Jury duty sure was interesting.

I was impaneled and served a total of 4 days on what turned out to be primarily a drug trial. The indictments were:

• Assault & Battery
• Drug Trafficking (Crack cocaine)
• Drug Trafficking in a school zone

The long and short of it was that the accused got into an argument with his girlfriend and took the car they had and drove off to her apartment. She called up a friend and went to get back the car (and her house keys and purse, which were in the car). When they got there, he was coming out.

The friend (who was, to say the least, a big girl) grabbed at the guy and eventually began hitting him across the face (splitting his eyebrow). Since they were struggling, the girlfriend called outside for security, and after a brief chase, the accused was tackled and cuffed. While they hoisted him the ground, 33-odd grams of very pure crack cocaine popped out from his waistband.

At the end of listening to the trial and deliberating - the defendant was found guilty of the two drug charges. It was basically a king's random of crack - and much purer than one would find on the street.

After we delivered our verdict, the judge came up and talked with us to answer questions. What we learned however was that when he was picked up, he not only had a history of other (lesser) drug charges, but he was also out on bail at the time for a murder 1 indictment. W00t! We gave him another extra set of years.

Thanksgiving was short, but thank God it was only a couple of hours away in CT. On the way home, we picked up a Christmas tree and on Saturday the 25th spent most of the day decorating.

The rest of the last week went pretty good - back to work and getting into the swing of things. Its not all too dissimilar to working at NIS in terms of the type of work, but it does seem a little bit more laid back. Perhaps it will pick up once I get settled in. Either way, it seems like a pretty good job.

This weekend we had ourselves a Holiday/Housewarming/Birthday Party. We spent much of the day yesterday making food and getting the place looking presentable. A good deal of our closest friends came over and we had tons of food and drink and had a great time. I got a few birthday & housewarming gifts, but since a few of them are best understood as inside jokes, I am not going belabor it. Needless to say, there was much laughter and merriment and we all went through a bottle of port on top of everything else, after the meal.

Cleaned up and relaxed most of the day. Nothing altogether too interesting... except for the fact Blogger is working for a change.