Good Morning, everyone.  This should be a good morning given the last two days.  Monday we had to be up at 4:30 so we could go to Hammond because Mom had been summoned for jury duty.  She could have gotten a waiver both on her age and the distance but she was under the impression, mistaken as it turned out, that the U.S. District Court was in Valparaiso.  I went along, under the, also mistaken, impression that there would be a lunch room or lounge where I could hang out while she was doing her civic duty.  No such luck.  Things have certainly changed since the last time either of us had to visit the court house.  They had three men stationed at the entrance by the metal detector.  One checked off the names of the jury pool as they came in.  Now that was NOT the entrance to the individual court room--it was the entrance to the whole building.  Mom said there were other guards (or whatever) every 15-20 feet to direct people to where they had to go, two outside the courtroom, two beside each doorway in the courtroom and two stationed at the defendant's table.  I am not at all comfortable with the level of security we seem to feel we need as a society.  I am definitely ambivalent.

Luckily I found a nice little Mexican restaurant across the street from the courthouse and was able to park my self there for most of the next six hours or so.  I always carry a goodly supply of reading material or other stuff to occupy myself so that was no problem.  The people running the restaurant were very nice about it and they did not have so much business that my long term occupation of a booth did any hinder their business.  

After a couple of hours I thought I would walk over to the public library and stay there for a while.  But I found I had no idea anymore where the library was.  Although I grew up in the eastern section of Hammond and went to high school just blocks from where the court house now is,  all my old land marks were gone.  Forty years ago this had been a vibrant down town section of about 10 square blocks with shopping, theaters, banks and restaurants.  If you jay walked you took your life in your hands because of the traffic.  Now most of it is gone.  It is like a ghost town.  Depressing.

Monday afternoon, after we got back, set the tone for Tuesday.  One of the cats decided to sneak outside behind me when I went out for the mail.  Kuma is a great sneak and very determined to spend as much time outside as he can.  He has also had a very nasty case of feline spring fever since the temperatures started climbing somewhat.  This time he succeeded and we did not miss him until we went to bed and couldn't find him.  We spent the next 24 hours anxious, depressed, more than a bit pissed with the little monster and hoping he would find his way back.  Which, happily, he did.  Next time I go out for the mail he gets put in the bathroom.

As a result of the early rising on Monday (neither Mom nor I sleep well when we have to rely on an alarm clock) and a very restless night Monday night, I am still feeling a bit fuzzy today.  

Chris In Paris (at Americablog) asked a good question today:  Why Wagoner and not Wall Street?  I am not exactly sympathetic to Wagoner but, to my mind, he certainly deserves to leave with a decent pension having given good service for 31 years.  Perhaps not to the tune of $20 million but he does deserve much more than the idiots who have been running Wall Street into the ground.  Or, rather, those idiots deserve considerably less than they or Wagoner got.  I wonder if Wagoner's ouster and the new more stringent conditions were meant to send a signal to Wall Street: straighten out the mishiva or you're next and don't expect us to have infinite patience.