Jury Dummy

Sometimes the brain really doesn't want to cooperate... back in December I received a summons for jury duty in March. I was originally supposed to go to Middlesex Superior Court in Woburn (the one that used to be in the tall, ugly building near Lechmere). It is possible to get there by bus, but I was afraid that I would not be able to make it by the 8 am start time.

I went online and petitioned for reassignment to Malden District Court, which is a mile or so from our house. I figured if it was nice enough I could walk, or at worst catch a bus over to Malden Center. My request was granted within 24 hours, but it caused the date to move up a few weeks, into late March. I made a note in my calendar that my jury duty date was March 29th.

Except it wasn't. Yesterday I was filling out my juror questionnaire, and noticed that it said I was supposed to go on March 22nd. I looked at the email I had received last week, and it said the same thing. Somehow my brain changed the 22nd to the 29th back in December, and since that's what I had put into my calendar it kept getting reinforced each time I looked at it.

A call this morning to the office of the jury commissioner quickly rectified the situation; I have a new date to appear, at the end of April. The clerk's general tone implied that others have made this sort of blunder before me.

Brain Fail

Middle-age forgetfulness is creeping up on me in earnest. Today I discovered that I left my phone charger at the hotel. It's inductive, which means you don't have to actually plug it into the phone; the phone's back rests against the face of the charger and is held in place by little magnets. That's cool and all, but it also makes it easier to forget about. I picked up the phone off the desk in the room and ignored the charger.

I called the hotel, but they didn't have it. Housekeeping probably just thought, "another stupid tourist forgot their charger" and threw it away. Fortunately, my phone has been discontinued, and a quick look at the Verizon web site showed that I could get a replacement for only $10, which is interesting because direct from HP (Palm) it's $70. Guess which one I chose?

Bonus embarrassment: when we left my mom's last night after picking up the dog, I left my phone on the kitchen counter, but realized that after we'd been on 95 for only a few minutes.