Darek + Stacie

About 6 months ago I got a jury summons. It was at a very inconvenient time so I was thrilled when I got there and they collected our little summons strips and told us thanks for fulfilling our service; the courts were not meeting that day for some reason. Score!

But a few days ago I got another one. There’s a place on the slip to claim an exemption if you “have appeared for a jury summons in Collin County within the last two years. See ‘Jury Service’ below.” Under jury service it says “If you have served as a juror in a city court in the past two years, you must include proof of service from that city.”

So my question is…

Does anyone out there know if showing up for that jury summons 6 months ago but not serving on a jury counts? I tried calling but only got the automated junk.

If anyone knows please let me know. I was under the impression that it qualified but I get confused with all the stuff on the form and online. I don’t want to do the wrong thing and get in trouble with the law. : )

I will love you forever.

EDIT/UPDATE: I finally noticed the email address on the summons and asked them. They replied within 45 minutes:

Yes, this does count as serving.  You may claim your exemption.

Thank you, legal system.

October was maddeningly crazy so cooking went out the window. We ate a lot of pizza. Now that things are slowing down for the winter season, we’re back to cooking.

We started with chicken tortilla soup. I’ve had this recipe about a year and a half and just never got around to trying it. The best thing about it is that you make it in the slow cooker…and it is SO GOOD and SO EASY.

I didn’t take pictures while making it, because I mainly just opened a bunch of cans and dumped stuff in the crock pot. The recipe calls for cooked/shredded chicken, but after reading reviews, I just put in raw chicken breast tenders and pulled them apart later. Other people used frozen chicken. It doesn’t get any easier than that.

You can find the recipe here: slow-cooker chicken tortilla soup

I made substitutions…raw chicken instead of cooked, all chicken broth instead of water, threw in a can of black beans for extra protein and extra YUM, used a can of diced tomatos instead of mashing up a can of whole ones (which is extra YUCK), only used half an onion and it was plenty, skipped the corn because it’s expensive at sprouts, and threw in tortilla chips instead of making my own strips (lack of time).

But I’m sure it’s fine the way it’s written. : )

Check out that extra yummness:

Absolutely amazing. Love love love.

More food coming soon.

So we decided it would be a fabulous idea to drive to Virginia for our friend’s wedding instead of paying a lot of money for plane tickets. Instead we paid with a lot of time.

A lot.

But the colors were nice.

We stopped at a scenic overlook and took pictures of…the scenery?

Darek took some shots while driving through the mountains:

This is my kind of rehab center. Just a bunch of trees:

Stopped at a rest area:

And why waste an opportunity to play with long exposures? Two hours stopped on I-40 is plenty of time to bust out the camera. And have a lobotomy.

I feel like I should write something – something important, something deep – about the current state of things and what happened last night. But I can’t decide on the words…so I’ll stick with some pictures for now. They seem relevant somehow.

Taken in North Carolina a few weeks ago.

At some point in my early days of trying to figure out how/where to advertise for wedding photography, I signed up for a weird service that utilizes some sort of bidding system. I usually just delete the emails but this one caught my attention:

I can’t tell if this is a joke, but I’m tempted to put in a bid. I’ve always wanted to shoot a pig roast.