Annunciation | NOLA

Second day of September and first day of Criminal Court jury duty. I was feeling nervous this morning. Didn’t know what to expect. Wasn’t that bad, just boring. You feel like cattle though. I entered through the main entrance but I think we can enter through a back entrance. I walked up the stair through the front where you have to put your belonging in an x-ray machine and go through a metal detector. Then down an ancient elevator to the basement. The holding pen, oops, I mean jury lounge, is a huge, windowless room full of chairs. You check in then take a seat. There’s a display on the wall that show how many courts are left for the day. There are 12 courts and we started at 8. The first pool of 25 people got called, left the lounge and then promptly returned because something had been canceled. It weird sitting there listening to them call out the names, waiting in anticipation to see if you are going to hear your name or not. They do provide coffee and tea and there’s a small kitchen with a microwave and refrigerator. I was getting stir crazy and around 11:00 took a trip to the snack bar on the first floor. I brought snacks but really just wanted to walk around. You have to sign out on a list so they can find you if they need to. You can also go outside for a smoke break. Councilman Arnie Fielkow is in my group. He said he was trying to get out of it. I was standing next to him so I asked jokingly “You’re not exempt?” and he said no. He got to wait with the rest of us. He moved over to the other waiting room, the quiet room where you aren’t supposed to talk. I main room has 2 TVs and I’m not a fan of daytime TV. It’s not bad if you aren’t seated close to them. I passed time on Facebook, checking email – there is free Wi-Fi, which is good because you can’t get much of a signal down there. Listened to a business podcast I’ve wanted to listen to for a month now. Trying to do some constructive stuff with my time. One woman was knitting. There’s a good way to past the time. Too bad I don’t know how. My name didn't get called and we got released around noon. Never been so happy to go to work.