It's always sunny in San Diego

Today

Sunny High 79°F Precip 0% Wind: NNE 6 mph Max. Humidity: 16% UV Index: 3 Moderate Sunrise: 6:52 AM PT Avg. High: 66°F Record High: 78°F (1983)

Randomness

Well, I haven't blogged in a while... and I am not really sure what I am going to write about... but sometimes randomness with excessive ellipses is a good thing...

I spent most of last week in Northern California with family and friends... there are pictures from some of the Thanksgiving festivities over at trevordanthony.com. Activities in NorCal included attending my sister's volleyball playoff games, breaking and fixing computers at my mom's place of work, going out to dinner and brunch, drinking at multiple Peninsula bars, playing board games with family and friends, eating lots of turkey, picking out a Christmas tree, going to coffee mutliple times in a day...

I drove home Sunday evening (travel time 8 hours, 15 minutes, not bad considering traffic and rain). Upon my return on Monday I fulfilled my civic duty and served jury duty. I had to stick around all day and was almost put on a jury (twice)... but I escaped by the skin of my teeth and the judge said to me, "Mr. Anthony, I am not sure if you are relieved or disappointed, but either way you are dismissed." And with that, it was over.

I am currently getting ready for the big holiday party this weekend... should be fun... if you are a friend of mine and you are in San Diego, you are invited - so drop me a line if your evite got lost in the mail :-).

Mailbox surprise

I just recently changed my DMV record to reflect my San Diego address. This may or may not have been due to the fact that I was issued a citation for not having the correct address on my license somewhat recently. (Talk about a victim-less crime...) Anyway, good thing I made the change, otherwise I might not have received the jury summons that I got in the mail today.

The one thing most people would consider worse than an unexpected bill is the dreaded jury summons. I actually would not mind doing my "civic-duty;" being on a jury is actually pretty intriguing to me.

I am concerned about something, however. On the back of the summons it reads:

The right of a trial by jury is the privilege of every peson in the United States. This right is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and the California Constitution, which provides, "the right of trial by jury shall be secured to all, and remain inviolate."

It goes on to say that in order to make the system work that people need to be willing to serve on juries. But the Superior Court of San Diego seems to be misinformed, or maybe they just printed their summons forms before President Bush signed into law legislation allowing the Executive Branch to decide if you get a jury trial or not.

This makes me wonder if there is such a thing as a conscientious objector status (or something equivalent) for jury duty.

The reason that the Superior Court system gives for fulfilling your civic duty is because each one of us is guaranteed a jury trial. However, I am now asking myself, should I fulfill my end of the covenant, serving on jury, when our government is no longer willing to fulfill their part of the deal?

Gross generalizations

I have met some great and intelligent people since I have lived in San Diego... but one place I have never met a girl that I would want to spend more than 5 minutes with is at a San Diego bar.

You see, when I first came down here I quickly realized that no one is actually from San Diego... so when you go into a bar and see a girl you can always go up to her and ask, "where are you from?" to start a conversation. The first few times I heard the answer to this question I was impressed... the girl would tell me, how she packed up all her stuff and moved to San Diego without a friend or a job. Wow, I would think, how independent!

But then I realized that the story was always the same and it went something like this:
"I was sitting in my room changing clothes and I looked over at myself in the mirror and I realized, I have a rockin' hot body. And then I asked myself, why am I letting this rockin' hot body go to waste under layers of clothing in [insert Midwestern state name here]?" Around this time the hair flips and the distraction has already led me to believe that maybe I am not dealing with the sharpest pencil, but she would continue... "So I realized that I needed to live somewhere near the ocean, and LA is to overwhelming, so I decided to move to San Diego."

Don't get me wrong, I am all for hot girls moving to the place I live... but the problem is that their motivations are not the most well thought out and that kinda defines the rest of their lives as well.

Now what about the people that grow up in San Diego... a few of them have to be intelligent, right? As a matter of fact, there are quite a few intellectuals that grew up down here. I went to college with a handful of them in Washington. So I decided to use the University of Puget Sound's online directory to see where, in the San Diego area, they moved back to... yeah... they did not move back. My friends that were originally from the San Diego area have scattered all over the country but have avoided the bottom left corner.

Perhaps I am just going to the wrong bars?