I’m up early this morning because today is going to be a long one.  I probably won’t get back to the computer until maybe fifteen, sixteen hours from now, and I wanted to make sure that I completed Day 15’s post.

Today I have to sit through eight hours of a mandatory inservice training.  My colleagues who already attended the training told me that it will be painfully boring and to bring something to keep me awake.  You know I’ll be knitting.  The other thing about these trainings is that everyone always wants to sit in the back, and if you show up late, you end up having to sit in the very front under the instructor’s nose.  I learned my lesson the first time I arrived for a training at ten minutes to eight, and the whole room was already filled.  So these days, every time we’ve got a mandatory inservice, I make sure I’m there at least half an hour early.  (Even then, I’m usually not the first person there.)  Anyway, I don’t know about you, but I have to go to the bathroom about every two minutes, so I like to sit by the door every time I’m in a classroom.

The training should be done at 1600 hours (or 4 PM), but if we’re lucky (and most likely we won’t be), the trainers will let us out a few minutes early.  I’ll get into the car and start the 150-mile drive south to the Ventura homestead, because on Friday I have to report for jury duty.  That will be another eight hours of all-day sitting around, if I don’t get called into a courtroom for jury selection.  Some people think that just because I work in a prison, I’m automatically dismissed from jury duty.  Not true.  I’ve had to go through the selection process before, and it sucked.  I thought about skipping out this time, and I even looked up “What happens if you don’t go to jury duty?” on Google.  The short answer is that you can be fined and even sentenced to jail time for contempt of court.  No, thanks.  I been inside a jail cell and a prison cell, and they ain’t pretty.