Rain, Rain, Friday 5

1. What type of mood are you generally in on a rainy day? Usually hopeful. Often this is due to a lifting of the sinus-busting pressure before the rain. I love the ozone smell after a thunderstorm especially, and I'm sure the groovy ions in the atmosphere feed into that.

2. What are your favorite things to do when the weather is gloomy? Curl up with tea or cocoa and a good book, or an arty movie I've been meaning to watch.

3. Have you ever been kissed in the rain? (I'm assuming you don't mean by my kids.... ;-) No. But I'm certain I would like that a lot!

4. After the rain stops, do you continue what you were doing, or do you run outside to do something else? Hm. I used to run out and splash in the puddles, but it's been a while since I had rain boots. Splashing barefoot, while something I like to do, is not that good and example for my kids at present. I worry about broken glass or other hazards.

5. What is your favorite drink/food to have when it's raining outside? The aforementioned cocoa or tea.

Jury Duty

In today's mail, I just received my third "Juror Qualification Questionnaire" in the last 8 years.

The first one came when I was pregnant with my first child. I got a deferment of service so I wouldn't be sitting for jury duty while my daughter was less than 6 months old and exclusively nursing, which was the plan. I still had to get child care and plan other things to be able to go when I *was* scheduled. I went to a half-day of sitting around in a room at the courthouse, but did not get on a jury.

The second one came when I was pregnant with my second child. Again, when I got the actual summons, I asked for a deferment for reasons of childcare issues and also to avoid conflicting with my class schedule (I was a grad student in CS by that time). Not that you have to give a reason for the deferment request. That time, my number was not on the taped message they have you call the weekend before you're due to serve, so I didn't even have to go sit in a room for half a day.

If I'm pregnant now, I don't know it, and, in fact, I'd be pretty damn surprised. In all this time, my husband has not received a single jury duty qualification thingy. Are they skewing this for women somehow, on the theory that tapping women for jury duty is less disruptive to the economy because lots of women are SAHMs? If that's why, it's utter BS and would piss me off. But I guess it *could* be totally random, or maybe even related to the fact that I responded/showed up before, so I would likely be compliant about showing up again. In any case, J and I were laughing a lot about my receiving yet another questionnaire.

I wouldn't mind being on a jury. I'd find it really interesting, I expect. I'm a geek that way.