Watching: It's too hot for television.

Listening: Nothing, but I'm soliciting reviews on Sugar Ray and Robbie Williams. (I got a "skip it" review for Sixpence. Thanks for saving me the $14, Jevon).

Anticipating: The new Austin Powers movie... only four more days!! (Of course, it's useless for me to anticipate it because I don't have anyone to go with.)

Moment of Grace: There were two today. First, I was sitting next to InternDarren in court when they asked us to move down in the row of chairs to make room for the pool of potential jurors. He didn't move quite when I did, so I ended up stomping on his foot, then clutching onto him to keep myself from falling over. (And no, it wasn't some graceful damsel-in-distress kind of clutching. It was holding-on-for-dear-life I'm-bringing-you-down-with-me kind of clutching.)

Second, we had to park in a valet lot about five blocks away, since our usual courthouse garage was reserved for jurors and witnesses. I get out of court at about 5:45, hoof the five blocks in heels and 100-degree heat, only to find out that because the lot is closed, the key to my vehicle is at the courthouse lot, back where I came from.

I would like to call your attention to a new addition to the sidebar material. It's called Moment of Grace, and its purpose will be to document the embarrassing, the unfortunate, the planets-aligned-against-me sort of moments that have been plaguing my life lately. I know I said yesterday that I wouldn't mention them anymore, but now I'm looking at it as sort of a demon exorcisim. Maybe if I talk about them, they'll stop.

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I have had a horrible crook in my neck all day, the really bad kind that start in between your shoulder blades and work their way up the back of your neck until you have a headache. And that headache only increases when you realize that there's no one home to rub out the kinks for you.

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Kind of a cool day in court. Criminal court week has begun, and today I got to watch voir dire, where the attorneys ask the big group of potential jurors all kinds of questions, then decide which ones they want.

I started out at another trial, but our defendant decided to plead guilty at the last second, and I mean the very last second. The judge went through what was going to happen, and then he asked the DA if she was ready to proceed, to which she said yes, and then he asked the defendant if he was ready to proceed, and he said no, and I saw the defense attorney become exasperated. It's actually in the client's best interest to plead, because he usually gets a lighter sentence that if a jury found him guilty, but the attorney had spent countless hours preparing for this trial.

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Oh, and I did get a nice warm fuzzy today. One of the attorneys came back to chat with me during court (it's amazing how much activity goes on in a courtroom while court is actually in session) and said that I didn't hear this from her, but the higher-ups have been rather impressed with my performance so far and said I really seem "on the ball."

That's always nice to hear, particularly when I feel like all I'm doing is bothering people with silly questions. It's kind of cool that I'm fooling everyone into thinking that I know what I'm doing.