Even though it lasted just over a week (and took up approximately 17 hours of actual time), my recent jury experience feels as if it has carved out a huge chunk of the last month -- and not, I don't believe, because I've spent a huge chunk of the last month writing about it. Maybe it's just that it was so out the ordinary, as far as my own "ordinary" is concerned, that it looms larger than real life.

And yet, real life somehow goes on, in spite of the looming. In April, taxes also loom, and I've managed to fall behind on several projects that I thought would be finished by the last week in March. Because, you see, I chose the last week in March as my time to serve, when I first postponed jury duty from last November. It thought the weather would be better (it wasn't), and I thought I'd be finished with the annual financial project (wrong again).

And then, when the trial is over and I'm ready to dive into some real work, along comes the landlord with the idea that this would be a good time to put a new roof on my house. This also took about a week but seemed longer, because the roofer showed up earlier each day as the job went on. By yesterday, his last day, he was starting before 6:30 in the morning. (6:23 to be exact. Guess how I know that.)

As you know, I'm not a morning person. To me, 6:23 am is the middle of the night, and prime sleeping time. I've had nights when 6:23 was the only time I was sound asleep. Sure, sometimes I drift off at 4:00 in the afternoon, but by midnight I'm wide awake again. I've been trying to regulate my sleep patterns so that I don't stay up too late. I've had some success, but as soon as I think I have it wired into my biorhythms, something jars me out of the routine and it's back to staying up until 3:00 again. It's a cycle I can't seem to break.

Anyway, the roof was finished yesterday, so I assumed I'd be sleeping a little later this morning. But no, at 7:00 am I thought I heard something outside my window. I was awake for the next half hour, straining my ears to make sure I was alone. Then I gave up and got up and peeked through the blinds. Nothing. I stayed up, and dragged my weary body through another day, but it was a better day simply because the pounding on the roof had stopped. Before I went through it, I didn't know how exhausting it would be to try to stay sane through that kind of constant noise. I'm so grateful it's over, and I have a beautiful new thirty-year roof as a reward for my endurance.

The roofer did leave one large and two smaller piles of debris in the middle of my yard. I was beside myself for about five minutes, before I realized that all I had to do was notify my landlord. Since the rent is due in a few days, I was going to stick a note in with the check. Then today the roofing company sent their crack cleanup crew (one guy with a truck) to remove the debris, and all is well again here at the homestead.

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The finished job. (Click photo for more shots of work in progress.)

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Unfortunately, the roofer dislodged my satellite dish and knocked out half of the channels I'm supposed to get. I have to commend DirecTV for sending out a technician the day after I called them. He discovered that in moving the dish the roofer had damaged it, and he replaced it with no charge to me (or the roofer, for that matter). I'm once again fully programmed and didn't even have to miss a Giants game (although that disaster in Cincinnati yesterday would have been highly missable).