Junk, Jury Duty and Explorations

So last week on Wednesday my father took me to their storage unit in Goleta. Among the mattresses and lawnmowers were the boxes I had packed up over 7 years ago when we were leaving for Germany. With the trepidation I prepared myself to see what my 16 year old self thought was important enough to save. Oh boy!

TO any of you 20 year olds, remember when in jr. high/high school it was cool to be way into children's toys? Yeah well I had a whole box of blue's clues, sesame street and disney stuff. oh my!

Then we come to the evidence of my hoarding: a box of saved gift bags. A WHOLE BOX! Not just gift back but store bags that I thought were cool. *shakes head*

Other than those chilling finds, the rest was a delightful walk down memory lane as I sifted though school projects, VHS tapes, childhood mementos and lots of books.

The following day, Thursday, I had Jury Duty. It was too late to try and get out of it. So I went! I had to go to Ventura since that is where I'm registered. My dad told me to bring plenty of reading materials. But when I got there they had free WiFi! So I sat for a couple hours. We could go outside so I sat in the sun and read. They would call us all in at times and read off names for Jury Selection. Around 10:30 my name was called! I went to the second floor and sat in the court room. They explained the basic details of the case (Criminal court: sexual battery and petty theft) and told us we would be interview by the judge, prosecutor and the defender. I must say as interesting as the whole process is there is nothing more mind numbing then Jury Selection. One by one, the 50 were going through this long process of elimination until it was 4:45pm. The judge announced that we would recess until the next day. I had to come back even though I might not be selected!

They opened the next morning by filling in the empty seat they ended yesterday with. When a jury was excused they select a random name to fill it. At 9:15am my named was called to fill that seat. After being interviewed by all three people, I stayed in my seat. I was to serve on the jury!

The trial started after the final jury selections were made and around 3:30 were went into deliberation. I learned many thing that day including that "sexual battery" is any touching of an intimate area with sexual intent. I really think they should change the name cause it was really hard to overcome the battery word when we were dealing with someone who had groped not beat someone. Of the whole process the deliberation was my favorite. 12 strangers discussing and deliberating the charges and the law! I wont go into the whole process, not because off court order but I just don't want to type that much! But I will say that I was a very vocal prat of the process. Eventually we found the guy guilty of sexual battery and not guilty of petty theft.

Then on Saturday my mom and I spent a day exploring Santa Barbara1 We sent to Monetcito, the Mesa, a bit of State Street. We ate lunch on the Mesa. Tri-tip blue cheese sandwiches! Yum! Bought some raspberries and ate them at the beach! Fun!

All in all a very exciting week!