Barb’s Burblings

I just finished reading Bossypants, Tina Fey’s book. Getting it was something of an epic quest–I wound up on the queue for it at the library twice (missed my pick-up the first time because I was in Russia), so I’ve essentially been on a waiting list for it since, like, March. Anyway, it’s a really enjoyable book. I’ve been watching 30 Rock compulsively since it went into syndication. It’s on from 5:30 until 8 every night–and it’s on twice in one of those time slots. (Unfortunately, another station that airs it at 11 airs one of the episodes from an earlier timeslot, which I always forget and wind up frustrated.) So actually, reading the book now was perfect timing.

Fey is very relateable, and one of my favorite passages was this, from page 173, when she finds out that the pilot was picked up:

I was a little excited but mostly blorft. “Blorft” is an adjective I just made up that means “Completely overwhelmed by proceeding as if everything is fine and reacting to stress with the torpor of a possum.” I have been blorft every day for the past seven years.

I LOVE it. Mostly because that’s exactly how I react to feeling overwhelmed. I needed a word for that feeling when I have 8 million things to do, but all I can focus on is playing Doodle Jump on my iPod Touch. One of the questions my boss asks in job interviews is how people react to stress. The only indication I give that I’m stressed (for the most part) is that my desk gets really messy.

Like everyone else, I totally want to be BFFs with Tina.

…or, How I Won at Jury

I was called for jury duty this week, for federal district court. I’ve been called a couple of times before, but this time, I actually sat on the jury. I was no longer Barb; I was Juror #4. (Or 93, which was my number in the total group called that day.)

As an experience, it was really interesting. A lot of my friends have mentioned–and this was my attitude, too–that they want to serve on a jury. They want to see the process, experience what it’s like.

In some ways, it was really cool. There were times during the trial that I had to stop myself from smiling just at experiencing stuff I’ve seen on tv and in the movies so many times. One that really got me was when the defense attorney was questioning a witness. Prosecution objected, and the judge overruled, but did the whole, “I’ll allow it, but get to your point” routine. And when the defense attorney objected during the prosecution’s rebuttal because it was so repetitious. (Because it was INSANELY repetitious.) I also found myself giggling almost every time we went into the courtroom because we had to line up by number, but we didn’t sit that way in the jury room, so we’d be scurrying around in the little ante chamber, trying to line up. I felt like I was in elementary school again.

It was a criminal case, with two counts–felon in possession of a firearm, and possession of a firearm with an altered serial number. We started on Tuesday; that morning was just selection and swearing in. In the afternoon–after the earthquake, which hit one sentence into the prosecutor’s opening statement, and the subsequent evacuation–we had the prosecution’s opening statement and two witnesses. Wednesday was the prosecution’s second two witnesses, and they rested. We got the defense’s opening statement and two witnesses. And then lunch! After lunch was rebuttal, the (long) jury instructions, and closing statements. And then we were sent to deliberate. Which we did. All day Thursday. And all Friday morning.

The problem is that part of “possession” is that the defendant knowingly possessed it, and there just was not much evidence of that–and what evidence there was came from one witness. It all came down to this one guy’s credibility. And the questioning was just completely inadequate. The prosecution rested, and I was like, “What? No! I still have so many questions!” I’m sure part of that is that there was undoubtedly evidence that they weren’t allowed to submit for whatever reason. But just things about timing of things, and where people were. The prosecution just focused on completely the wrong thing. And their “star” witness was a bit belligerent during rebuttal. The defense attorney did a good job of redirecting us, I think, and managed to get a witness who was with the defendant at the time of arrest. The case came down to a he said/he said scenario.

When I heard the charge, I was like, “This has to be a slam dunk–how can there be questions?” But when you’re given very little in the way of hard evidence, you’re left with a ton of questions. We actually started heavily in favor of not guilty. My reasoning was that I just didn’t know–and if I didn’t know, I couldn’t vote to convict. We talked. And talked. And talked a lot. It was a great group, honestly; there was a lot of diversity, both in race/gender/age and in opinions, and everyone treated each other with a lot of respect. And there was a lot of laughter, too. Really, I couldn’t ask for a better group. Which is good, because as I said, we spent 8+ hours (longer, you’ll note, than the time spent actually presenting the case) in a small room, talking to each other. (Not taking into account the numerous times we waited in the jury room for the court to be ready for us.) After 4 hours of discussion, we got stuck. The judge told us to keep going. So we talked more. Gradually, the room moved more toward guilty. But early on, we had people say that they were not “sway-able.” Too many doubts to convict. No doubts. The rest of us moved around, and we agreed on a verdict for the second count (not guilty–the prosecution submitted literally nothing into evidence that the defendant knew the gun had an altered serial number). But we hit a wall. So we wrote another note to the judge explaining where we were and how we got there. And so we submitted a partial verdict, and were dismissed.

(How did I wind up voting? I spent a lot of time undecided. But this morning, we read something in the jury instructions that brought me over to guilty. I explained my thoughts ["I'm ignoring all of the controversial stuff and just focusing on the fact that there was a gun on the floor of the car. And this instruction allows me to use my common sense."], and another juror said that I had swayed her. I totally win at Jury!)

But first, the judge came into the jury room to talk to us. He didn’t seem terribly surprised, and acknowledged that the prosecution didn’t do a good job at all. It really should’ve been an easier case than it was–here was a guy in a car with a loaded gun at his feet. But they brought up enough extraneous information–and they did it, not the defense!–that we wound up questioning the credibility of the main witness. So we were a hung jury; there was a mistrial for that count. The defendant will probably be tried again on this charge, and he may very well be found guilty. As a group, we sure thought he was guilty–but did the evidence prove it? Not enough.

It was a good experience. It took longer than I would’ve hoped, but it was really fascinating going through the process, considering everything, debating points. It helped that the other jurors were so respectful and good-natured. I’m not foaming at the mouth to serve again, but I certainly wouldn’t mind. If nothing else, it would be interesting to compare the experiences!

Plus, I have an awesome certificate of appreciation, suitable for framing.

I’m used to being the youngest. I’m the youngest in my family, I’m the youngest grandchild on one side, and almost the youngest on the other. I was one of the youngest people in my grade at school; there were kids who were an entire year older than me (and kids in the grade behind me who were older than me). And I’ve always worked with people substantially older than me.

…Until now. After 11 years of working with people at least 10 years older than me, I now am dealing with being a fair amount older than some coworkers. There’s one coworker in my department who’s 6 or 7 years younger than me, but for a while, it was just her. But in the past couple months, we’ve hired two other women (I admit, I want to use “girl,” but that sounds weird; of course, “woman” does to me, too) who are way younger. One’s in the 7-years-younger range; the other just graduated from college last December.

And it’s totally weirding me out. I talked with my boss about setting an example (because I work very closely with one of them), and I now find myself being the one with experience and teaching. I’ve been lucky to have some great bosses, so I’m hoping that I’m successfully modeling their behavior, but it’s totally weird. I feel so old!

It doesn’t help that I remain pretty much in the middle. You know what’d be great? If we hired people MY age. But I admit that it’s nice seeing the little group of 20-somethings hanging out. It’s something I’ve never had; it makes me happy that they have that camaraderie.

For the past few years, I’ve taken on a sizable freelance project in the late spring/early summer. From the end of March to the beginning on June (with a couple weeks off in there), I spent almost 140 hours on it. And now…I don’t want to do anything. At all.

Even after finishing the project, I’ve been busy–tap recital, ushering, volunteering, etc., etc. When I look at my calendar for June and July, I shudder a bit. The problem is, it means that on nights that I’m home with no actual obligations, I don’t do anything. At all. Tonight, for example, I had a number of things I needed to do: Work on another freelance project, clean the shower, do laundry, take off my nail polish, play with Rosetta Stone a bit. And I have…finished a book I was reading and made a playlist for a friend.

Part of the problem is that I know I have tomorrow night free, too. Of course, tomorrow night I will have ADDITIONAL cleaning. But, meh. That’s the future. And I’m banking on the cats doing something helpful while I’m at work.

…Or maybe cleaning fairies?

If you want to visit a site that you make you laugh until you cry, check out Hyperbole and a Half. Seriously, it brings me nothing but joy. And insight into my life. Seriously, this spiral (from “This Is Why I’ll Never Be an Adult“) happens to me on an all-too-regular basis at work:

The longer I procrastinate on returning phone calls and emails, the more guilty I feel about it. The guilt I feel causes me to avoid the issue further, which only leads to more guilt and more procrastination. It gets to the point where I don’t email someone for fear of reminding them that they emailed me and thus giving them a reason to be disappointed in me.

Then the guilt from my ignored responsibilities grows so large that merely carrying it around with me feels like a huge responsibility. It takes up a sizable portion of my capacity, leaving me almost completely useless for anything other than consuming nachos and surfing the internet like an attention-deficient squirrel on PCP.

Do yourself a favor and check out the archives. Made of awesome, and perfect for a Sunday night.

Yesterday at work we “celebrated” Breast Cancer Awareness at our all-staff meeting. Coworkers got up and told their tales of breast cancer. I didn’t share mine.

My grandfather died in November of 1997. My grandmother turned 80 the next month, and early the next year was diagnosed with breast cancer. She went through treatment and has been in remission since 1998. She’s still going relatively strong and is almost 91 years old.

I don’t remember when my aunt was diagnosed with cancer in her mouth. I want to say it was spring of 2005 (around Easter, though I found out after, because who wants to bring down a holiday like that, right?). I watched as she fought treatment for a cancer that she didn’t deserve. She never smoked, never did anything like that. She taught reading at a local college, and read Agatha Christie and Anne of Green Gables, and loved watching Trading Spaces. She had four children, and a grandson, and fought the cancer and dealt with depression and died the day before her daughters’ 26th birthday. She didn’t get to see her second grandson or her daughters graduate from medical school.

It’s a story similar to so many about breast cancer, but I can’t help but feel that it’s not just breast cancer that needs awareness and research. People are out there dying of all forms of cancer. It’s not that I don’t support breast cancer research, it’s just that when I choose to spend my funds on charity, I have to prioritize. So when I give, it’s to causes that hit closer to home for me. Breast cancer is something that hits close to home…but more down the block than in my front yard.

At our monthly all-staff meeting today, we had a presentation on identity theft. Which is all well and good, except that I swear we just had one maybe 4 months ago. We get it. Protect ourselves.

(Though obviously there are people out there who need help. For example: The woman who lived in my apartment before me. She didn’t bother changing her address with the post office. When I moved in, I found a check for her deposit sitting in the mailbox. Since then I’ve gotten her bank statements and, even better, her credit card. Yep. Apparently her old one expired, so I now have her new one. Man, she’s lucky I’m honest.)

Anyway. One of the things the presenter talked about was identity theft and social networking sites. I thought that might be interesting–I can definitely see how Facebook, particularly, might lend itself to identity theft if you’re not careful. Except that the only thing she gave as an example was Tony LaRussa (of the football team the St. Louis Cardinals, according to her) suing Twitter (not that she said Twitter) because of the profile someone set up using his name. Sigh. Yeah. Before she talks, she might want to have looked into this a bit. She obviously has no idea what Twitter is like. Tons of celebrities have people set up fake profiles. It happens. I mean, I’m following “Peter Angelos” on Twitter (and I totally recommend it–it’s hilarious; from today: “This year, we’re drafting Matt Wieter’s [sic] DNA in the first round”). I’m following FakeRahmEmanuel, for heaven’s sake. I hate it when presentations have potential, then don’t live up to them. Particularly when it’s 45 minutes in the middle of what turned out to be a nearly 2-hour meeting. Good times.

On the positive side, I did make a list for myself of things I need to do for our conference. So that’s good.

I took a nap this afternoon instead of doing work–I was tired and had a headache, so figured it was for the best. Naturally, I had a dream that involved my teeth falling out. Like, all of them. They popped out of my mouth and looked like dentures. But anyway. I’ve always heard that dreams about your teeth falling out are a sign of stress. This isn’t surprising; I am pretty stressed right now, between my job and my freelance job–not to mention feeling bad about spending all my time in front of a computer, etc.

Naturally, I followed this up by going to the Orioles game, ensuring that I wouldn’t get a ton of work done today (I fit 2 hours in after I got home). Whee!

So, I went on a cruise with Becca and Steve. Technically it was a few weeks ago. But look! Pictures! The cruise was indeed super fun. I actually felt bad for the crew–it must’ve been a rough week for them.
On a cruise, you get a little card that’s basically everything on the ship; it’s your room key and is programmed with your picture to use when boarding and leaving the ship, it’s how you charge everything on board (food, casino, bingo, spa services, etc.). And it turned out that there were issues with the cards we were initially given; they all were associated with the wrong names. So on the second night, we had to exchange the cards for new ones.
On top of this, it was the first time they had done this cruise. The ship had been doing sailings in Europe all summer, then did a trans-Atlantic, followed by an 8-day cruise, then our 6-day. The crew hadn’t done the same cruise once in over a month, which had to have thrown off their routines.
But the topper came on Wednesday, when we were in Grand Cayman. As we headed off toward Jamaica, I could feel the ship make a very sharp turn. And then…keep turning. Eventually the cruise director made an announcement, that someone or something had gone overboard. Turned out that it was the giant inflatable monkey that someone had on their balcony (visible in one of the pictures linked to above). But they had to make absolutely sure–due to international law–so we were required to figures 8s just south of Grand Cayman as everyone on the ship had to check in again. Which took three hours. Steve, Becca, and I wound up sitting in the bar near where the check-ins were taking place to watch the fun in the latter portion of the proceedings. By that point, the director was listing names of people who hadn’t checked in. When the last ones did, there was much cheering.
Anyway, I did get my bobsledding in. Mystic Mountain was just fantastic–so beautiful. I went on the bobsled three times. Seriously, there was nothing not awesome about that day. And we got to Jamaica on time; just barely, due to aforementioned circling of Grand Cayman. In any case, if I run away from home someday, you’d be wise to check out Mystic Mountain. I may be living on a zipline platform there.

At work, we have a monthly all-staff meeting. They bribe us into attending by having cake (in honor of that month’s birthdays)–which is enough for me, honestly. They also have us fill out attendance cards, and then hold a drawing. One person wins free parking in the building garage for a month and one person wins Metro passes. And I won at the June all-staff! It was very exciting. And I discovered that parking in the building itself is incredibly superior to parking in the garage right next door. (That yes, even has a walkway between the two. I am that lazy.) Also nice was not having to pay and sleeping in a bit later.
Anyway. I picked up the clicker to get into the garage and the window tag on June 16. And we had the July all-staff this Tuesday. Which means that the next person should get them starting next week. Only…nobody from HR has contacted me to tell me that. And when I picked them up, the HR person didn’t say anything about returning them. I really probably should take the bus on Monday and turn in the parking pass, but…man, I don’t want to.
Although driving such a short distance is killing my mileage.