Jury Duty

Back in the month of May I received a summons for jury duty.
Since I'm the luckiest guy in the world it wasn't for the big courts downtown with parking hassles, a long drive, and trials that might take weeks.
Mine was for the little Justice Of The Peace court two miles from my home, next to Arby's™, with 6-member juries deciding evictions, tickets and truancy cases among other small matters.
The court is in a suburban shopping center, and everyone who worked there (clerks, bailiffs, constables, judges) was refreshingly unpretentious and fun to be around.
It was a mellow experience compared to downtown.
Kind of Andy Griffith Show in a way.


After a jury got picked that didn't include me we were excused for 90 minutes.
I decided to take a walk to a local park around the corner to kill some time.
(The little pine tree photo with the wild clouds was shot in this park, BTW)

I hadn't gone far when I felt a 'splat' on top of my head.
The photo above points to where the bird was, and the 'splat' graphic indicates the approximate location of my shitty hair.

To be continued

Don't Take My Word For It

I just went out and shot the drainage ditch from the previous post again with my phone camera.
Getting the same angle and distance from memory didn't quite work out, but it's close enough.
This is what it usually looks like.

Wherever a ditch crosses a low road, barricades go up to protect the stupid from themselves.
The catchy motto is Turn Around, Don't Drown! but every year a bunch of morons try to drive through rushing water and get swept away to their deaths.
If you go around a barricade--even if successful--there's a fine of a few hundred dollars.
If you have to get rescued by the fire department, you pay the fine AND pay for the rescue.
I think sterilization should be added, to protect the quality of the gene pool.
Sadly, it's probably too late for that.

Rain Much?

After the newspapers pointed out last week that it had already rained for forty days (and/or forty nights) straight I realized that Texas has gotten all biblical on me again.
Never mind the hardcore New Testament thumpers we have, the rains have brought us back to the days of Noah.
In Austin there have been arks built, but only for same-sex critters.
Smart.

I had to cut the grass exactly three times last year because of the drought.
In 2007 I have cut it almost every week since early March, and have only gotten a break when it rained so much the sun never showed for weeks at a time which kept the insane growth in check.
It looks fucking great, but enough already!

Here's the drainage ditch that handles the runoff from our neighborhood, shot out the passenger window as I stopped my car on the bridge.
Normally ten feet wide at best and a little more during a good storm, here it's running at least 80 feet across.
Shit, we have rivers around here that don't carry a tenth of this flow most of the year.

Don't even get me started about the bugs.

Attack Of The Killer Snails

Run, Grandpa, Run! The snails are coming right for you!
Shit, it's too late.