A Whole Nother State

There are lots of things the jury duty official could have asked. He could have asked "Who here has served on a Grand Jury before?" or "Who here has been convicted of a crime?" or "Who here is having digestion issues and simply can't sit on these wooden benches for one minute longer?" I am guessing there are countless ways he could have shrunk the pool of potential jurors, and none of the aforementioned ones would have helped me out much. I've never been on a jury, or convicted of a crime (unless you count that one party in college when I was 20 years old and got hauled off to jail in a paddy wagon with 35 of my closest friends and acquaintances. But you don't count that.) Plus, I'd eaten bran cereal that morning and was feeling fine.

What the important guy in the suit did ask was this, "Is there anyone here who does not live in Manhattan? Please line up in the center of the room." I thought about this for approximately 3 seconds and then stood up. Rob, you see, has been transferred to work in the San Francisco office of [censored!]. And, because he is bringing me along with him, it would be very hard for me to serve on a 6-month case in New York. In fact, when I told the official my news, he even said "Wow. That's a whole nother state." Yes, it is.

Then I said to him, "Plus, I'm pregnant and would probably be having a baby before the case was over."

"Congratulations," he said, waving me away because I had obviously become an extremely unattractive prospective juror.

So there you have it. I'm pregnant (due in March) and moving to San Francisco in November (we're in the city today looking for places to live. This activity toggles between being exciting/fun and exhausting/a remarkably quick way to get in an argument.) In other good news, my company has been kind enough to allow me to transfer as well, and I will do my job out of whatever spectacular apartment we do eventually find. Which is good, because otherwise I would probably just lie down in the middle of the city, thinking about how much I love it, while my weight balloons out of control.

The other nice thing about having a baby is that it affords Rob the opportunity to fake punch me while we're getting ready for work in the morning, all because "the baby told me to do it." Rob and the baby already have a very special bond.

We'll miss New York a lot, but I am truly ready to move back to my favorite city in the world, made that much better by its proximity to wine country...which I will be enjoying again at some point in 2010.