Law and Order: V-A-L

And now, to complete our hat trick, pay off our trifecta, elaborate on the charmed third time...I shall share with you the HYPE that comes after BREAD and DEPTH in this sonnet to my Saturday:

How do I write thee? Let me count the ways.
I write thee for the depth and bread and hype
My prose can reach, when I begin to type
About events in ordinary days.

There's no way to ease into it, really. So let's go there:

VAL RECEIVED A SUMMONS TO APPEAR IN COURT!

Now some of you may assume it has something to do with her not paying her telephone and electric bills if she doesn't receive them because they have been stolen out of EmBee, her trusty John-Deere-green thick metal pipe mailbox hammered into a long wooden shelf at mailbox row. Or something to do with her not paying (one of) her car insurance bill(s) because it was not in its regular long billish envelope, but tacked onto the bottom of her liability and loss limits statement that comes with the little proof-of-insurance cards that tear off at the perforation. Seriously. Who sends out proof of insurance before you've paid the insurance? Or that she was apprehended loading up her car with empty boxes from Save A Lot. Or that Hick has finally served her with papers. Please. As if Hick would serve anything to Val! All of you assumers have constructed donkeys out of your own selves and moi. You're not even close.

I HAVE BEEN SELECTED FOR JURY DUTY!

Yes, during my very last year of gainful employment, my last year of teaching before I hang up the ol' dry-erase marker, I will be subject to absence due to jury duty! You know what that means! It will be even harder to use up some of my 100 sick days/personal leave days. Jury days don't count. AND the last time I had jury duty, the school district didn't even take my jury pay! That's an extra $18 per day in Val's pocket. Plus another $2.52 in mileage!

My term runs from September 1 to December 31. With the luck of Val, her presence at trial will be required during Christmas vacation, when Genius is home from college, and celebrating his 21st birthday, for which we have planned a casino excursion. Something tells me that I will not be excused from jury duty for a casino visit. Maybe my physician will meet me there, and I can say I have a appointment with my doctor.

I served on the jury before, you know. I was called perhaps four times. During three of them, I was excused, because the lawyer Hick and I have used for years was trying the case. I did not feel that I could be impartial, you see. I was perfectly willing to serve. Can you believe the other lawyer excluded me from that jury pool? I was really broken up about it, seeing as I had to leave and spend the rest of the day not sitting in the courthouse, and not working. Woe was me.

On a side note, I know exactly where I was the morning that news of the Taum Sauk Reservoir collapse trickled in. Sitting in the courthouse waiting for jury selection. It kind of made my predicament insignificant. Don't you worry about Missouri's hydroelectric power, though. Taum Sauk has been rebuilt. If something like that happens again while I'm in the courtroom, I will ask to be excused if I'm called a third time.

I hope I get a more interesting case than Eminent Domain this time.