Hows my little juror?

Last week marked the second and final week of my jury duty service. The best part...not having to go in even ONCE!!! This was a big deal for me. If I got stuck on a jury they have the audacity to pay a juror $10 per DAY(plus mileage). That's just low enough to be a joke. I'm 95% sure panhandlers make more than that daily.

Anyway the reason that this is exciting to me is that this is the FOURTH time I've been summoned to jury duty service. The first time I was in Duluth and I wrote on my summons in large probably messy capitol letters I'M PAYING TO GO TO COLLEGE AND CAN'T BE ON A JURY. The second time was a year or so later and I had my car mostly packed to move to Indiana. I called that one in and said I can't come because I'm moving out of state, the lady laughed and said yeah that would be a long drive.

The third time was scheduled for the beginning of harvest this past year. It was a close call too. I actually showed up for the first day because I couldn't get a straight answer on whether or not I would be required for service. Fortunately I was able to get out of it since I'm technically a farmer and that is the busiest time of the year for me. When I got out of service I was asked to say when my next availability was and marked it after the new year. She said from her experience I would most likely get called right away. Sure enough, I got my letter mixed in with Christmas cards and a trip up north. Every night I got home I called the jury hotline and did a little cheer for every time I didn't have to go in (every night baby!)

Apparently I'm a marked man for jury duty. I've been summoned more times than some people twice my age. I have a sneaking feeling I'll be called again soon because of how I got so lucky with the draw in Vermilion County this year.

Hows my little stranded traveler?

After Christmas at home this year we headed up to MN to visit my family and friends for a fast weekend of catching up, good times, and a lot of relaxing.

We kicked off the trip by setting our Alarm for 3:45am to leave by 4am so that we could drive an hour through the falling snow that was being largely ignored by the interstate cleanup crews. Our 6:30am flight was delayed because some of the ground crew couldn't make it into work due to a couple of inches of snow in Bloomington (we made it just fine driving an hour!). After getting the VIP "shoveled path" treatment to our plane we flew to MSP without anything noteworthy happening...well aside from the guy next to me leaving his seat and giving me TWO SEATS OF LEG ROOM! Heaven. Being tall is under-appreciated on flights of any length.

When we arrived in town we grabbed breakfast with both of my brothers and their whole families! It's been a few years since I've been able to see that many family members in the same spot so it was great to catch up and say hey.

Afterwards Laura and I were able to exchange our Christmas presents with my parents and we decided that we must have been good kids this year! Yay!

That night we did a Cognac tasting with my Dad's respectable cognac collection. After tasting five different cognacs we learned that Courvoisier tastes like garbage compared to some of it's rivals (in Dad's collection). We were also pretty surprised to find that the two Hennessys we tried had some very different flavors considering they bear the same brand name and don't really have much distinguishing one from the other.

The next day was quite a bit warmer (12) and we gave the sledding run a try. Typical me if I can add fun to something perfectly fun on it's own I will try. So I added a run with some tree obstacles and later decided to add a "cliff" into the mix. There were no injuries, just fun.

That evening we headed to Town Hall Lanes for some bowling and brews with my lovely friends and old roommates from Duluth. We had a great time and even witnessed four strikes in a row performed by the always lovely Chin.

The next day my parents hosted a party for a bunch of my friends and their parents from high school and beyond. I love that friendships on good foundations can be picked up months or sometimes years later without a step missed and we can have a fantastic time together.

Reflecting on hanging out with old friends I had tried to make a point of not telling people that I've just simply been busy. Sometimes awkwardly mentioning I was trying not to say that. It has for some reason a go to response along with 'nothing much' and 'the usual, and 'same shit different day' mostly because life hasn't been simply those things, I've been busy! With things! Fun things! Apparently I need to check my blog before I hang out with people so I can carry a conversation due to a complete lack of a useful memory.

On Sunday we were planning on flying home at 7:45pm and due to a long lasting snowstorm in IL our flight was canceled. After the usual headaches and waiting for about 6 hours for a phone call from Delta we were rebooked for Wednesday. Sadly since everyone was snowed in and temps were hanging around -15 all afternoon we no one could check on our cat Jinx. So we rented a pretty lame Mazda 5 almost van and drove home on Tuesday. Not before our completely lazy and unproductive and phenomenal monday in front of the TV on the couch and hanging out with my mom and dad. Since it was so cold Monday night (-18) we decided to try the oft failed throwing boiling water into the air trick. We thought that was pretty cool.

The drive home on Tuesday was remarkably quiet considering a massive snow storm just moved through Illinois two days previous. Oh wait, two days ago...any municipality worth their weight in salt should have that stuff under control within 48 hours easy. But not Champaign or Vermilion County! It was literally at the county lines where we encountered ice covered roads and cars and semis all over in the ditches. It was absurd! I can rant for awhile on this topic (where was the sand?) but I'll just say we made it safely home and we were happy about it.

A nice drift next to our car.

It snowed so much that we actually shoveled our driveway for the first time ever! We actually have piles of snow all around!

It was an eventful trip and it was great catching up with everyone I saw...until next time MN, keep it cool!