Busy, with foreshadowing

I feel like I've been very busy recently. Mostly it's good stuff, just not a lot of nothing-to-do time on my hands. I need a certain amount of down time for the sake of my sanity, so I'm trying to maintain a balance here, but it's challenging. Just looking at the last and next few days:

• the end of last week was full of auto-shop drama
  
• Saturday was my awesome trip Out West (yes, I am totally the typical Boston-area homebody)
• Monday night was stitch and bitch (I crashed early)
  
• last night was post office--doctor's office--Target--watch Bruins game
  
• tonight I had dinner with a friend, then gave Carlos a lap for an hour
  
• tomorrow is jury duty (more elaborate rant below)
• brunch with friends Saturday morning

Not bad stuff, generally, just plenty of it, on top of working and trying to keep up with the cat hair and general grunge at home. Why, can you believe I didn't get to Barnes & Noble with my gift card yet? I was so sure I would, but there it still is.

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So, tomorrow I have jury duty. Civic responsibility and all that, but have I told you why it strikes fear in my heart?

I was 18, and just home from a year at boarding school in England. The year was a confusing mix of unprecedented freedom--living abroad! let loose for a weekend in London! dealing with different currency, culture, and expectations--and equally unprecedented rules. Curfew and out-of-bounds and schedules, and why are you going upstairs during the day, there's no need for that, you don't go to your room during the day.

Shortly after returning home, my mother brought me in to Cambridge for jury duty. I was 18, and not a particularly mature 18. I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. And I was selected to serve on the jury for a murder trial.

I have no idea why they picked me. One of our neighbors was a big-time lawyer, and he had said bluntly, "No attorney in his right mind would pick an 18-year-old for a jury," but there I was.

It was really nasty. I was kind of joking when I said that it traumatized me, but I was telling someone at work about it today and actually felt rather shaken. Twenty-three (and a half) years later.

Perhaps they will let me off for jury-duty PTSD.

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Today someone came to talk to the person who sits next to me about taxes and some issue with company bonuses being mis-taxed and I don't know what all, but they were talking and talking and talking, and seriously, this is not a tax office, we are not even in HR or accounting, and your twenty-five-minute (no exaggeration) conversation about this shit is driving me nuts, shut up, go away!

The fact that I am not a permanent employee of the company and therefore did not get the $1000 bonus in question did not help my temper. Nor that the conversation took place as I called in to the jury line and learned that I do in fact have to report tomorrow.

Sigh.

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I opened a job-listing today with that raised-hopes feeling, only to see an opening for an Urdu speaker. Whump. Back to earth.

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One thing from my doctor's appointment yesterday that I forgot to mention was that the nurse was a knitter. She hasn't tried socks yet, but has been wanting to, and she looked with interest at both my sock-in-progress and the socks on my feet (the recently completed STR lightweight pair of skypes), so I gave her the copy of the pattern I had with me, and she was so pleased.

Knitters. We're out there. Everywhere.

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Random question: what are the odds that two people in a group of about 20 would have February 29 birthdays? Pretty small, wouldn't you think?