Jury Duty is NOT Fun

So Jury Duty was a colossal pain in the ass last week. Got picked for a jury after spending 6 hours in the jury pool watching "The Price is Right" and "Home Improvement". And if being trapped in a room full of coughing and sneezing strangers, with a vending machine that only sells Pop Tarts, Tim Allen on 14 different TV screens and a ban on cell phones and Blackberrys doesn't make you want to find someone - ANYONE - and convict them of a serious crime, well...then you're a better person than me.

Also - maybe I was just raised in an old-fashioned household, but I was under the impression you should be dressing up to go to court. Or at least - not dressing like you just finished riding the rails and are looking for your next can of beans. Seriously - there were women in see-through shirts and stripper heels, dudes in raggedy old sweatshirts and jeans with holes in them...it was so bizarre. It was like "Hee Haw" met "Pimps Up, Hos Down" and together they beat the crap out of "Law & Order". Did that make any sense? I don't care if it did, because it just put the hilarious image of 2 TVs with legs kicking a 3rd TV with legs who is huddled on the ground in the fetal position into my head. That can't happen! That's absurd!!

Apple Jacks is a subpar cereal, everyone. Don't be fooled by how delicious the first 2 or 3 bites are. Eventually you will be eating a bowl of soggy circles, and every now and then you'll bite down on one that is hard as cement for no discernible reason and it will ruin your whole morning.

My recent Apple Jacks purchase was borne of necessity rather than preference. I turned down the cereal aisle at my local grocery store and saw that two gentlemen were there having an argument. Which didn't bother me at first, but then guy #1 tells guy #2 that he DOES love him, and that he'll tell them when he's good and ready, and guy #2 looks like he's going to cry. This is when I realize that I am intruding on an extremely personal and important conversation and I'm absolutely mortified. I didn't want to just turn on my heel and leave, so I feigned interest in the Count Chocula for 10 more seconds and then grabbed the first box I could reach. Apple Jacks. Dammit.

Come to think of it - that's eerily similar to how I ended up with half of my shoes and my copy of "Dude, Where's My Car?".

Blogging is Hard

Except not at all. I'm just lazy. I have jury duty tomorrow - that will inevitably result in hilarity I can report on....right? Riiiiight. So tune in again on Wednesday.

And in the meantime, enjoy this:

Liviiiiing Siiingle (oooh in a 90s kind of world, I'm glad I got my girls!....)

As I wrote about in a previous blog, sometimes it's less than spectacular living alone. Not often, mind you - but sometimes. Like when you're smack in the middle of a "Designing Women" marathon, and there's no one around who can run to the corner store and get you an Orange Bud Bar. Oh man that sucks. Or when you need someone to keep watch as you're trying to discreetly empty all the beer cans and liquor bottles you've left too long into the communal garbage/recycling closet. It's much easier to continue living in your apartment building when your neighbors don't think you're a fall-down drunk with a penchant for dark rum and weeping softly.

Another time it's good to have someone else in your apartment is when minor repairs need to be made. Because two heads are better than one, and an extra set of hands could have been held up to stop me from entering the bathroom with the idea that I would caulk the bathtub myself, thank you very much.

Two nights ago, the batteries in my carbon monoxide detector died around 4am. (They never die during the day, do they? DO THEY?!?!) This resulted in that blood-curdling and shrill beep to sound out every 30 seconds, alerting me to both the battery situation and my heretofore unknown fear of carbon monoxide alarms.

After an unecessarily long struggle to get the alarm open and the batteries out - which was periodically broken up by both my cursing the inventor of these alert systems and my collapsing on the floor to wail about the terrible hand in life I had been dealt (it was all very dramatic) - I got three new AAs and crammed them in. At which point the alarm started beeping in long and loud sequences of three with only a 2 second break in between. I don't know what I did; whether I pressed Test/Reset the first time but not the second time, whether I pressed it 2 times when you only need to press it once, or whether I had angered mighty Podaga while tending to my fields.

Long story short, I have removed all the batteries from the detector so as to get some peace and quiet. However, the whole experience (which lasted maybe 4 minutes total) has me completely on edge in my apartment. I keep waiting for the detector to go off again, as I rock back and forth on the floor...almost willing it to happen as I slowly go mad. It's pretty much exactly like "The Raven" except more intense and also I'm drinking a lot of dark rum.

Awesome

This website will make you feel better about every bender you've ever had:

http://www.textsfromlastnight.com/