Scuba Diving Vacations

We had a trio of mantas swim by on the night dive earlier in the week, and they didn't return that evening. Bummer. At least the divers got to see them for a pass, unfortunately our snorkeler wasn't in the water just yet. They've had mantas sticking around the last couple of nights, hopefully they'll do the same as we're planning another charter this Tuesday evening.

Earlier this week I got to spend a day in court for jury selection. I get a summons about every other year to call in and see if my number comes up, this time it did. It's an interesting process for those who've never done it before... can't talk about the case, but the jury selection process shouldn't be off limits. Roughly 60 some odd potential jurors showed up. When you sign in they give you a list of names of everyone involved in the trial, later when they are picking jurors each potential juror will be asked if they know any of the individuals on the list.

All the potential jurors are escorted into the courtroom and seated. After the formalities they start culling jurors... do you live more than 70 miles away, are you a government official, a doctor, a policeman or first responder, are you a caretaker, etc. In this case I think one was thanked and excused. At that point they spin a basket, ala bingo or lottery style, and call out 12 numbered jurors at random. These are the first 12 likely jurors, each is asked questions by the lawyers on both sides. The lawyers are allowed to agree to excuse jurors by cause/conflicts and then the lawyers enter a phase where they are allowed to excuse jurors without stated reason. As a potential juror is excused, another random juror number is pulled out of the basket and they in turn get to sit in the jury box and answer the earlier questions. Each team of lawyers gets 3 non-cause exemptions and so you are looking at roughly 18-25 people out of the entire group actually form the pool of potential jurors while the rest of us just watched the process... interesting.

I'm back to work at my part time job tonight. I'll be there 4-5 nights a week for the next few weeks 'til it gets busy again.

The eel above is a small White Mouth Moray eel. It's roughly the size of my thumb in thickness.

later,

Steve