It's been six... no, seven months since the last one. So, time I let you guys know how things are going in my life.

Let's see...

Mom's cancer is still gone. Her sense of taste is slowly returning, but when I say slowly I'm not kidding. She says a lot of things she used to like are still tasteless or even taste awful, now. But she's cancer free, so there's that.

My brother was unemployed for about two months before he found another job. It's WFH and came with a decent pay increase, so he's happy about that.

My car was involved in an accident in December. A large clump of dirt flew up from the highway median and hit the top of my windshield and the front fender. Came out of absolute nowhere; I think a car on the opposite side went into the median and threw the dirt up, but I didn't see it because it was dark (December, remember, so night came early) and the other side was lower and effectively over the edge of a small hill. At any rate, the fender and one headlight sustained damage, and my windshield was absolutely smashed. Worse, because the clump hit right at the top of the windshield, it actually bent the car frame enough to total the car. So I had the stress of dealing with insurance, getting a rental, and going car shopping, right before Christmas.

So now I'm driving an Hyundai Sonata, which is a little larger than my old Elantra. Still fits in the garage, but it's tighter now. And although I got more of a payout from insurance than I expected I would, I really would rather have not had to shell out several times that amount to get a new car. On the good side, new car means a decent upgrade. I was happy with my Elantra but I must admit this Sonata is niiiice. And I got it just in time to avoid the stupid tarriffs.

As for my job, it proceeds apace. The constuction finally finished last week, so the labs are pretty much built. But they still need to be inspected and certified, and then all the equipment moved into them. Lord only knows how long that will all take. In the meantime, I am still mostly just checking doors and trailers there and confirming the place hasn't spontaneous caught on fire. The job itself is easy, if tedious, but the commute sucks.

Looking forward to my next vacation with Cathy. We're going to San Francisco, which I am passably familiar with, having lived there for five years or so way back when. I'm going by train and plan to visit an old friend or two while there.

I don't make a lot of journals, because I honestly don't think too many really care about my thoughts or life. Not a woe-is-me thing, it's just that I'm not famous or influential, I'm just another guy. Why would most people care? But I also know "not too many" isn't the same as "nobody," and my last entry was seven months ago. Quite a bit has happened since then.

First, the biggie: my mother's cancer is gone. She underwent radiation therapy (not chemotherapy) and they think they got it all. They're going to keep an eye on her to make sure, though, since they're still uncertain where it originated. But signs are good. My mom didn't like the experience very much, mostly because it killed her sense of taste. I'm not sure if that's due to the therapy or because the cancer was in her throat, but starting in April or so she's been unable to taste anything. Now that the cancer is gone and treatment's stopped it's starting to return, but it's not at 100% yet. More like 20%, at present.

Cathy and I take a real-life vacation together each year, each in a different place. This year, it was Hawaii. We had a great time, but had a snafu regarding the house we rented in Volcano, a neighborhood near the entrance to Volcanoes National Park on the big island. Namely, the reservation instructions never mentioned that we had to check in by 6 pm, and we arrived there at 8:30 or so. So there was nobody to let us in or give us the code. After a bunch of calling around we basically had to give up on it, and instead had to decide whether to go 45 minutes back to Hilo and find a cheap motel, or go 10 minutes away and get a room at Volcano House within the park itself. We went with Volcano House, and didn't regret it. Well, Cathy might have, as it was kinda chilly at the summit and the place, being (re)built in the 1940s didn't have air conditioning or even heat in the rooms. But waking up to a view of Kilauea was pretty awesome. And when we transferred to Kona, on the west coast, the resort gave us an upgrade to our room for some reason, giving us a spectacular ocean view from the enormous wraparound balcony on our corner room. We also saw the sun's green flash during the luau we attended the first night there. Great trip.

My job site has officially closed. It wasn't a surprise; the place was slowly bleeding people out even before Covid, and when the pandemic hit nearly everyone left went WFH. Even when restrictions were lifted, most people didn't come back, and the building's been nearly empty except for the labs for years. It was announced as imminent just about the time I wrote the last journals. I didn't include it in the bad news then because I knew I wasn't going to be fired, just transferred to a different site. But I've been working there for mumblemumble years, and was really worried about where that new site would be. And what hours I'd be working; I'd gotten quite fond of my schedule. Well, turns out I was transferred to the new site. The labs weren't shut down, just moved, and so they'd still need guards. So all the guards at the old place now work at the new one, with the same hours. That's the good news. The bad news is that it's for the same pay, and the place is even further away from my home than the old place was. So my commute just went up by about 30%.

The fun thing (that's sarcasm) about that was the transfer itself. After literally months of asking whether I and the other guards would be transferred to the new site and being told, "Yeah, probably, that'd be the logical thing but we don't have word," we finally got word. At the end of August I was finally told, "You will indeed be going to the new place, and you'll start on September 24th." Hooray! I can actually start planning! Now, you might have noticed that I said the site officially closed - past tense. You might also have noticed that the 24th hasn't actually come around yet. So what happened was that on the 3rd - Tuesday last week - the janitor at the old site mentioned that the mechanical guy at the new site was griping about having to stay late to train me that Thursday. Which was rather puzzling, since last I knew I was still going to be at the old place for another 3 weeks or so. So on Wednesday I made some calls to my boss, and found out, oh yeah. I start Thursday. Tomorrow, at that point. How very nice of them to tell me, huh? Good thing it got back to be through the janitor, huh? Sheesh.

But I'm settled in now. The commute is bad but not as bad as I'd feared, and the site itself is fine. My boss said he's trying to get us a pay bump, but I don't know if that's true or just a platitude. I guess we'll see in time.

And lastly, my brother was indeed laid off. Same day that I started my new site, in fact. He's not happy about having to go job hunting, but he was pretty much expecting it. Hopefully he finds something soon.

And there you go. Quick summary of my life's big happenings since February.

So, I posted a week or two ago that my mom has cancer. It's not thyroid, it's in or near the lymph nodes. Not lymphoma, and they think it can just be surgically removed, but still. Yikes

Now, she's starting to show signs of mental issues. She tried to tell me about her experience finding the lump, again, leading off with, "I haven't told you about this thing in my neck..." And my dad said last night she was mumbling when she spoke; he worried she might have had a stroke and took her to the ER. Tests are ongoing, but she sounded fine when I spoke with her an hour ago. But it's not exactly reassuring.

Meanwhile, my brother's employer is looking at downsizing. Apparently they've yet to turn a profit since they formed. So his employment is uncertain. As for me, well, the site I'm at – I'm a security guard, remember – looks to be closing down. It's something I've seen coming for at least five years, now, but now the timeline is looking like months and not years or "eventually."

On the good side, if/when this place does close down, I'll still be employed. Just at some other client. But that's unlikely to be at a location or with hours that suit me nearly so well as this one. Seriously, other than my commute (and the pay, of course) this site works absolutely perfectly for me.

Lots of changes coming to my family soon, it seems, and most are not great. Yay...

Every two weeks I host a night of board gaming. And the first of these each month is a potluck. Today (well, yesterday, by now) was that day. I made chicken pot pie (technically, I made it months ago, and stored it in the freezer until now), and the guests brought sloppy joes, pies, muffins, and a few other things. I played a game new to me, On Mars, a very complicated game that I lost not as badly as I thought I would. Not a bad night, for the most part.

Except, five minutes before people started arriving, I got a phone call from my dad. My mother had discovered a lump near her jaw last week. And after a biopsy, it was confirmed to be cancer. Given the location of the lump, probably thyroid. We don't know how advanced it is, how widespread it is, or pretty much anything else, other than that it's cancer and it's in my mom.

I didn't really have a chance to think about it much before Game Night got going. And even less while I was playing. Since it ended, though, it's kinda been a growing weight. I said to my roommate that I felt I ought to feel worse about it than I do. Well, I'm starting to feel worse about it. Been kind of distracted and scatterbrained for the last 6 or 7 hours. Kinda curious how I'll feel once I wake up tomorrow. Right now I just feel kinda... numb.

Nothing like a big ol' dose of mortality to flavor your day, huh?

So, to recap: Called to jury duty. Trial was primarily a domestic violence case, in which someone went to an ex-girlfriend's apartment and demanded his keys, and that she call him Jesus Christ. When she didn't do either (the first because she didn't have any keys of his, and the second because come on) he hit her. Trial started on the October 24th, wrapped up on the 31st. No, we jurors were not allowed to wear costumes in the jury box despite it being Halloween. I asked.

Time to deliberate.

First thing to do was to pick a foreman. Or forewoman. Foreperson. This is the person who would read out the verdict, eventually, and in the meantime was supposed to control the debate as a moderator and fill out any paperwork. The woman who volunteered and was chosen was... well. Not ideal, in my opinion, though of course I didn't know that at the time.

As you may recall, there were two charges. #1 was violation of an No-Contact Order. This was a felony, because it resulted in an assult. For the defendant to be guilty, he had to meet 5 criteria, such as did he do this within my state (yes, duh), did he know about the order ahead of time (yes, he violated it before minus the assault, and he mentioned it in a recorded phone call from jail), and so on. I don't remember all 5 - that's what I get for writing this a month after the fact - but the only one that was even slightly in doubt was whether he had actually hit her. A few of the jurors didn't like the prosecution's main witness, considering his testimony dubious. Still, after about an hour we had decided that he had, in fact, hit her, and voted unanimously guilty on charge #1.

Charge #2 was much, much harder to come to an agreement over. This one was "residential burglary," which we were told has nothing to do with stealing but has to do with being where he wasn't supposed to be. As with #1, there was a list of criteria he had to meet to be considered guilty. He had to intentionaly go to or remain at a place where he wasn't allowed to be, and holy shit did we debate the crap out of the definition of "intent."

By the end of the first day, we still hadn't come to a decision. We asked how to put in for a mistrial, but the judge returned with a paper that read essentially, "The jury may continue deliberations." Yeah, gee. Thanks, Judge.

So, we debated for most of the week. We got let out at lunchtime every day for 90 minutes or so, and then we were back at it - with "it" sometimes being each other's throats. Things got pretty heated at times. I was all for calling him guilty, because to me it was pretty clear. The other side was using such arguments as "The person who told him to leave paid for the apartment, but wasn't the resident and therefore had no authority to tell him to get out." Which to my mind is splitting hairs a little too fine, if not just utter bullshit. There's also the fact that he intentionally went there - but the other side said he intentionally went in order to retrieve a key, not to assault her. The pro-guilt side said that didn't matter, he went there on purpose and was thus guilty.

The leader of the other side continually said he was willing to be convinced, but that was bullshit because he was pretty dismissive of our arguments. And then he'd claim we were dismissive of his. Ugh. Meanwhile, the forewoman just sat there and said she was reluctant to convict because she didn't want to put a guy away when he might not be guilty.

It was maddening.

Eventually, late on Wednesday we asked the judge for a mistrial, again. This time he granted it. We were called into the courtroom and asked for the verdicts. Guilty on charge 1, hung jury on charge 2. Cannot come to an agreement. Mistrial.

Well, at least we got him on the felony.

After the trial, we were given the opportunity to talk to the attorneys to clue them in on our thinking. It was strictly voluntary, but every single juror went in. (The bailiff said since the trial was over we could take any seat, and I wondered what would happen if I went and took the judge's.) There we told them what we thought - basically, the prosecution did a great job proving the first charge but had largely ignored the second one. Without any direct testimony about it, we were left to figure it out from the implications stemming from the first chage, and some of the jurors were just unable to jump that gap.

And then it was over. I went home and called work, letting them know that I won't be in on Thursday night but will be back the next week. (That message somehow got misunderstood; when I went in on Tuesday evening I found they thought I had called off for the next week but would be back on Thursday. So I had company on my shift that night, which was unusual. But Wednesday was back to normal.) I spent the weekend trying to get my sleep schedule back where it ought to be to work a graveyard shift, something that I honestly am STILL trying to accomplish. Ugh.

So, my thoughts on the entire process: long. Much longer than it should have been, thanks to a few obstinate people. Open-mindedness is fine, but at some point you really need to actually listen to what the other side was saying. Their scenarios for how this charge fails to meet the burden of "beyond a reasonable doubt" bordered on absurd at times. It was, to my mind, not reasonable. So a case that should have been a day of debate, at most, turned into most of a week of arguments and frustration. I now understand why experienced attorneys say no case is a sure thing until the verdict has been read.

Speaking of attorneys, things in court were not at all like on TV. Court procedurals have drama to them, and good actors. The attorneys in my trial did their damnedest to be as bland and unemotional as possible. And on TV they only show the important witnesses, and indeed the important questions, all of which clues viewers in that this particular testimony IS important. In real life, we had to listen to everything, and we needed to figure out for ourselves what was important and what wasn't. Much more difficult, and potentially boring except a man's freedom was on the line. None of us wanted to fuck this up, so we paid attention.

This was a fascinating experience, one I'm glad I partook in. But I'm not eager to do it again.

I should probably finish this before it grows too distant and fades...

So, first of all, just to make something clear: I wasn't upset at being selected to sit on a jury. I'm not so patriotic that I see jury duty as an honor, but I do consider it as, well, a duty. More to the point, it's a break from the everyday routine. Once you're out of school many people's lives, mine most definitely included, fall into a rut. Every week is roughly the same as every other, with the exception of vacations. This would be a nice change.

Sucks that the pay is so bad, though.

Monday rolled around and I trundled off to court. I had to be there by 9 AM, and waited in the room that used to be used for holding potential jurors during the selection process, pre-Covid. After being collected by the bailiff, we were led to the back rooms of the courthouse, where the jury rooms were.

How to describe the jury room? It was fairly small, perhaps the size of a mid to large bedroom. There were two en-suite bathrooms, like you might find in a cheap motel except without the shower. There was also a kitchen sink, mini-fridge, coffee machine, and microwave. We were told that once deliberations began we pretty much were stuck in here except for lunch breaks, so this was all to give us no excuse to want to get out. There was also a large boardroom style table in there, and lots of moderately comfortable chairs plus a whiteboard.

The first day, we sat around waiting for a while. This was on the 24th, which is almost 3 weeks ago at this point, so I don't recall exactly when we were called in, but it was over an hour. While we waited we read books, used our phones or whatever.

Then we entered the courtroom. The judge swore us in, then read us some instructions. (Or maybe it was the other way around - remember, 3 weeks ago.) Basically, don't talk about the case, don't make posts about the case, and try to avoid even letting people know you're on a jury, so don't make posts online about being on a jury. It's hardly a top secret thing, so telling people who need to know is fine, but it just shouldn't be broadcast to all and sundry. This would help avoid people trying to offer their opinions on the matter, which may influence jurors.

Next came the attorneys' opening statements, where we learned what the trial was about and what each side's general strategy would be. It seems the defendant had a No-Contact Order against a woman, which he'd broken. This was at least the second time he'd broken an NCO, and this time it wound up with him hitting her. He wanted to get a key from her - a key to what, was never disclosed - and she said she didn't have it. He also said his name was really Jesus Cornelius Christ, and she refused to call him that and that was disrespectful. Add it all up, and he got pissed and hit her. The defense argued that he had been lured to her apartment by the woman and her current lover, that the lover had hit her and set up the defendant to take the fall. The evidence was that he left the scene after calling the cops on the defendant, the defendant had just been sitting in the living room quietly when the cops arrived, and the woman never said who had been the one to hit her.

I have to say, the defense argument kinda stank. On the other hand, we've all watched Law and Order and other crime shows, and this sort of thing shows up a lot. So who knows? Could happen, right?

The first week we saw maybe a half dozen witnesses. One would come up, be questioned, cross examined, and released. The jury would usually be released back to the jury room after each witness as the attorneys argued something over with the judge. More phone browsing would ensue.

Court officially ran from 9 AM to 4 PM, with lunch at noon to 1:30 PM and a 15-minute break at 10:30 AM and 3 PM. In reality, things were rarely so orderly. Sometimes the witness examination would run long, or short. We rarely got those 15 minute breaks, because we were often "on break" back in the jury room already; I think there was one time when we were let out and told to be back in 20 minutes. One day, a witness that was scheduled to testify in the afternoon couldn't, or at least didn't, show up, so court was released until the next day. All in all, over those four days (court here doesn't convene on Fridays) the jury might have been listening to testimony for 8 hours, and that's being generous. Probably closer to 6.

The next week, on October 31, the attorneys gave their closing arguments, where they reiterated the points the'd tried to make during the trial. The judge gave us our jury instructions and read them out for us - it was something like 20 pages, and he read every one of them aloud. Then he sent us back to deliberate.

And in my next and hopfully final part, I'll talk about jury deliberations, and my overall impression of the experience as a whole. But I think this entry is plenty long enough.

In a mostly-good way. You see, I had jury duty.

I first received notice back in May or thereabouts, and I was supposed to report in July. But since I was planning to go to Vegas with  cathyoak in early August I felt it would be a bit of a pinch. If the trial ran long then I'd have major problems making my vacation. So I pushed it back to the end of October.

(The Vegas trip, by the way, went swimmingly. Except my shoes were falling apart and had lost a lot of their padding, so my feet quickly started hurting. I have new shoes now, and walking is no longer agony even if I do it for more than a whole 30 minutes.)

Come October, just as I was preparing to put in for a week off work so I could do my jury duty, one of my coworkers announced she would take Monday the 17th off. But hey, Xodiac can cover; he usually does! At which point I had to rush in and say, nope, not this time, and explain that the 17th was the day I was set to begin my service. It was only a few days before I was going to put in a request for time off myself. So my boss kind of had to scramble to find someone to cover for the week. To make it worse, that coworker came down with Covid the week before, which really knocked her out of the running for covering my shifts or training a new employee to do so.

But they couldn't forbid me from serving on a jury. Worst they could do is transfer me to a new site, but that would still leave them with shifts that needed covering. So, kinda sucked to be my boss, I guess, but shit happens sometimes. I wound up training someone to take over temporarily while I was gone, and hoped it would only be for that week, which was slated for jury selection.

For that, I had to download and install Zoom, and adjust my sleep schedule to be diurnal (I normally work graveyards). The first was decidedly easier than the second. And then I had to await notice of when the meeting would be. I awoke at something like 6 am Monday and waited for an email inviting me to a Zoom. And I waited. And waited. Around noon, or maybe 1 PM, I finally got it. The meeting would be tomorrow (Tuesday). So I had lunch and took a nap.

So at 9 AM the next day I used Zoom for the first time. After a 2-hour wait, the meeting began. I got asked a few questions, and listened to other potential jurists be asked other questions. A couple of their answers were almost guaranteed to get them removed from the jury pool. And then it was over, right around 1 PM. We were told we would be notified on our status later in the week.

Wednesday, no notice.

Thursday, I learned I was selected for the jury proper. Service would begin Monday the 24th at 9 AM.

Crap.

No, NOT bunnyvirus. A disease that made you into a bunnygirl or bunnyboy would be pretty neat.

Novel bunyavirus re-emerges in China

Article highlights:

* Someone got infected with it in 2009. It was contained, but recently some dipshits got infected after mishandling the body.
* It causes fever, fatigue, nausea, abdominal pain, and decreased appetite. Oh, and organ failure leading to death.
* Fatality rate is estimated at 10%. For comparison, Covid is approximately 6%.
* It is believed that it can spread person to person, though no mention of just how contagious it is.
* There's a case in Taiwan from someone who did not visit China.
* There's currently no cure or vaccine.

So, who had a SECOND deadly viral pandemic on their 2020 Apocalypse Bingo card?

Time for my semiannual journal entry!

So, the latest events (the riots and protests triggered by George Floyd's death in Minneapolis, that is) have once again torn open the wounds of racial inequality and police brutality in America. And since a lot of people are talking about it, I thought I'd chime in. But rather than rail against this incident, or the rioters and looters who are taking advantage of the unrest to turn into human cockroaches, I'm going to simply list off some major changes that I feel the country needs.

1) Pay jurors minimum wage. This will allow poorer people to sit on juries without putting their livelihoods at risk, which in turn will allow a true "jury of thier peers" for poor criminals. It'll also make jury duty less despised in general. Hard to argue with something that'll get people more involved in their communities.
2) Increase police accountability. If they screw up or overreact, they should face the consequences. "Internal Affairs" is a joke.
3) Remove the Electoral College. It's about time.
4) Legalize marijuana. Tax it like cigarettes. Legislate it like alcohol.
5) Institute some sort of nationalized health care. Obamacare is a start, but I'd really like to see something like Canada's system.
6) Require all businesses to provide sick pay. Covid has shown how essential some jobs truly are, and that we can't afford for someone to come in to work while sick because they can't afford to take time off.
7) Gun control. Not banning, but control. Nothing will eliminate shootings entirely, but we can cut them down by requiring safety training and registration (or certification that they have already been done) upon any sale, whether retail or private.
8) Restaurant staff should be required to be paid at least minimum wage. It will eliminate reliance on tips (which are unreliable), prevent waiters from losing money when management takes them (which is illegal, but still done some places), and generally provide financial security for those employees.

Some of these I've thought about a good deal. Others, however, are very general, at just a "we need to do something about that," sort of level, at least in my own thought processes. Maybe others have thought them through more about how to do it, and what practical roadblocks reform would face. In either case, I'm willing to discuss them in comments.

And, of course, if you can think of a reform to add, feel free to suggest it!

At the start of July - two months ago, now - my employer realized that the other people at my site neglected to renew their licenses. It's arguable whether it's their fault or my company's, but either way it makes it literally illegal for them to do the job they're hired to do. Suddenly I was the only regular at my site.

Obviously, this doesn't work very well. Even if I worked every day, I can't work 24 hours for several days in a row. Still, they had me fill in as much as possible. For 5 weeks I worked at least 5 days a week, which doesn't sound bad until you realize these are 12-hour shifts and my commute is 30-60 minutes. The last couple of weeks I worked all 7 days.

It was, to say the least, exhausting. Yeah, my job isn't difficult, but it very, very tedious. Add in that there's really no time on work days to do anything but sleep, commute, and work, and you'll start to understand.

Still, it came to an end. Several weeks back, in fact. Problem is, my coworked got their new licenses in just in time for me to attend DragonFlight, a small board game convention held nearby. While certainly better than work, I would be hard pressed to call a convention relaxing.

The week after the con, I got sick. I think it was the flu. It was a terrible weekend, but it cleared up just in time for me to go back to work on Tuesday with no days missed. Yay.

Last week, a coworker - one of the ones who'd just gotten their license back - got sick. I had to fill in for them on Sunday. And Monday was a holiday, so I had to fill in then, too.

This weekend was a relief of sorts. No extra work! But, again, not exactly obligation-free. Had people over on Saturday for gaming, and as it was the first Game Night of September it was also a potluck. Feeling uninspired, I just made a cold-cut tray, but I made it, not bought it. Friday I bought all the stuff that went on there. Sunday I woke up early to watch the local football team play their season opener (we won) and then went to a friend's birthday party, and Monday I'm meeting another friend who just moved to the area. Except for Game Night, none of these took much time, but they were all outside the norm, and the time they required had to be accounted for.

Next weekend, God willing, will be the first weekend that truly, actually FREE since July. I'm really looking forward to it.

On the good side, all that overtime really helped pad out my bank balance. Those 5 weeks, I giot roughly 12 weeks worth of pay. Tack on another extra paycheck for the holiday weekend, and things are looking nice there, enough that I'm requesting time off so I can go on vacation in Hawaii.

But man, I'm looking forward to next weekend.

If you've been Watching me for a while... well, first of all, thanks! I appreciate it. It's always an ego boost to know people think what you're doing is interesting, that others like what you like, and so on.

Anyway, if you've been Watching, you probably know that my main OC and namesake has a female alt, named Xoie. Like Xodiac, she is a dragote, with a coyote's body, head, and arms but draconic legs, tail, wings, and horns. But things get a little confusing as to just who Xoie is. "Xoie" was originally meant to be what Xodiac is called after being gender-changed, as he seems prone to. But I've also envisioned her, at times, as Xodiac's lover, his sister, and someone who has absolutely nothing to do with Xodiac, with the similarity in names being just a coincidence. This is confusing at worst and awkward to explain at best.

So I've decided to clear things up. Xoie is, as of now, officially Xodiac's name as a female. And yet... I did like the idea of him having a sister. So from now on, his sister's name is... (drum roll)...

Rille.

I'll be going through my files over the next few days, rewriting what stories mention sister-Xoie and changing them to call her Rille, instead. The folder in my gallery labeled Xoie will be renamed. I do have to figure out whether to put the handful of badges with Xoie's name prominently displayed in the Rille folder or Xodiac's; either way, I'll need to adjust the description to explain things.

So that's that. Xoie is Xodiac after being TG'd. Rille is his sister, who was born female. She's a year younger and a bit more outgoing, energetic, and playful than her brother.

Now, I just need to explain the two versions of Xodiac...

Sometime in March I received notice I was summoned to jury duty. I requested the entire week off work, even though my state only requires you serve one day (unless you're empaneled on a jury, of course) because I work grave and wanted to adjust my sleep schedule to be a little more... normal. I didn't quite succeed, but I got it about halfway there. Good enough.

I first reported in on Wednesday, May 29, at 8 am. We watched a video about what jury service entails, then sat around. My name was eventually called and I was assigned a case and a number. The jury pool was large enough that they split it into two groups, 1-45 and 46-75. I was number 46, so I wasn't called up until after lunch. The judge asked whether serving would pose an undue hardship on anyone, and after getting details from those who answered affirmative she dismissed about half of those who claimed it. Since it was by then halfway through the afternoon, we were dismissed and told to return on Monday, June 3.

On Monday, I arrived, and was told I had missed a message telling me to come in on Tuesday, instead. Tuesday I reported in with no problems except that I was operating on 2 hours of sleep. Guh.

During the general questioning that first day, the judge asked something like, "Does anyone personally know myself, the prosecutor, the defense attorney, the defendant, the bailiff, or the court reporter?" Obviously, this is intended to find bias. The question found something else out, however, when one of the potential jurors said she didn't know the judge but worked with her husband, and that while he hadn't disclosed any details, "he had told her what TYPE of case this was." To which the judge said, "Oh, he DID." I think someone was sleeping on the couch that night.

Since my number was so low, the first in this second group, I was the first into the courtroom. Which meant I spent the second day in the jury box, not the spectator pews. The jury's chairs, at least at that courthouse, are pretty darned comfortable, I must say, and there's tons of leg room.

The two attorneys had very different questioning styles. The prosecutor asked questions of everyone, asking people to raise their hands if they thought they had an answer. Some of the questions were leading, some not. If nobody answered, she might pick someone from the pool. The defender, meanwhile, went methodically through the pool. She'd ask question A, and ask jurors 1, 2, 3, and 4 what their answers were. Then she'd want to hear what jurors 5, 6, 7, and 8 think about question B. I preferred the prosecutor's method, better.

The case clearly had something to do with sexual misconduct. I'm not sure if it was sexual assault, sexual harrassment, or out-and-out rape... but I think it was probably the last one. When the *defense attorney* uses a term like "forced sexual conduct" it sounds an awful lot like a euphemism for rape. Up until she said that I genuinely wasn't sure which it might be.

I was eventually dismissed, very late in the process, and I'm of two minds about that. It was a nice change of pace, and it would have continued to be interesting. Nothing like jury duty to make you feel like you Matter. On the other hand, I'm not sure I liked the idea of a guy's life well and truly depending on my ability to tell when people are lying, exaggerating, or telling the truth. And while I wasn't too worried about the loss of pay, I *was* a little concerned that, with the trial estimated to last two weeks or more, I might return to duty and find my site has been permanently assigned to someone else. I like that site; with the exception of how far it is from home (~1 hour commute in, 35 minutes coming home) it is pretty much perfectly suited to me and my temperament.

Well, for better or for worse, it's over now. Unfortunately, since I had to come in for a second day of jury duty, instead of most of a week to get my sleep schedule back to normal, I only have a day or so. This week is probably going to suck. But, oh well.

Back to the grind!

Getting started with drawing was hard. Is hard. First there were a few technical glitches to overcome. For one thing, my tablet seemed to be locked to my secondary monitor, which is smaller and situated above my primary one. This is fine for things like watching streams, chats, and email, but for things I need to pay close attention to for more than a few minutes at a time it's a bad idea. I also couldn't look up how to change it, because the digital manual that was supposed to come with the driver didn't install correctly.

Once that was fixed, though - mostly by downloading an updated driver and resetting the computer - things moved along. I'm going to be using Krita, a free digital paint program that was the best among a sampling of free or cheap art programs a certain YouTube artist tried out. (You can check out the video here.)

Of course, that presented me with new problems. A good art program is complicated! Fooling around a little, though, I did manage to make one image. And so I present to you, my very first drawing! Here!

I know, I know. The skill, the talent, the sheer awesome, it's all leaving you breathless. And to think, it'll only get better!

Seriously, though, for now I'm concentrating on learning how to use the tools I have. Most notably, how to use Krita. So I'm watching tutorial videos, especially this one, to see how to properly use the program. Once I understand the tools better, I expect I won't be intimidated quite so much at the prospect of using them. Which means I'll then be able to work on my hand-eye coordination and then, hopefully, learning to draw.

I'm feeling very excited, right now. And about twice as anxious. You see, I jut bought myself an art tablet.

I last tried to teach myself how to draw... I dunno. Maybe ten years ago, at this point. Maybe less, but not much less. I thought then that if only I had started learning ten years ago, I'd be good by now, and with that in mind I thought maybe in ten years - by now, that is - I'd be at least decent.

Well, that fell through. I could draw objects reasonably well, if they were right in front of me, so I made some decent still-lifes. But drawing people, or from imagination, wasn't happening at all. Plus, I was doing this at work. On the good side, I had (and still have) lots of time to draw, there; my job is not exactly busy. On the bad side, I had to use pencil and paper, and maybe a how-to-draw book. It made things difficult, and I wasn't really seeing much progress. It was discouraging as hell, frankly, and eventually I stopped.

But with this digital tablet, hopefully I can pick it up again. There have been plenty of times when I'm awake at 3 AM with nothing to do, after all. It's too early to go to bed, I'm too tired to write, there's nobody online to chat with, and I don't feel like playing a video game. (That last one varies.) At times like that, watching an art tutorial video and diddling along on my new tablet would be good.

So that's what I'm going to try to do.

Don't expect to see my own art posted here anytime soon. But maybe, just maybe, you might see something in a year or three.

Wish me luck! Because I'm eager to give this a shot. A second shot, really. And I'm very nervous not that I'll suck (which is a given) but that I'll continue to suck.

My policy in regards to posting commissions and YCHs that I buy is usually for me to allow the artist to post it first. Or at least have the chance to. I wait a week after I receive it before I post it, myself, whether they've uploaded it or not. Yeah, I paid for it, and it's mine. But the artist is the one who did all the work. It seems only right that the initial attention at being on the top page, the hits from searches, and the first shot at praise goes to him. (Or her, as the case may be.) It just seems right to me.

And yet... there are a few, a very few, times that I was commissioned to write a story. And my policy was to give the commissioner a week to enjoy the finished story themselves before I post it to FA and anywhere else I might send it. After all, they paid for it. If they hadn't, chances are the story wouldn't exist; certainly not from my keyboard, at least! Since they paid, it seems only right that they get at least a little time to have exclusive access to it. Right?

Well, maybe. It doesn't take a genius to realize these two mindsets are kind of contradictory. Either the commissioner should get first dibs on enjoying what they paid for, even posting it to gain praise for it, or the artist/author should get that privilidge. I suppose it speaks well for me that I tend to let the other side that that right, no matter which side of the transaction I'm on, but I've been considering making my policy in this matter more consistent.

But which way should it be? Should the commissioner be allowed to post first, as the one who thought up the work and paid for it? Or should the artist, as the one who actually put in the creative effort?

This is, by the way, not going to be a hard and fast rule. Even if someone commissions me, I wouldn't demand they not post it for a week. Nor would I demand the artist hold back, next time I commission something. This is just a sort of informal survey. Which seems more right to you?

I was thinking of billboards with a countdown timer to November 3, 2020, labeled "Time Until YOU Can Vote Trump Out of Office" and imploring people register. With all the anti-Trump sentiment that bubbled up around his inauguration, I was thinking it might be fun to harness it to fund billboards like that.

Put maybe two in Ohio and two in Florida (because both are swing states), with another in or around DC itself. Even if each is $1,000 per month, it would only cost $240,000 to have them up for all to see for four years. I'm pretty sure I can raise that much on Kickstorter or Indiegogo or something.

So, anyone think I should start pricing out billboards? :)

As I explained in my last journal, I don't think it's going to be as bad as some people seem to think. I just don't think he's going to ruin the country. Still, I'm not expecting him to be one of our better presidents. I could be wrong, but it's a little early to say.

But a lot of people are darn near panicking over Trump's coming presidency. Heck, some people I know are panicking, with no "darn near" about it. So I started wondering, if he really does turn out to be not just bad but despotic, what can we do?

Not a whole lot, actually. Not legally.

We can protest, of course. But that just serves to notify those in charge that we are unhappy with the state of affairs. It's pretty safe to say Trump knows some people aren't pleased at his election. He's not about to step down. So what else can we do?

Um... write our congressmen? Because they are the ones with the power to hold Trump's policies back. Remember that term, "checks and balances"? The people don't impeach a president, Congress does. But with Republicans in control of both houses, it's not exactly likely. He'd have to really step over the line before they do that. It can happen, especially if Trump gets too reactionary too fast, rather than little by little with every step explained and excused away. But, again, I don't expect it.

Maybe you can write your state legislature. If states can defy federal edicts on marijuanna, then they can at least try to do so on other things. Of course, if that happens too much, we no longer have a United States.

I can't think of much else a general civilian can do without stepping outside the law. Way, way outside the law.

Since there's not much that can be done about it - by me, at least - and since I'm less than perfectly convinced he's going to be the disaster some people think he will, I'm not going to panic. And I suggest you do the same.

And I suggest you also stop protesting. We get the point, already.

Wow. It's been a very... surprising week, at least to me.

I had planned for this journal to be about what I thought - and yes, feared - Trump might do as a president. He might try to prosecute Hillary Clinton for her email indiscresions and Benghazi, for instance, despite investigators repeatedly finding nothing to prosecute Or he might tilt government contracts towards companies he owns or is invested in, which would be a rather blatant abuse of power. Or he might "open up" the libel laws, which if worded poorly (and it probably would be) would pretty much gut the right to Free Speech. And remember, there's a seat that needs filling in the US Supreme Court, and another likely will go vacant before he leaves office. If he fills it with somone of similar mindset, or a lackey, such things might be declared legal!

Definitely worrying!

But then he recanted on prosecuting Hillary, saying he's come to realize doing so would be "too divisive." And he says he's having second thoughts on global warming, whereas on the campaign trail he was adamant that it was a hoax.

That doesn't address all the issues I (and others) were worried about, by any means. But it does seem promising. It could well be that his campaign persona was essentially one false front, with Trump simply saying whatever he thought necessary in order to eke out a win. I certainly wouldn't be surprised, and it doesn't exactly make me like him much more. After all, if that's the case then he lied, telling his supporters he would act in one way when he never intended to follow through. There's a word for that, and it is betrayal.

So, on the one hand, he's still not a very pleasant person. He's clearly a "me first" kind of guy, no matter how I try to spin this. His reversals don't address some of the things people are worried over, either. But if he did lie about his beliefs, then chances are that we're seeing his real ones peeking through now, now that he's already elected.

So, originally, I was going to warn people to brace themselves for possibly the worst president ever. And that includes George Jr. Now, though... I just don't know what to expect. He still could turn into a self-serving monster willing to use his position to gain power and money for himself without care for anyone else or the welfare of the country as a whole. He could. Or he could reveal himself to be far more moderate than anyone would have guessed.

I simply, honestly, truly do not know what to expect from him, anymore. But my fingers are crossed.

My first thought upon learning who will be our next President was that the stupidity of the American electorate apparently is impossible to underestimate. On second thought, however, I decided that Americans simply didn't learn from the Brexit. I'm pretty sure that a lot of people weren't so much voting for Trump as they were voting against Hillary, or against professional politicians in general. Protest votes are okay, but they only work if they come close to winning. They're supposed to show that you want this person out of office, and you're willing to put almost anyone in there in their place. Even someone who isn't really qualified. If they actually win... well, they're as legally binding as any other vote, and you just elected that unqualified boob.

I don't know that's true, but it makes me feel better to think so.

That said... it's been over a week, now, and I've had time to give the matter still further attention. I'm dividing my thoughts into three posts. In this one, I'm going to go down what I think the consequences are going to be. This particular post isn't meant to be what we can expect from Trump as president; this is stuff that I think will come to pass simply because he won the election.

1. Hillary Clinton's presidential asperations are done. And possibly her chances at any lower office, as well. She lost to someone who is not a politician; who is a blatant bigot, hypocrite, and fearmonger; who just plain doesn't play by the rules of politics or, really, polite society. If she lost against him, her chances of ever winning are nil.

2. Don't expect that tax loophole to be closed. If Hillary had won, then whatever tax law he used to avoid paying taxes for the last however-long-it's-been would probably have been closed. It might even have been made so he'd have to pay back taxes on it. As it is, though, his election shows that people didn't care enough to take him to task over it. And with Trump himself in the White House and his party in control of Congress, any legislation to close that hole isn't going to go anywhere.

3. Expect American politics to get much nastier. After all, it's been shown that it works. People apparently will forgive some things now that in the past would absolutely kill a campaign. It's possible that this is a one-time thing -- that protest vote again -- but that won't be assured until people reject the next candidate who has an ugly past and runs an ugly campaign. So for the next few elections -- at least the next few, mind you -- expect some very unconventional candidates to run with some very unconventional campaigns. And if they win, too... oh dear.

4. There will be a resurgence of the Right Wing. Being a major businessman, and being elected on a campaign based on repealing Obamacare and deporting and nonadmittance of a select group of people, right-wing politicians are going to feel empowered. And they probably should.

5. Congress is largely going to rubber-stamp Trump's policies. This is the only one on this list I'd label as probable, not all-but-certain. A lot of Republicans were against Trump as he ran, thanks to what he was saying on the campaign trail, but now that he's won a lot of them are going to decide that was a mistake. They're going to do what they can to show they can be trusted, that they're good Party members, and they'll do that by approving of much of what he does. And with Republicans are in charge of both houses of Congress, that means a lot of what Trump says is going to go through unchallenged.

The reason this is not as certain is that some of what Trump has proposed is really, really out there, as far as American policy is concerned. It's possible some of it might be outrageous enough to make even his fellow party members realize it's a bad idea. But there's already people who derided Trump being proposed for his cabinet, and presumably they knew about it beforehand and didn't turn it down. Other Republicans who were against him before the election are quoted as saying they "trust his judgment". So I'm far from certain Trump will face much opposition from Congress to his proposals.

6. It's going to be an interesting four years. Not necessarily a good four years. But certainly interesting.


My next post will, hopefully, be my thoughts on what Trump may or may not do as President.

A few weeks back I finally got a smartphone to replace my old clamshell dumbphone. There are a lot of pros and cons with upgrading like this, I've found. Here are some of them:

Pro: Welcome to 2010.
Con: Dammit, I was still getting a handle on 2005.

Pro: Customizable wallpapers! Ringtones! Icons! Everything!
Con: The free ones suck, and to good ones cost. Ugh.

Pro: A touch-sensitive screen makes selecting things so much easier than a d-pad.
Con: I've already butt-dialed 911 once and taken innumerable pictures of the inside of my pocket (fyi, it's dark).

Pro: I can play games at work now! Real games!
Con: I have discovered the "fun" of games designed for microtransactions.


No doubt more is waiting to be discovered, on both sides of this little equasion. In general I love the capabilities, but it does take some getting used to.

Someone needs to make a movie titled "Rated G" and then make sure it gets rated R.

I hope you read that in a gravelly, nasally, Darkwing Duck-esque voice. I really do. :)

Donald Trump Jr. - the Republican presidential candidate's campaign manager and son - recently posted a tweet comparing Syrian refugees to Skittles. In case you haven't heard about it by now, it goes as follows: "If I had a bowl of Skittles and I told you just three would kill you. Would you take a handful? That's our Syrian refugee problem."

A lot of people have jumped on him for posting that. Not for bad grammar (though there's that cardinal sin as well, here) but for racism. They say he's demeaning the people by comparing them to candy, that the crisis is a humanitarian issue, that the tweet shows "white supremacist overtones."

I think that's true, though less true than the media is making it out to be. It's a metaphor, and looked at as a metaphor, it has a point.

The problem is, it's a BAD metaphor. And if you alter it so it's a good metaphor, you'll see how invalid that point really is.

Let's take a look at a few things. A bowl of Skittles like the one in the picture Jr. tweeted contains... I dunno. 100 Skittles? But Obama wants the USA to take in 10,000 refugees. That's 100 bowls. But you can't just scale up the number of deadly candies; claiming that we'd let in 300 terrorists, or potential terrorist, is ridiculous. The TSA and Homeland Security can hardly claim to be 100% accurate, but they're not that incompetent. For that matter, there probalby wouldn't be 300 terrorists who even try. So I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say that 3 should be raised to... 10. 10 Skittles out of 10,000 will kill you. Would you grab a handful?

But wait. We're not done. Because there's a bigger audience than just you. America has a pretty large population, after all. So you're not the only one taking candy out of the bowl. Let's make it so you take one Skittle - just one - and you pass the bowl around. 10,000 Skittles. 10,000 people. You have a .1% chance of choosing one of the bad ones. Which, in this analogy, means that one of the terrorist-refugees has settled near you and targeted where you live or work for his next bomb. I rather suspect the chances of that are much lower than that - America is big. But, whatever.

Still, 10,000 people took a Skittle. That means someone is going to die! Ten people, in fact! We can't have that!

Not so fast. 10 people might die. But a lot of terrorist attacks fail. Just look at the recent attacks in New York and New Jersey. What was it, 3 bombs? 5? Only two went off, and one of them was under the auspices of a bomb-squad robot at the time. The one in the dumpster exploded like it was supposed to, but although it injured 20 or 30 people it killed none of them. And other attacks get busted, or the terrorists blow themselves up with their own devices. These are not professionals, people.

So, for our analogy, 10 people will eat bad candy. But some of them will sniff it first, and throw it away. Some will vomit it up before it does much. Some will get sick, but not fatally. And yes, one, maybe two of those of people might actually die.

That means your chances of actually dying from that bowl of Skittles is .01% to .02%. Would you take a handful?

Don't answer yet! Because you have to remember that this is just an analogy. Each of those Skittles represents a real person. A refugee, in fact, fleeing war, poverty, disease. Trying to evade persecution, torture, and death. Not all of them would die if they'd remained in Syria, but a good many probably would. And even for those that would survive, I do hope you don't try to claim their lives would be better there than here in America. People don't flee their homes and apply for refugee status when things are just a little tough.

Which means you can save 9,990 lives. Nearly ten thousand lives will be immensely, immeasurably improved by your actions. All for just a .02% chance (and probably less) of being killed. Now would you take a handful?

You know what?

I think I would.

A few weeks ago, I sent a question in to one of those write-in reporters. The Straight Dope, however, doesn't offer etiquette or relationship advice, or even mechanical help. You can ask them any kind of question that has, or might have, a factual answer. Obviously, the main reporter, Cecil, doesn't answer every question; there's only one article a week.

And this week's (June 24) turned out to be the one I asked.

So, if you're interested, check out the article here. I was educated and entertained, and very happy in general about the whole thing. :)

All my picture commissions are up on FA, now. Well, all I can find; I'm pretty sure there's two or three I have that are missing. And there's one that I just bought but hasn't actually been made yet, so that one's obviously not here. Still.

So the next step is to upload the stories I've written. I've been going through my little library (emphasis, alas, on "little") and will be adding those to my gallery shortly. Thing is, I'm not going to upload anything that is a gross self-insertion story. Most of them use my real name, and the few that don't seem... pretentious. And there's a handful of stories that I feel are actually capable of selling, if I can find the right magazine or editor; I'm not about to upload those here. So there's actually only a few stories that I've written and are comfortable uploading here. Sorry about that.

Feel free to comment on them. If they're bad, I want to know why and how to improve, and if they're good, you'll be stroking my ego. I win, either way. So please, let me know what you think!

Ok, so I've been on FA for years. And all this time I've used it to find art and fave it or save it. But I hadn't submitted a thing. I am not an artist, after all. I'm also something of a technophile, and learning the ins and outs of the uploading and linking system, frankly, was a touch intimidating.

But I've decided to bite the bullet and learn. So I've started to upload my old stuff. My old stories, the commissions I've, well, commissioned, and so on. And to start it off I've uploaded a badge I had done years back, of one of my alternate characters. Why not a picture of myself, or at least my main actual character, Xodiac the Dragote?

Just stupid, I guess.

So, let's get some actual content in this thing!