Jury Duty: Day 1

I decided to live-blog my day at jury duty:

8:40 a.m. - Ugh. A huge waiting room. Quelle surprise.

8:42 - Ooo! They have internet access!

8:43 - Jeez, the connection is slower than dial-up.

8:45 - Finished my e-mail to my bosses saying that I forgot my cell phone. Yikes. I hope there aren't any emergencies.

8:50 - Look alive! The jury duty boss lady is giving instructions, but I'm too sleepy to pay attention to all of it. Good thing I'm never going to be a lawyer.

9:05 - Oh no, a crappy instructional video about the function of the jury.

9:07 - [watching video] Ooo, trial by ordeal! Let's throw someone in the East River and see if they float.

9:35 - Fantastic, a repetition of the same instructions all over again for the latecomers.

9:41 - Did I forget to remove the royalty information from my estimates?

9:42 - Yup, I forgot to remove the royalty information from my estimates. I could tell my boss to remove it for me, but he'll probably say something about how I should've removed it when I was done with my estimates yesterday.

9:43 - Maybe I should go in to work after jury duty's over and fix my estimates.

9:44 - No, that's stupid and my other boss is going to think I'm crazy for coming in.

9:45 - No, I'll go in and fix my estimates. It'll bug me if I don't.

9:52 - My turn to hand in my jury ballot so they can pop it into the raffle ticket spinning drum thingie. I hope I don't get picked.

10:04 - What is that smell??

10:12 - Oh, first jury selection call. Let's hope I'm not one of these 30 names.

10:17 - Whew! Dodged a bullet, or rather, 30 bullets. I should be in The Matrix.

10:45 - Why are they making us move to the other side of the room?

10:47 - Woohoo! Excused for the day! Time for some lunch and then to mosey uptown to work like a good little employee.

I didn't show up in the office until nearly 2:00. Both of my bosses were surprised to see me. One of them told me I shouldn't have come in and should actually leave early today. He told me (when I was leaving after 5:00) that if I get out early tomorrow, I shouldn't come in to work. Okay!

Girly Shirley

Last night, I stayed late at work to tie up loose ends before doing my civic duty and becoming a juror for Manhattan. Shirley, being a dedicated employee, is often still in the office until past 5:00, when building services turns off the air conditioning during the summer (so Shirley says, not that I stay late during the summer, me being a carefree assistant and all that good stuff). She suggested we walk together to the W. 4th subway station to catch our respective trains.

So, we were about to cross the street by our building when the following ensued:

DORA
[Peeks out past the parked cars on the side of the street and sees that the nearest vehicular traffic is still a few blocks away; begins walking across the street]

SHIRLEY
[Looks and hesitates, watching me make my way across the street]
Eek! Dora!!
[Flails arms wildly to get my attention because she thinks I'm going to get run over]

DORA
[Stops halfway across the street]
What? You can make it, Shirley!

SHIRLEY
[Jumping up and down]
Eek!

DORA
[Sees traffic very close now that I've paused to look at Shirley]
Eek!
[Runs back to Shirley, glaring]

SHIRLEY
[Looks sheepish]
You probably could've made it to the other side and I'd still be here being nervous.

DORA
Your shrieking could've killed me! I'm never walking to the subway station with you again! Aren't you a New Yorker and therefore used to dashing across the street??

Culinary Quest

This weekend, I fulfilled three of my food wishes. On Saturday, Josh and I went to Chelsea Market (also where Food Network films Emeril Live). We didn't buy very much, just two lovely little desserts. The vanilla flower cupcake on the left, and a chocolate mousse tart (seen above). They came from Ruthy's Bakery and they were so yummy! Then again, if you cover anything in buttercream, I'm very likely to find it yummy.


Later that day, I made lasagna for the first time. I remember my aunt used to make lasagna a lot and my dad complained that it was dry and that Stouffer's lasagna was better. From then on, I assumed that lasagna was difficult to make if my aunt couldn't make it like something that came out of a box. However, I've been thinking about making this recipe for a few months now and figured that the only way to know if lasagna is really hard to make is to actually try.

I can say that I'm glad I tried the recipe (and so is Josh), because the lasagna turned out great! The only snag I encountered was the fact that the market didn't have any turkey sausage, so I used chicken sausage instead. It also made a lot of food (as I discovered when I hefted it into the oven) and made the apartment smell wonderful. The picture there really doesn't do it justice.

Today, I continued my quest for the perfect chocolate chip cookie. Last Sunday, I had a great tasting cookie, but it was too crunchy, so I followed Alton Brown's recipe for a chewy cookie and got pretty good results, combining the tasty recipe with the chewy one. I'm still not where I want to be though. The cookies came out a little too flat, so I'm going to try Alton's puffy chocolate chip cookie recipe next time, which uses cake flour instead. Who knew chocolate chip cookies could be so complicated?

Yes, another law school post

Last week, I bumped into P, my former law school study buddy. I hadn't spoken to him in a while and at first thought that he was snubbing me since I wasn't a J.D. candidate anymore. It turns out that it wasn't the case, and I told him about how Josh withdrew from law school as well. Apparently, Josh hadn't told P about it.

P told me to pass on this message to Josh: "Don't feel embarrassed that you dropped out because I'm embarrassed that I didn't leave. Now I've spent too much money to stop, and a lot of students in our section feel that way. You're lucky to have left when you did."

So while Josh's mom may ask me the obnoxious question: "Do you still like your publishing job?" (I think she secretly wishes that I'd stayed in law school and hopes that I'll go back and finish to become a law-yah - say it with the Brooklyn accent), I know that on my worst day in the office, I will still prefer the path I chose.

Or rather, the road not paved with suck-ups with noses so brown you can't resist the urge to hand them toilet paper; depressed law students; Bar review scams; inept school administrators; and pretentious professors.

Grey's Anatomy Rant

Can I say how much I'm beginning to dislike Izzy? Josh laughed at me when I said so, which is understandable because she's not a real person.

She acts like she's better than everyone else, when she makes mistakes of her own. Fraternizing with a patient? Not a good idea. Sleeping with Alex while messing with the feelings of said patient? Not a good idea either. Getting mad at Alex for being frank about Denny's condition? Not a good doctor. Being bitchy to Meredith and making it seem like the whole George situation is her fault?

So wrong.

Izzy pushed George to pester Meredith, saying "make her listen," when she should've said, "If she doesn't want to listen to you, you should find someone who wants to listen to you." Now Izzy is on her high horse, telling Meredith that it's all on her to make things right. Izzy was more than happy to butt in with her advice before the meltdown, but now that it's a genuine problem, she's on the bench, as though she had no part in the problem.

On the other hand, can I say how much I love Alex now? I'm so happy someone finally stopped pussyfooting around George. Even after the meltdown, he didn't learn his lesson about moving on, despite the kick-in-the-pants that awful crying scene was, and Alex said what needed to be said. A lot of people probably think that he's a dick, but that's because he tells the truth (i.e. the reality of Denny's situation).

Happy Blogiversary!

My blog has been in existence for three years! To commemorate the occasion, I'm linking my new blog, which I use to keep track of books and movies I've read/watched.

My reading blog!

Spare change?

Josh and I were walking along 14th St. last night by Union Square and we passed a man asking passersby for spare change.

I heard him say, "Hey man, can you spare any change for hookers and condoms?"

Josh said, "Did he just say what I think he said?"

I wonder if the guy got more money with his honest begging.

Weekend Update

I went home to my parents' house in NJ this weekend. I was afraid I'd be really bored, and spent much of my Friday afternoon at work debating which two books I would take with me. In the end, I didn't even finish one (although I came close). Before I moved to NY, I had a difficult relationship with my parents, especially my father. Now that I live away from home, I get along with them really well, and it's very different. If you'd told me two years ago that I'd be playing pool with my dad, I would've glared at you and walked away.

My relatives came for a big belated Chinese New Year dinner on Saturday and we did the usual pool, Guesstures, and trivia games. We also went to the mall, and being that most of us resided in NY, where there is a hideous 8.625% sales tax, the zero sales tax on clothing in NJ was pretty sweet. My poor brother was stuck walking around the mall with three girls, and it included prom dress shopping.

On Sunday, I went to dim sum with my parents. My brother didn't go because he got up at 9 a.m. (after sleeping for 4 hours) to go to Atlantic City, where we planned to meet him later for dinner.

We went to dinner at the Borgata Buffet and sandwiched that with playing the slots. It's the only game I can afford to play. My brother plays the card games and amazingly makes oodles of money. I amazingly won in slots ($65 to be exact!) and stopped playing very early because I don't like risking my money.

Wooo! That was quite a weekend!

Do the doo

This morning, I went to my company's annual employee presentation held in a theater in Times Square. While walking there from the subway station, I realized that Mountain Dew was doing a promotion for their diet version. I got a free can of Diet Mountain Dew, which I later gave to Josh (I told him I got it for free from a stranger, and he wanted to verify that the can wasn't from a crazy stranger).

They had set up a snow covered slope in the middle of Times Square. I presumed they were going to have some snowboarding like in their commercials.

A police horse on duty (ha ha, doody) by the Mountain Dew people decided to take part in the promotion as well. It promptly lifted its tail and pooped, creating its own mountain doo. It did not bode well for the group of Mountain Dew rabble rousers marching down the street in direct line of the horse's mountain doo.

I didn't stay to watch because I'm a dedicated employee. I'm so dedicated that the president of the company shook my hand when I walked in and during the handshake, I was thinking, Who the hell is this woman and why is she shaking my hand?