The Week from Hell

Sorry for the absence of blogging. The title of this post says it all. The past seven days have been absolutely godawful; the worst stretch I can remember in at least two years. That doesn't include jury duty next week, when I'm also expected to come up with a ton of output in my day job. And leave us not forget my dad's weekend visit, which was scheduled to begin this Friday. This is becoming a "perfect storm" scenario all too quickly.

Further bulletins as they happen, but they'll be brief, and few and far in-between until after Christmas at the earliest.

Eerily enough, Jim Geraghty is pulling jury duty today. When I saw that, I got a minor case of the creeps....

UPDATE: My father has kicked back his visit for a week, so that gives me all of Friday to work with. OTOH, I'll probably be stuck in jury duty the following Friday and unable to pick him up at the bus station.

One disaster at a time, I guess.

UPDATE II: The storm appears to be starting to abate a little. By next week some figurative shafts of sunlight could even be knifing through the gloom.

Or would be if not for this damned jury duty. That's been pushed back a day to Tuesday, pending further rescheduling. From what I've read, if assigned to a trial jury service generally lasts three to five days. Reporting is no guarantee of actual selection, and hopefully I'd be dismissed. But if I was assigned on Tuesday, that would possibly, but not assuredly, conflict with my father's visit, since he's coming by bus and needs somebody to pick him up at the station.

What to do? Perhaps my wife could get time off of work to go retrieve him, but I wouldn't know the status of my availability until the day before, and even a week in advance is short notice for her (at least when you're not in management). To say nothing of leaving dear old Dad hanging, or calling him the night before and telling him to postpone (or, more likely, cancel) a trip that has already been deferred once already.

OTOH, not reporting until the second week has its own pitfalls. It says right there on the back of my jury summons that "If you are selected as a juror, you must complete the trial, even if it extends beyond your two week term." That would put me into year-end closing, which I can't pawn off on my clerk, which would mean spending all day at the federal courthouse and then dashing to the office and working long into the night. Can you say "Nightmare, the Sequel"?

The brochure that accompanied my jury summons says, "Serving as a juror is a fundamental obligation we all share as citizens of the United States." And, in and of itself, I have no "fundamental" problem with it. I've had several months-long stretches of, shall we say, "free time" in which jury service would have been an at least mildly interesting diversion.

But now - and I realize I'm hardly making an original observation - it's just a federal pain in the ass.

UPDATE III: Now I'm rescheduled for Wednesday. I'm beginning to see a pattern emerging here.

Well, you know what they say - "Once is a fluke, twice is a coincidence, thrice is a trend."

Today was a much better day, BTW. Looks like the aforementioned "shafts of sunlight" are the beginning of a morale high-pressure system.

And just in time for Christmas, too.

UPDATE IV: Just took a look at this week's docket for all the federal judges where I'm being summoned for jury service. And there it is: tomorrow, 9AM, jury selection and trial for Gambini v. Total Renal Care. If I'm going to be snagged this week, that's when it'll be.

Interestingly, a Google search for "Total Renal Care" comes up with a company that had some SEC problems several years ago and appears to have gone tits-up, judging by how their domain name is now available.

That's all the more I really want to find out about them or this particular case. I'll learn the disposition of that desire in a little over four hours.

UPDATE V: Yep, they got the net over me. Now to see if they can reel me in.

Now I understand why fish flop around so much.

FINAL UPDATE: The way to flop out of jury service on a tort case is to tell the counsel for the plaintiff that you think punitive damages suck. When s/he asks you about it, of course. When he did, and I gave my honest answer, I figured that would clinch it for me. But I was still sweating it out when the jury was announced. I hadn't been that on-the-edge-of-my-seat since Election Day.

So, all's well that ends well. And so long as I'm summoned to jury selection for tort cases, I have a foolproof way of escape.

So, of course, wait two years and watch as I get netted again and thrown into a criminal trial. But that's a week-long blog entry for another day.