We the Jury Find the Defendant...

Guilty, as charged.

A week later, the verdict was finally rendered in the court case I served as a juror for... I personally had made up my mind (even though you're not supposed to) by day two, when the defendant took the stand and proceeded to make up her testimony as she went along, and eventually got her words shoved down her throat like eight times when the prosecution cross-examined her. Deliberation took about an hour, with the majority of it spent clarifying aspects of the trial that some of the jurors didn't understand, or were unsure of. Once those of us who were paying attention filled in the rest, there really wasn't much to talk about except whether someone had "magically appeared," stolen the defendants ID and password, and used it to wire $1125.95 to Western Union without inputting the money from the customer into the cash register, effectively pocketing that much of Rite Aid's money for herself. She got caught when they compared the numbers, and when they did a surprise register audit on her the next day, they found she was doing the same thing again, and had $1100 bundled up in a seperate area of the cash register, ready to be yoinked whenever she pleased. Busted.

The experience in itself is something I'm glad I did, it was quite interesting being stuck with eleven individuals from eleven totally different walks of life, and having conversations with them about anything and everything between recesses and the mandatory hour and a half lunch break. I was the youngest by far, something I'm not used to being, but something I'm going to be seeing a lot more of outside of college. Everyone had their little title they were known by, from "The Student (me)" to "The Actor" "The D.A." and so forth. One of the things I ended up finding out about one of my fellow jurists (spellcheck?) was that she is now in fact the first Air Force officer that I've met. She works in combat cameras as she calls it, basically documenting wars. Said she'd gone through the AFROTC program rather than OTS to earn her commision, and thinks she has one of the best jobs there is. The facets of leadership involved and seeing people look up to her in her "workplace" having just come out of college is something she said was most rewarding about her career choice. It was encouraging, hearing about someone who has actually been there, and knows how it is, and doesn't regret the decision at all.

[head begins to bob to "Who Knew Heaven Is A Place On Earth"] It appears they finally killed Audiogalaxy, my source of mp3s for quite some time. I've switched over to WinMX, a program that's very Napster like that seems to work very well. Spent the evening downloading a bunch of old 80s tunes, a decade I've always been a fan of musically. Also picked up a new version of "The Prayer" by Josh Groban (who also did the great "To Where You Are" mentioned earlier) as a duet with Charlotte Church, which is just as good if not better than the Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli version. Their combined age is only 35 (20 and 15 respectively) and their talent is obvious. That song has always been one of my favorites, the last note harmonically is just beautiful.

Guess I'll stop sounding middle aged now. ;)