My last three blog posts

My last 3 blog posts have NO comments. None at all. Throw me a friggin' bone here, people. Isn't the point of blogging to share a bunch of stupid stories with people and then have them comment on said stupid stories? Do my stories need to get stupider? More stupid? Stupid-endous? Stupidtacular? I feel like they are getting stupider by the second... I can feel the stupid.

Fun stuff from Jury Duty

So it was a couple of weeks ago that I went to jury duty. Iv'e pretty much told everyone about the facts of the case and how it turned out. So I'm going to post a few things that I thought were interesting about the whole experience.

Some interesting names of people in my jury pool:
Quintas
Robota (yes, as in "domo arigato, Mrs. Robota, domo domo....)
And Melinda, the baliff.

The jury sits in a slightly raised seating area, on the side of the courtroom. There are two rows of chairs, with a small wall separating the jury seating area from the courtroom floor. I found it highly amusing that someone had carved graffiti on the inside of that wall from the jury seats! Someone had been so bored during a trial that they pulled out their car keys and started carving on the wall! (There are no pocket knives or any sharp objects allowed into the building so I figure they did it with car keys.)

Our judge was an older man, who had come out of retirement to help with the case overload in Arapahoe county. (Talk about an overload, the case I was on was already 2 years old....) He was a very astute judge, who was spot on with the information on the case and was very sharp. I did find it amusing though that it looked like he was asleep during most of the trial. He would lean back in his chair, and look out through the bottom of his eyelids through his glasses. Just when I was convinced he would start snoring, one of the lawyers would object to something and he would instantly take care of it.

Couple of things I learned:
The state does provide enough coffee for everyone. (In both the jury selection room and in the actual jurors deliberation room)
They do NOT provide food. (muffins, doughnuts, etc.)
Your job is required by law to pay you for at least 3 days worth of jury duty. After that, the government will pay you $50 dollars a day....I'm still waiting for my $50 check!

Castlewood Canyon

So I live on the Southeast end of the Denver Metro area. I really liked it when I lived on the west side of town, becuase I was close to the foothills and plenty of good hiking. But, I don't, so I either have to drive accross town, or find somewhere near me to hike. I have heard of a place called Castlewood Canyon, which is near Parker. (about 15 miles from my place.)

So last weekend I took a drive there to check it out. The closer I got to the park, I realized that it is far enough out of town and is down inside a nice canyon with pine trees and cool rock formations. As I drove up to the gate, I rolled down my window to pay my entry fee (its a state park, which was kind of a downer...) and the Ranger at the gate had a bullsnake wrapped around her neck! I said" Hi! How much do I owe?" She said "6 dollars." I said, "Ok, do you know you have a snake around your neck?" She laughed and said"Yes, this is Sid. He's super nice." I quickly said goodbye to the Ranger and Sid and drove in to find a parking space.

I found a spot near one of the trails and just started to walk. It was a 4 mile loop so I figured that was perfect for what I wanted to do. The trail was nice, relatively unkept (which was nice) and had plenty of shade with the big pine trees. The trail wrapped down into the canyon, and ran away from Parker Road. It actually went far enough so I couldn't hear the traffic and was really starting to have a nice outdoor experience. It's about at this point, that I something caught my eye, so I stopped to take a look....it was a deer leg just off the trail. Now, I have seen carcases of animals before and they don't really bother me. But what really caught my attention, was that this particular leg was completely cleaned of all meat. Stripped raw. And, the rest of the deer body wasn't anywhere nearby..... so something had taken this leg and dragged it over by the trail to eat it...

If there was any doubt that I was actually having a good outdoor experience, it was now gone. I continued hiking for a couple more miles and then came back. I didn't see any wild life except for birds and squirrels. But the hike was nice, the views were great and Sid was a nice snake. I will definetely head over there again.

Slacking

Yes I'm slacking with the blogs. Yes I went hiking at Castlewood Canyon this last weekend and want to post about it. Yes Iv'e been through two days of jury duty and want to post about it. No I'm not going to do it now. Thanks.