At 5:01pm today, I got the slightly unwelcome news that I have to show up at the LA courthouse tomorrow at 7:45am for jury duty. There are three possible scenarios now:

1. I sit in the courthouse until 5pm and never get called, and then I’m done with jury duty for at least 12 months
2. At some point during the day I get called into a jury, subsequently dismissed, and am done with jury duty for at least 12 months
3. I get called into a jury and they like me, and then I’m stuck there for an indeterminate number of days.

I’m kind of hoping for #2, actually. It would be fun to go through a bit of the process, plus I’d get dismissed before 5pm and would beat the horrible crunch getting out of the parking lot. #3 would suck for a lot of reasons, mostly having to do with how incredibly busy I am at work these days. Caltech pays for 10 days of jury duty, so that’s not the problem; it’s just that I’ll probably wind up working nights and weekends to keep from falling behind. I’m not really a fan of working outside office hours; I prefer to sit on my ass and vegetate.

To celebrate my impending doom, I got a library card. As I stepped inside the Glendale Public Library, I suddenly realized that I hadn’t even been inside a library since college. And I hadn’t been inside a non-school library since… umm… I’m not sure, but an embarrassingly long time.

See, I always buy my books. I don’t know why, when there are perfectly good library books sitting around that you can pick up for free. I got into the habit when I was young and living in South Carolina, and the library didn’t carry much in the way of science fiction and fantasy – after all, only heathens read those books, and the South Carolina libraries weren’t big on sending their readers to hell.

But books get expensive, and also take up a lot of space. So, with the possibility of a 9-hour day sitting in a courtroom with nothing to do looming over me, and being out of already-owned books to read, I decided to make good on my promise to myself to quit throwing away money on books.

Sadly, the library only had one of the books that I wanted, so I went and bought the other one. (New hardcovers tend to have long waiting lists at the library, so I guess it’s still no good for those super-long fantasy series when I have to have the new book RIGHT THIS SECOND.)

The book I checked out of the library was Listening to Prozac, which I can’t believe I haven’t already read. As I was checking it out, the girl in line next to me noticed the title and asked me if it was actually about Prozac. She announced that she was on Paxil. I was a bit thrown – I mean, I’ve always been very up front about the fact that I’m on Prozac, and I don’t think there’s anything to be ashamed of, but this was the first time I’d ever had a stranger tell me what psychiatric medications they were on. Either she’s part of a new enlightened generation, or she’s just really neurotic (after all, she is on Paxil).

Somehow, I doubt tomorrow will be nearly this interesting.