COOL.

When we returned home, super tired, from that, Seth was also arriving home from his half-day continuing education CPA class. He took the afternoon off and we all went to the town pool. They give the children a free pass at the end of swim lessons, that's good for one adult and one child to swim so we used those. The thing was, just as we left our house, it was sunny. Half-way to the pool, the sky was dark and lightning was flashing. I thought we'd have to ditch our plans, but instead genius Seth takes us to the indoor town pool. Genius!

I actually don't like swimming that much, plus I'm still all baby-fat, so I wasn't having a very fun time until I took a spin on the twisty waterslide. It is AWESOME!! I didn't do any other swimming; I just went around and around, time after time on the water slide.

Then when we got home from that, Eric and Jules were invited to sleep over at the cousins' house. We took them over there, and the three little boys were all so tuckered out from our big day that they fell asleep instantly and Seth and I had a lovely quiet date night.

I HAD A BABY!

This is old news for some of you. After a threatened miscarriage, a hard recovery from cerclage surgery, and many difficult months trying to be a mother to four children while physically disabled by pregnancy, our son was finally born.

Mark Bryant Leech came on May 10th, at 2:11 pm, after 10 hours of weird labor. I think if I had walked around and been upright for longer, labor wouldn't have been so weird. But I test positive for group B strep and needed IV antibiotics for the baby before delivery, so I went in as early as possible to the hospital. Anyway, baby Mark threatened to need a c-section with his little reduced heart rate, but we ended up not needing one, THANK GOODNESS.

I recovered quickly from the delivery and Mark started out as an absolute living doll of a baby. He's a little gassy now, but he's still pretty dang good.

I Am Testing Blogger's "Enter" Ability

Here is a test. I want to see why this thing is eliminating all my hard returns. Why would it do stupid things to the spacing in my last two posts that mattered? What other options do I have for starting new paragraphs, other than hard returns using the enter key? Test. Test. Test.

Book Review: The Celestine Prophecy

Well, I picked up this book because I had the vague notion that I'd heard the title before, possibly in connection with The Da Vinci Code. I checked it out from the library and had to force myself to finish reading it. Here are the things that astounded me about this book: 1) It was written by someone who is a native English-speaker. The writing is really not good. Here is a sample: "...then entered my room and held my stomach until I went to sleep." Uhhhh...what? And another: "From behind a group of trees, another man walked out to greet the vehicle. I couldn't believe my sight. It was Dobson!" It's hard, when reading prose this terrible; it makes it so I can't believe my sight! I have to hold my stomach until I go to sleep! 2) The author is serious. This book was about as transparent a plea for impossible, idealistic social change as I have ever seen, and I've read Walden Two and The Jungle. So, yeah. I just started laughing at the end when he was having the characters say things about a wonderful future for humankind without money and without full-time jobs. The sad part was the form at the end of the book where you could write in and sign up for the newsletter. He'll send you an "audio tape based on his interpretation of an individual's moon sign and sun sign." It'll help you "discover your most inspired, spiritual mission." Don't do it! Don't send in your money! It's not for realsies! Anyway, I finished this book, I can't recommend it for anyone who likes reading or books or realistic outlooks for humankind. But if you want to read it, I can't stop you. PS It really bothered me that in this professionally published book, the typeface kept changing at random. Just hit select all and pick a font!

Lame

Ok, so I am SUPER ANNOYED at blogger right now for totally hosing the spacing on my big spring break post. I'm not going to post anything at all if it turns it into a big stupid unreadable mess everytime. Sorry you all have to suffer, but if I can't read it and I already know every word it says, that's unreasonable.

Good Big Wib News

Maybe not very exciting for everyone else, but SUPER EXCITING for me: my in-laws took the three little kids home with them this last Monday and they're staying for this week of spring break. Here's the recap: Monday: Seth took Eric to his Gifted/Spring Break program, but after Grandma and Grandpa left with the children, I went to get him. After I ate a cup of ice cream and watched a show, that is. Anyway, we stopped on our way home for lunch from Good Times, then came home and ate it in front of X-Men. Then we had a LATE dinner of super-delicioso baked lemon-chicken and brown basmati rice, just sitting down to eat as Seth walked in at 8: something. Tuesday: I took Eric to his "class" then stopped to borrow the wet/dry vac from my Bro-in-law at Baskin Robbins. Seems our water heater overflowed in the night but the floor drain was good-n-clogged. Then when I picked up Eric we stopped at Baskin Robbins again for ice cream treats. We also brought home the Super Plumbing Snake my bro keeps at the store for cleaning waffle cones out of his drains. That's still in the back of the van, though, since I can't lift it and Seth is home late every night. After our ice cream lunch, Eric went to play at his friend Trevor's and he stayed there while I went to the 6:30 meeting about saving our local library. It's going to be a pretty big deal, with a General Improvement District and PAC and everything. I finally picked Eric up just after 8, and when I got a little quesadillas-n-tomato soup dinner ready, Seth walked in, just in time. Wednesday: I dropped Eric at this class, then went straight to my endocrinologist appointment. Everything checks out, if you were curious. I picked up Eric and we went straight to Village Inn for lunch and Free Pie Wednesday. My lunch was the "VIB" with country potatoes, two egg omelet with cheese, strawberry crepe, and french toasts. It was SO DELICIOUS. And I finished the entire piece of triple-berry pie. We were full from lunch at dinner-time, but still followed through with our plan to get a Little Caesars hot'n ready and take it to Seth's office to have dinner with him. That was fun. Thursday: I dropped Eric and then went straight to the Temple. It's stake temple day, but I knew I wasn't going to make it for the evening sessions. It was going to have to be first thing or nothing. So that was good and I made it back in plenty of time to go to the potty before picking up Eric from his class. We sat around all afternoon, "partying," by which I mean we watched tv shows, drank soda, Eric played the computer, and after our lemon-chicken-alfredo dinner, we had brownie sundaes. Mostly I did a lot of knitting on the latest pair of socks I'm making. So that's my spring break so far. I realized yesterday, that I'm doing nearly as much driving around and as many errands as usual, but I don't have to buckle anyone in or tie any little shoes or change anyone's pants (besides my own, which at this point is certainly a chore). That's the main bonus for me: not getting tuckered out chasing little people around every second.

Not Much Info on the Internets

Here's the thing: I don't notice very many changes when I have my thyroid dose changed. I had my dose adjusted a couple months ago because of the pregnancy. I actually noticed a couple things different, so that was new for me.

Lately I've made a couple lovely new jewelry items. I will make a lovely necklace and then put it on and wear it until I make a new one. I make stuff for myself out of sterling silver mostly. I made a necklace and wore it for maybe a week or 10 days and then noticed that half of it was BLACK with tarnish. Then I made another and wore it for several days and noticed that half of this new one was also BLACK with tarnish. I have been wearing sterling silver for years with only normal tarnish levels, and in fact have noticed that wearing stuff usually keeps it from getting all black with tarnish, because it's rubbing on your shirt or whatever. So I made another necklace and wore it for maybe a week and was unaccountably horrified when I found that half of it was BLACK with tarnish.

I just did a search online and there is just barely more than an iota of information on this. In fact the only real reference I found to any of this was a lady asking on a forum why her sterling necklaces were suddenly turning terribly black with tarnish. She mentioned that she had had her thyroid dose raised and had had a miscarriage the previous year. I have been pregnant six times, including right this second, so connecting these dots tells me it's the thyroid hormone and not the pregnancy or miscarriage.

Isn't this weird? All of a sudden all my silver necklaces are turning pitch black around the back of the neck, to the point where I gasp when I discover it. I can't find any science to back this up, but I have to conclude that my higher thyroid dose has combined with some inherent acidity in my skin or something and produced really high silver-tarnishing powers.

On a possibly unrelated note, I have a skin acidity that corrodes the nickel plating off of flutes and knitting needles... Related? or Unrelated? You be the judge!

Unspecified Leukodystrophy

My nephew and niece, Bryce and Annalise, have been "diagnosed" with unspecified leukodystrophy. They are basically losing their muscle control, after completely normal early development. Their mom and a friend have set up a blog to keep people updated on the situation and give people a chance to help with the next adventure: genetic sequencing.

Check out the blog and donate if you're able. These are awesome, sweet little kids!!!

www.bryceannalisesjourney.blogspot.com

Big Opportunity

Bryce is my nephew. He was a chubby, normal baby, and then his muscles started to go stiff. Since then, it has been non-stop tests, doctors, procedures and therapy and he's still the happiest little fellow ever. His "diagnosis" is more of a non-diagnosis, since doctors are unable to say what is really going on, only eliminate known illnesses.

If you know anyone that lives in Modesto, or anywhere close enough to drive there, please encourage them to attend this concert.

Helping Bryce will be worth the effort of attending the concert. My children pray for Bryce and his family every night. Plus, Ragtime music! What's not to love?!!!

I Made Soup on a Cold, Cold Day

I got a call from Eric at school asking if I would come and pick them up when school ended, because it was so cold. Also that school was canceled for "tomorrow". That's today. I did not pick up the children, rather telling him that they could run home more quickly than I could drive over and wait in a stupid line of mini-vans to pick them up, and that I would have hot chocolate and cookies waiting. That's what we did. I guess the cold really makes you want to bake and cook stuff. Because then, for dinner, I decided to make soup and buns.

I usually make a creamy potato soup and that's pretty good, but I was picturing a delightful hot broth instead, but still with potatoes. So I went online and found a recipe for what I'm calling "Irish Potato Soup." I made "focaccia" buns, that is, buns made in muffin tins with dough intended for focaccia bread. The soup indeed featured a delightful hot broth, and I consider the whole dinner a success. Here's a link to the recipe:


www.irelandseye.com/aarticles/culture/recipes/cooking/tatosoup.shtm

My stinkin' keystrokes won't work for copying and pasting right now so I'm a little frustrated. I hope that link works. Anyway, here's the recipe that I made:

6 or 7 medium potatoes
2 medium onions (I used 1/4 c. dried minced onion)
1 T. butter
6 cups "stock" (I used chicken broth/stock left and frozen from cooking chickens)
parsley
salt and pepper (I used 2 t. salt and 1/2 t. pepper)

Peel and dice taters, chop onions. Melt butter and gently cook onion and taters in covered saucepan until soft but not colored. (I tried to do this but the onions started burning, so I added about 1/2 cup of water and cooked them with the lid on until I needed to add the broth for time reasons...) Add liquid, adjust seasoning to taste, seive if desired, serve in bowls garnished with parsley. I did not seive.

That's my news: delicious and not-too-bad-for-you potater soup with warming broth. Even Seth liked it and he's a broth-strainer. I made sure to tell him the broth was a main part of it. Anyway, good times!

Recent News of Wib

Well, we had Christmas and New Years. Not really news. Everyone asks how I'm doing lately, so here's the fun update.

I was feeling pretty good through the whole Christmas break from school. Then last Tuesday I went to the endocrinologist and had my thyroid dosage changed. You need more when you're pregnant. So I started taking the higher dose the next day and within about 36 hours, morning sickness had returned! So, hooray! It is kind of good, though, because this is sort of the first time since my big cancer-ectomy that I've actually noticed any difference due to thyroid hormone. A couple other things changed as well, one of which is unmentionable here but greatly appreciated, and one of which will take longer to fix because it has to do with dry skin.

Anyway, that's the news of WIB.

Nice Try, Boneheads

There's a news item in the paper this morning, about a "Twain scholar" who is "working with NewSouth Books in Alabama to publish a combined volume" of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. The catch is that they're replacing the so-called "N-word" with the word "slave" in this edition. The hope is "not to offend readers."

Except that you just did.

You're a scholar? I think this is what is called "Revisionist Scholarship." You think you're better at writing dialogue characteristic of the time frame of the novel? You think you can eliminate ugly race relations from history by replacing a single word with another, far less appropriate word? Really?! You think you can somehow make this literature better? Better than Mark Twain, one of America's most beloved, revered, and respected authors? Really?! You think you can maintain the feel of the book without the at-the-time-extremely commonplace slang that made it great to begin with? Really?!

And FYI, "Twain Scholar," I hear this word several times a day walking past my house to high school, so you'll have to eliminate racist black high schoolers if you really want to change the history of this word. Maybe you should start a campaign to teach them to call each other "F#%$in' Slave." There. That would fix it.

I love Mark Twain. I love the readability of his novels and short stories. I love that they're about every-day people, and the dialogue and slang, although debated by wannabe scholars, are a good part of what makes these books great literature.