First, there’s the continuing juggle of jury duty and my current job.  That continues to be a challenge, though it hasn’t been as bad as I might have expected and being unavailable for much of the day frankly shields me from a lot of the bullshit.  But it still means I spend time early in the morning and late afternoon on my laptop, as well as throughout the day on my BlackBerry, responding to messages.  And there is some down time – like the last two afternoons, where I don’t  have to be at the trial.

Did you notice my use of the word “current” in the previous paragraph?  That of course implies there’s a “future” job, and there is.  I’ve accepted a new position – same employer, different department.  Or, as I say in my more cynical moments “same circus, different tent.”  Cynicism aside, I’m very excited for it and looking forward to a new challenge and a new team.

But February (and part of March) stands between me and the new job.  With jury duty likely going well into February, and my vacation to Nicaragua running from March 1-13, it doesn’t make sense to start any sooner than that, and since HR likes to switch people over at the beginning of a pay period, it means my start date will be March 19.  So, a few days to wrap up when I get back from Central America, and I’m off to the races with the new gig.

The new gig will be back in downtown Oakland, which means I may spend more time in the office than telecommuting, though I suppose it’ll depend on what’s going on in the office. Much of the new team is scattered throughout different offices, so we’ll have to see how much in-office time is absolutely needed.  Still, as I start to get to know folks and my new role, it’ll make sense to be around in person.

I will get a chance to meet more of my new colleagues next week as I sneak off to Disneyland for the two-day offsite staff meeting.  Through an amazing stroke of good fortune, the two days I have off from jury duty next week coincide with those dates.  Even though I can’t start for another month, it’ll be nice to begin the orientation process.

So, yes, I was selected.  The trial is a long one, partly due to the fact that it is a complex, serious criminal case, and partly due to the fact that (unlike in television and the movies) the criminal justice system in the real world moves at what sometimes seems a glacially slow pace.

To wit – the jury selection process.  Panel C (yes, there were panels A, and B as well) arrived on a Thursday morning at 8:30.  At around 10:00 we were called into the courtroom where the basics of the case were announced, and we were asked if we had any hardship exemptions (fitting into a narrow set of categories).  Those who did were allowed to hang out and plead their case, those who did not (or whose exemptions were not granted) were sent back to the main jury assembly room to fill out a 20+ page questionnaire.

We all returned on Monday afternoon, at which point a few more folks were dismissed based on information in their questionnaires.  Sum total of time spent was about 45 minutes.  We were asked to return the following morning.

The next day, what was left of panels A, B, and C (about 100 people) then entered the formal voir dire process.  Twelve people were called to the jury box, and the judge began the process of questioning each person, one by one.  If something in the responses indicated a bias, the person was dismissed, and a new person was called, and that person was then questioned.  This went on until the judge had 12 people in the jury box who he felt were not biased.  I was the last of the people to be seated in this way.

At this point, the attorneys had a chance to ask questions of the jurors.  Each of them went through a list of questions, then they were given a chance to dismiss for cause, or to make peremptory challenges.  Several jurors were eliminated through this process, as each was dismissed, a new person was brought up, and the questioning process (first from the judge, then by the attorneys) started again for each new person, until finally there were twelve jurors and no requests to dismiss.

Then we repeated the same process to get the alternate jurors.  The entire voir dire/selection process took two full days. Since they’d allotted another day to select the jury, and Fridays are often off (judge attends to other business), and Monday was a holiday, we returned the following Tuesday to start the actual trial.

This was last week.  The schedule only had us in court on Tuesday and Wednesday, with Thursday and Friday as planned off days, but since the judge was sick on Wednesday, we all showed up… and were sent right back home.

Starting tomorrow, we’re supposed to have five straight days.  Of course, even “full days” aren’t that full.  We arrive at 9:30, are dismissed for lunch from 12:00-1:30, and are dismissed at 4:30.  There’s at least one break (of about 15 minutes) in the morning and in the afternoon, though often there are more breaks.  Each break, the jury has to file in and out, and retreat to the jury deliberation room.  Often, the breaks go over by a few minutes, so overall, the actual time in the courtroom is less.

I’m not sure I’d wish the days to be longer – time in the courtroom is exhausting.  Having to stay as mentally focused as we do and listen to complex arguments and testimony is exhausting, but at the same time, part of me wishes that the days could be somehow made more efficient so that we had to show up for fewer of them.

Meanwhile, I’m doing my best to keep up with my job in the early mornings, and via BlackBerry during the day. I could also bring my laptop (there’s wifi available) but so far I’ve been able to keep up with what I need to by emailing on the BlackBerry and joining a few calls here and there.  It’s one less thing for me to schlep back and forth each day, too!

The weather’s been (mostly) great, so it’s been nice to leave the courthouse at lunch and go out to the picnic tables out back, or to sit on a bench or in the grass closer to Lake Merritt.  This week’s weather will be a bit more iffy, but hopefully I can get out and get some fresh air anyway.  Plus, it’s close enough to walk (about a 30 minute walk), so I’ll get the morning and afternoon time outside.

The jury room is cozy for the 16 of us, but comfortable enough, with private bathrooms for the jurors (much better than being out in the public areas, where the bathrooms are woefully small for the number of people using them), plus a water cooler, fridge, microwave, and coffee maker.  At least that makes it easier to bring a lunch!

Fortunately, I’ve offset that by excellent eating of late, though I think I’m a little tired as my body adjusts back to a steady supply of meat & veggies without all the other crap.  Hopefully I’m settling into that now.

I’m also settling into the routine of jury duty, which means I try to do my job early in the morning and late afternoon at home, and on the Blackberry during jury breaks.  After three days (two partial, one full) we’re still in the jury selection process.  As of now I’m on the jury, BUT (big but) the attorneys haven’t even taken their first shot at eliminating people.  Based on what I know about the case so far, I suspect the DA would love to have me, and the defense attorney won’t love me.  So we’ll see if I’m right and the defense attorney tells me to go bye-bye.  If he doesn’t … well, the next six to eight weeks of my life just got much more complicated.  It’s supposed to go till mid to late February, and the judge has assured me that I will be able to go to Nicaragua on March 1, even if I’m selected.  So we’ll see how this week plays out.

It was a slowish year skydiving for me, which was okay.  It was an up-and-down year health & fitness wise (and yeah, I’m focused on that right now because a couple small but nagging injuries have had me pretty inactive for the last three weeks). Professionally it was more of the same, though I did get a promotion, other than the salary bump and the change in title, nothing much changed in my day-to-day life.  Working on possibly changing that in 2012; stay tuned.

Oddly, for someone who has generally tried to consume less and buy less (do I really need X, Y, or Z?), 2011 may be remembered for three purchases: 1) The RV, 2) my freezer (and its contents – a 1/4 cow and 1/2 hog) and 3) my food processor.  The former made our year’s big boogie experiences more pleasant, and the latter two have made it so much easier to make good choices food-wise (not that I always have, mind you, but they do make it easier!).  In fact, I just made up my first batch of sauerkraut using the food processor.  We’ll see how it turns out – I put in cabbage, carrots, onion, and fennel (all from my CSA box this week).  Yum!

Overall, though, 2011 was a good one, and I’m looking forward to lots of positive things in 2012.

I got in 14 jumps at the boogie, two each the first two days, and five each on the second two days.  The first day it took me a while to get motivated, and the second day I would have jumped more but winds picked up pretty early in the day and I much preferred sitting on the ground and watching others fight the winds.  Still, other than the one windy afternoon, and chilly mornings, we couldn’t have asked for better weather (and the weather looks great for the rest of the week as the boogie finishes out).

Just as we did two years ago, we found that we really enjoyed the quieter pace of the early part of the boogie, before the dropzone fills up with the post-Christmas crowds.  The first two days, I don’t think there was ever more than one plane flying; by day three there were two planes for some of the day, and by our final day, there were three planes turning loads all day.  It’ll probably be like that or even busier the rest of the week, since not only is the boogie going on, but the USPA Collegiate championships are going on as well.

With those 14 jumps (assuming no jumping on Saturday, that is), I end the year with 853 jumps total.  At only 66 jumps this year, it was one of my slowest in quite a while, but considering I didn’t get back in the air till April after my injury, I guess it’s not so bad.  After 2010′s 191 jumps, maybe I needed a slow year.  Hoping to pick up the pace again next year.

So far next year, we’ve only got one big trip planned – the Boogie in Nicaragua, but it promises to be a great one.  In considering our travel insurance options, it’s only a slight difference in price to buy insurance for one trip vs. the entire year, so we’re buying for a full year.  Maybe it’ll motivate us to do some more cool international travel before the 12 months are up!  Of course, like all insurance, we hope not to have to use it at all, but it’s good for peace of mind.  In fact, at the boogie this past week, I caught up with my friend who had hurt himself in Lodi a couple years ago.  He filled us in on his recovery – it took a  five months before he was fully recovered, and he wound up having to have surgery in San Francisco before going home to Norway.  His private insurance covered everything, including a special medical flight home.  We’re purchasing similarly generous insurance (which has no exclusions for skydiving, of course!).  It’ll be nice to not have to worry about that part if we do have to deal with an injury abroad.

They’re definitely important in the kind of work I do.  Whether as an internal or external consultant, I’m typically in a client-facing role.  In my current job, I spend a lot of time running interference between parties, getting people who don’t always talk to each other to not only talk to each other, but have real communication.  That takes trust, it takes openness, and it takes valuing and maintaining those relationships.  There’s a little bit of playing politics as well, but if the relationships are strong enough, it’s a lot easier to withstand the politics (or even ignore it).

I’m not sure I really have a profound ending to this post, but I did have that moment of clarity today when I had a conversation about my future that could have been highly political, but because of a strong relationship I have, was instead highly personal.  That’s the way it should be.

I don’t inherently love cooking.  For a long time, if I didn’t have a recipe, I didn’t make it.  Well, there were probably a few exceptions, but those were typically really simple things like frying an egg, making a hamburger, or the like.  Generally if there were more than a couple ingredients, I needed specific steps, proportions, and instructions.

But lately I’ve been breaking from the confines of recipes more and more often and having an absolute blast doing it (and discovering all kinds of fun and tasty things in the process).  Getting a CSA produce delivery from Farm Fresh to You has inspired me.  Getting something in my box that I have no idea how to use can often prompt me to search for recipes online.  Sometimes I won’t have everything for the recipe, but I can look at the ingredients and think “I can improvise” – and I do.  The more I get to know different ingredients and flavors, the more I have a good sense for what can be substituted for what, and the more I’m willing to experiment.

I’ve been getting pretty creative with breakfasts, especially.  Instead of the same thing every day – scrambled eggs with cheese and a side of meat, I’ve taken to considering the eggs as a base for all kinds of interesting experimentation.  Today, for example, I had scrambled eggs with arugula pesto (homemade), spinach, and a side of sauerkraut (along with some bacon).  Another new favorite is fried eggs over roasted sweet potatoes.  I’ve been known to take a carnitas burrito leftover from the burrito shop in Davis, empty out the insides into a pan, and scramble them with eggs.  Really, eggs are often just the binder for other good stuff.

My latest thing that I’m getting pretty good at is roasting a whole chicken.  For some reason I’d always thought it difficult, or not worth the trouble and if I wanted a roast chicken, I’d just buy one.  But as I became more sensitive to the quality of my food, and realized what’s in the supermarket chickens, I decided I probably ought to learn.  Once I started making my birds this way, I’ll never go back.  Super easy, and very delicious (I don’t even bother with the thyme!).  And of course, whole chicken is cheaper than buying individual parts, and one chicken makes four nice meals.

Today I was looking for a particular recipe and I went through my pile of recipes I’d printed out and found some great ones – many of which I haven’t ever made before.  Now I’ve got all kinds of new ideas to try!

So as we creep up on Thanksgiving and my 41st birthday (when did that happen?) this week, things I’m thankful for:

•  The people in my life. Yes, yes, it’s cliche, but I really do have some good ones.
• That we’ll have a family Thanksgiving this year for the first time in a while.  Mom & Dad will be here for a few days on their way to a far east adventure.
• That I not only have the luxury of spending an obscene amount of money for a heritage turkey (still smarting a little from that one), but also that I don’t have to worry in any way about putting food on the table (or in the cat’s bowl), or really about any of my needs, basic or extravagant.  I know that not everyone has that freedom, and for that I’m grateful.
• Which ties into my job … frustrating though it may be to me at times, I am thankful for it.  I’m thankful for the stability, and I’m thankful for the income and the benefits, I’m thankful that it’s helping me set myself up well for retirement.
• I’m thankful for my body and my health; though I don’t always take perfect care of it (the occasional junk food binge still happens from time to time), I’m thankful that I’m able to take the time and resources to take care of it; like putting mostly excellent, unprocessed foods in it, and being able to afford to have fun workouts (which make it a lot easier to push my body to more optimal conditioning).  Even though sometimes I feel every one of my 41 years, I hope I’ve got another 41 (or more) in me.
• I’m thankful that on most days, the worst thing I have to deal with is someone cutting me off in traffic, or someone annoying me at work, or something equally meaningless.  I know that’s not always the case, and I’m grateful for every day when that’s as bad as it gets, and I’m grateful to be able to continue to maintain a healthy perspective on that.

The cow is coming from a friend’s family’s small ranch in Marin County and we are going to try to make that delivery happen this week.  That was a real treat to find out they had the meat available, as I was planning to buy from a commercial source.  It’ll be nice to save a bit per pound and get it from a friend!  The pork will come from Full of Life Farm; I’ve placed my order and it’s due to be ready for pickup on December 17.  Finally, I ordered a Thanksgiving turkey from Prather Ranch, which sells at my local farmer’s market.  It’ll be ready to pick up there the Saturday before Thanksgiving, which will give it plenty of time to thaw before the big day.

Just as my bi-weekly deliveries from Farm Fresh To You have challenged me to be more creative with vegetables, I anticipate these purchases will also challenge me.  I’ll have to learn to prepare cuts of meat that I’ve never even purchased before, which should actually be a lot of fun!  I’m really excited about this new adventure.

It brought me back to two times this summer when I had the exact opposite experience – of being so far in the middle of nowhere with crystal clear skies and I saw parts of the night sky that in my city life I never get a chance to see.  The first was at Lost Prairie – looking up to see a field of stars broader and deeper than I’ve seen before.

The next was even more surreal – waking up in the middle of the night on my first or second night on the Grand Canyon rafting trip.  I awoke and saw a light so bright and focused that my first thought was that someone near me in camp was up and shining a bright flashlight.  As I slipped back into consciousness, I realized it wasn’t an artificial light after all, but the moon – clearer and brighter than any moon I’d ever seen.  With absolutely no light pollution and not a cloud around, the moon’s light was entirely different from any in my experience.  The moon that night was just past full; those who’d been on the trip longer said that the night of the full moon, some were having trouble sleeping because of the brightness in the night sky.

I’m still attached to my urban life, but it’s great every so often to get that far away from civilization and see the world as it used to be.