Where the hell have I been?

Total Weight Watchers loss to date: 20 pounds

So, I have been away from the blog for a couple of months. No other reason other than I got busy and then forgot to update. I was out with some friends last night having dinner / drinks and one of them asked me about my blog. My response was "Oh...right! I have a blog!" So here I am.

So what have I been up to? Nothing specific...job search stuff...catching up with folks...went to New Mexico on vacation for about 5 days...saw a lot of theater. Saw Hair, 9 to 5, and Norman Conquests. LOVED Norman Conquests, really liked Hair, and tolerated 9 to 5.

So I know this is rambling and full of non sequiturs but I hadn't really thought about what I wanted to write beyond just catching up a bit. I also just realized I have started the past three paragraphs with the word "So."

Anyway (see, I didn't use "so), I had indicated in my last post that I had a followup story to my post on court shows. About 10 years ago I was selected to be on a jury in a civil case at the court in Jersey City. This was the first time I had ever been called for jury duty and as luck would have it, I got picked to serve on a case. While part of me was irritated that I had to do this, the other part of me was interested to see what it was all about.

The case I was serving on was a personal injury case. A woman had slipped in the snow on this commercial property, injured her shoulder, and was suing the owners of the property for negligence. Sounds simple enough...but her case was so laughably bad and full of holes that I was being thoroughly entertained. Here are the facts:

• The incident occurred at 2am in the morning when it had been snowing for about an hour
• The plaintiff was walking home when she decided to cut across the defendant's property and she slipped in the snow. The property is a machinist's shop, which was closed, and she had no business on the property other than cutting across to make her trip home shorter
• After she fell and got hurt, the first call she made was not to her doctor or the hospital, but to her attorney
• During the case, she claimed that she had been hurt so badly that she needed to have surgery on her rotator cuff and that she could no longer ride her motorcycle or do other activities that required used of her upper arms or shoulder. (Read into that what you will.)
  
• Several witnesses came forward to testify that they had seen her around town riding her motorcycle, pumping her fist in the air at people, working on her car at the garage when it was up on the rack, etc.
  
• She claimed that the person riding the bike and fixing the car was her "boyfriend" who used to wear her helmet and had long hair in the back like hers (ie: a mullet). I guess she didn't realize that wearing her rainbow earrings to court was a good indicator to the jury that she was lying and in no way did she have a "boyfriend." Henceforth, we will call her Jersey City Lesbian...JCL for short.
  
• The jury ruled in favor of the defendant as she clearly seemed to be just looking to get some money

Ok, fast forward about 5 years later and I am watching People's Court. They introduce the Defendant...it is the famous JCL! She is suing another car shop for getting her car upholstery dirty while they were fixing her car. She had a 10 year old Honda and she was suing them for $3,000 to clean the interior and replace the carpets in the car...even though the car shop had already offered to clean the interior for her and take care of it...she refused and decided to sue them on People's Court.

Before she began her testimony, JCL took the time to state "Judge, before I start, I want to take the time to tell you that you are beautiful and I am a huge fan of your show." Judge Marilyn Milian's response "Ok, when you are done sucking up to the judge, you can begin." The case is presented..the judge pretty much laughs at her..and she is thrown out. Case closed.

Out of all this, I guess it can be summed up as folows..you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear.