Planning The Unpredictable » Travel

Jury Duty

nina — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 03:10:05 +0000

I had jury duty the last two days. I was thrilled and wanted nothing more than to be on a trial. The way it works is, your name gets assigned to a group with a number. The first 12 people in the group are in the jury until otherwise. Today I made the cut at 12. I was *thrilled*. It was a civil case, aka lawsuit involving a motor vehicle accident. The defense admitted to guilt but they didn’t admit to any damages from the accident. That is why we were there.

Anyway, the first question was – How did we feel when we heard what this case was about? Being the observant person that I am, I noticed the injured party was not in the court room. I said I was curious about what happened and how injured they were. Only a couple others shared this view with me though. I thought that was very odd.

I believe my jury experience was essentially over at that point. 80% of the others thought most lawsuits were a waste of time/money. They thought they were stupid. They thought they needed to cap the rewards. And then someone brought up the McDonald’s case. Multiple people said that it was frivolous and that the women needed to talk some personal responsibility.

I am all for personal responsibility but McDonald’s needed to take some too. The coffee was 180-190 degrees. The woman had third degree burns from the coffee. I of course said something about this. I guess that was a mistake also.

Anyway, I was the first person tossed off the jury. There was another person that was kept on the jury and he wasn’t able to complete a sentence. He also looked like he was straight out of jail which is possible because he raised his hand when he said he didn’t like the justice system.

I think I would have been very fair. I am a pretty factual based person. I can see both sides to it.

Oh well, I fail. Fired from jury duty.

A trip to the ocean…

nina — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 07:05:04 +0000

is not complete unless MS girl falls on her rear end. I scared Tom a little when I fell on the slippery rocks down on the water. I think Tom was more hurt by it than I was. I just had a little cut on my hand. He wanted to turn back around! Heck no! I wanted to see the tide pools.

More tomorrow when I am more awake….

Here are some pictures from today:

Deer :

Water :

Mountains :

Ooops, I forgot.

nina — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 04:00:13 +0000

Last week, I forgot my shot twice. I don’t think its so much forgot because both nights I said I need to do my shot. I think its more that I don’t want to do my shot. I do not like the site reactions. Yeah, they aren’t horrible but they aren’t fun either.

Tom and I went off to San Juan Island this weekend. It was lots of fun. I totally had flash backs to being a kid and playing in the tide pools. Tom had no idea what a tide pool was and hadn’t even seen a barnacle before. He enjoyed poking them and watching them react.

Multiple sclerosis has given me a couple things. The first thing is a need to do new things more often. A normal weekend would be chilling at home and doing errands. Now, I want to do something new every weekend. Tom enjoys the new stuff. Last weekend I made him go to the fair and see cows, baby pigs and goats.

The second thing is a desire to get back into photography. It has been years since I was into photography. I took a few class at the high school and college level. It was long before digital. I will probably get cancer from all the gross chemicals but anyway, I am still getting use to digital. There are some very big differences. I also miss the dark room.

So, what has Multiple Sclerosis given you?

Eye Doctor

nina — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 05:04:41 +0000

I went to the eye doctor today to get my prescription updated. I just wanted my vision checked, no drops or annoying thats that prevent me from seeing. Anyone with optic neuritis knows that you get your eyes poked enough for years. I have had my eyes dilated three times since first having problems. The eye assistant said that I would have to have my pressure checked which was done in May 2008. I said no, I didn’t need that. I just needed a prescription.

Well, it seems insurance companies don’t want to pay for just a vision check. They will only pay if you have the full exam. There is no reason I need the full exam after just having one. Insurance companies are freakin stupid.

Anyway, I have noticed some changes in my vision since the optic neuritis. When the assistant did the vision test, he said “well it’s 20/20 so no problem”. The doctor came in and said that my vision did look good but then she put up a new screen I hadn’t seen before. It was red on one side and green on the other. The green letters were clear and easy to read. The red was a little blurry. So that is why my vision is blurry… I can’t see the colors right I guess.

Anyway, she wrote me a new prescription. I am not sure if that will help the weird color blurriness but I’ll hope it does.

I have been having tons of fun with this election year. Sarah Palin is about as opposite as I get but man did she spice it up. She is a no-name crazy wackadoo from what I can tell but she seems like the sexy librarian from next door with 5 kids. It’s something people can identify with. She probably won some people over with her speech although Tom disagrees with me. He was expecting her to talk about the issues that matter. She of course didn’t. She talked about how she get rid of her private chef and how she listed something on ebay. They were things normal people understood. She was feisty and a lot of people were laughing.

Some of the claims about here are just nuts. My favorite is that she has more executive experience than the whole democratic ticket. They define an executive a single person in charge of something. She was a mayor for a town of 9,000 and a governor of a state with 670,000 people. The population of Chicago alone is 2.8 million. The whole state has over 12 million. I think I will take the person without the executive experience.

Anyway, for todays laughter… (Jon Stewart should run for president):

[youtube VkG441uLmUU]

Back from Rome

nina — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:29:36 +0000

Well, I am back from Rome. I can’t say it was my favorite place to visit but at least I can say I have been there. It was at least 90 degrees everyday. Insanely hot. One benefit of traveling alone is that I can set my own schedule. I would relax in the late afternoons until it cooled down. My hotel was in a good location and I was able to spend my evenings looking at different attractions.

On the second day, I went to the Colosseo (or Coliseum) which had a line about 1/8 of a mile long. I purchased a pass that let me skip the line which is good because I would have never waited that long. Once inside, there were stairs that looked like this (not my picture, I forgot to get one of the stairs):

They had an elevator which was reserved for disabled. I pulled the disabled pass and took the elevator up. I should have taken it down also. They were rather scary. I have been taping my foot everyday which has helped but still… argh. Anyway, as I was walking into the elevator, the lady keeping track of the elevator laughed and said something about me being fat. I wish that was just the problem.

And that just about sums up my thought on Italy. I am glad to be back in London.

In other news, it seems I hit a vein when my Copaxone shot. I have a nutty bruise on my leg. I have noticed I get bruises about one in 10 shots. I think this is normal but I guess I should call when I get back to the states to make sure.