Doing The Duty

My civic obligations caught up with me today...



All in all, it wasn't the worst jury duty experience I've ever had. It actually went pretty smoothly this time, and I was out by early afternoon. They had an informative video on the courtroom process playing on the tv that actually wasn't too bad. And I was front row center when famed Judge Constance Sweeney came out to talk to the jury pool for a few minutes. She seemed like a pretty nice lady, and urged us to come up and say hi if we ran into her in the hallway during the day. But there's a detectable sternness in her eyes, that told me I'd hate to be on the wrong end of a lawsuit, with her looking down from the bench.

Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera with me, as they screen everyone coming in, like at an airport, and I doubted they'd let me bring a camera into the court building. It's too bad, because there's a good perspective of the downtown towers and buildings right from the entrance area that would have made great pictures.

Having much of the afternoon left, I took advantage of the time to get some tasks done, including getting the ol' Jeep some badly needed new tires. That was an outlay I could have done without, but couldn't be put off any longer. Grabbing the camera en-route though, I took a couple sky pics. These smooth-edged 'lenticular' clouds are evidence of high winds in the upper altitudes:



It occured to me it's been a while since I snapped a sunset...



As darkness fell I decided to break in the new tires with a quick run up to Northampton for a coffee.



It's pretty cool how this tattoo parlor is in front of a big window on the 2nd floor, displaying the work being done. Kind of goes along with it's name, 'Living Art Studio'.



I never got a tat, mainly because I could never decide what I'd want imprinted on me for the rest of my days. Kelly's got a nice one. I'm not sure if I'll ever get one now though; it's become so common, it's almost at a point where not having a tattoo is becoming a statement...