My Whole30 Journey

As some of you may be aware, I've been struggling with weight my entire life. As a child, I was always more overweight than all the other children; I couldn't participate in many activities. As an adult, I ballooned up to over 300 lbs. Not even my own wedding could convince me to get off my ass and lose some weight before the big day. My self worth and self esteem were in shambles. I've documented my argument for hCG here. And using it, I lost over 100 lbs. But, it's an extremely hard diet, and kind of expensive, and technically not legal.

However, thanks to hCG I've (mostly) been able to keep my weight down. I'm now at 185 lbs. I've been trying to eat healthy; making my own food and documenting what I eat in myfitnesspal, along with seeing a nutritionist every month. Whole grains, lean protein, lots of water, etc, and I've started to exercise. But after about 4 months of my scale not budging an inch, I began to get very frustrated. How is it that my body burns 1680 calories a day just by being alive, and I eat less than that an exercise, but the weight doesn't come off? (True, sometimes I'd go nuts in the break room and have treats. It's always been my downfall.)

And then I read the article about The Biggest Loser (found here). Basically the jist of the article says that after extreme weight loss, your metabolism PERMANENTLY slows, and now the contestants barely eat enough to stay alive, exercise, and gain weight. Even though learning the information about their metabolism may have been liberating for them, it was depressing for me. What if, because of hCG, I was stuck in this too? What if the scale my nutritionist uses to calculate how many calories my body burns in a day is off, and it's actually less? And I am over-eating every day and the exercise just burns that and helps me maintain? I needed to do something, and no - more exercise was not the answer for me. 

Then, my co-worker Beverly told me that her doctor recommended The Whole30 to her. At first, I scoffed. Cut out dairy, grains, and sugar? Dairy is where I get most of my protein from in the form of babybell cheeses and greek yogurts. And I knew from experience that eating carbs in the morning (in the form of my healthy breakfast bar) keeps me full better than protein does. But as I was reading the book, I saw the science in what they were saying. Mainly, The Whole30 is an elimination diet. Get rid of the foods that might be causing inflammation in your body, or irritation, swelling, tiredness, sleeplessness, what-have-you, for 30 days. And when you're all clean, slowly re-introduce them back into your life and try to get a feel of how the foods treat you. 

That's not the main reason I wanted to do this, though. It's technically a "side effect" to lose weight on this diet. By eliminating all the sugars and added sugars from the foods and drinks we consume, it forces your body to use fat as its main source of fuel. Thus, the weight comes off. Artificial sweeteners are my weakness. I remember, after doing hCG and then eating out, how fracking sweet sweets were, and how damn salty all the packaged foods have become. I still hold that sensitivity to salts, but my sweet tooth needs to be reset. And I'm hoping to keep Splenda completely eliminated from my at-home diet even when this is all said and done. I've dropped putting crystal light in my water and am now used to drinking it without flavorints. I don't know how coffee will go, though. I'm not addicted to caffeine so quitting the coffee habit was easy. I've tried and failed before to drink it black or with just a splash of milk. So I'll do my 30 days, and see if I can stomach black coffee.

The other thing that intimidated me about this 30-day plan (besides having to cut out artificial sweeteners - this includes mints and gum by the way!!!!!) was the amount of cooking I knew I had to do. And the amount of money I was going to need to spend in order to get it going. It's insane. I don't see anyone living a normal life within this 30 days. I don't want to scare anybody off, though. I'm used to cooking my meals but even this was beyond stressful to me. Here are some facebook posts I made last Sunday about the process:

It was hard work. I didn't want to touch food every again after that day. But, once I got it all prepped, now all I have to do is keep up, and that's quite a bit easier. It sounds totally awesome-tasting though, doesn't it? I already liked sweet potatoes but never really bought them for myself. Now I am in love with my fries and that garlic aioli (which is about the easiest thing in the world to make). That brisket was as amazing as you can get non-smoked, and that was the best tomato sauce I have ever made.

Quitting all the bad stuff wasn't as hard as I'd feared, and probably because I was already eating pretty healthily before this all began. I still want gum. God I want gum. But that's about it. I also miss drinking my crystal light lemonade. But, I've learned to like a couple of green and oolong teas without sugar. I think I'm slowly getting more energetic. I feel a lot less lethargic this weekend than I have in the past. I've taken a week off from exercising (YAY!) to allow my body to adjust to the changes, and I'll be back at it come Monday. The last day of my Whole30 is on June 14th, which is, consequently, the same day as my nutrition appointment and that bloody scale. I can't wait to see if this works.

Wish me luck! 

Update
Completion

Chena Lodge (Day 2)

Alaskan Adventure (Day 1)

Aurora Adventure (Night 1)

The original plan had been to do everything Chena had to offer in one day, including things like snowmobiling (snowmachine), dog mushing, Ice Museum tour, the hot springs, and ending with their Aurora tour. Unfortunately, due to having such a late night prior coupled with mom being sick, that didn't quite pan out. Instead, we slept in until almost 10am (Woohoo almost 7 hours! Score!) and got a ride from Enterprise to pick up our rental vehicle for the rest of the trip.

Pro tip: If you intend on traveling to a place that you know needs a big truck in the middle of winter, like say, Fairbanks, AK, pre-order their tiny car and get a free upgrade.

Not all the rental places only had trucks, but this Enterprise in Fairbanks was tiny-ass. As in, "we have 3 vehicles to choose from and they're all trucks", tiny-ass. So yeah, free upgrade to their Dodge RAM 4WD. In blood red; my favorite color.

Side note: Dodge RAMs have this really weird key fob. Turns out said key fob is the key to start the vehicle. Also turns out the actual key they give you that looks like a key is for the tailgate. Mom had to call and ask how to start the truck because originally they had started it for us. We laughed the rest of the trip at our stupidity. 

Anyway I'm getting way off course here. We decided to drive down to North Pole (Not the North Pole - the town will quickly correct you) to check out Santa Claus House. It was pretty neat, but I've never been a super Christmas-y person. I'm in it for the family get-togethers and gift giving; the whole decorating thing I find expensive and pointless [says the Spock inside me]. 

I did find a shot glass and a pretty ring there, though, so it was worth it for me. The part I liked even more was the ice sculpture drive-thru area next to the Reindeer farm (which was closed for the season, unfortunately!)  

After that quick jaunt to North Pole, we drove up to Chena around 3-ish, which is 40 miles away from Fairbanks. This is the point that I tell you that mom almost ran over a red squirrel and that was the only time I saw anything besides the bird on the whole trip.

We arrived at the Chena activity center and phased-warped to Japan. Seriously. There were more Japanese people than Americans. All the signage was in both English and Japanese. They had Japanese-only tours. It seemed strange that it was Japanese-specific. Why Japan? Turns out...

This was in their bathroom. With the heated toilet seat. My favorite feature of the whole lodge.

It's apparently not that far from Alaska?? 

Anyway, since we'd arrived so late, we didn't have time to do much, so I signed us up for the ice museum tour and the Aurora tour for later. 

The ice museum was kind of cool. Due to geothermal energy, they are able to keep the structure below 32 degrees all year long, even in the heat of summer, and with 30+ people inside at once.

They had an ice bar that served an apple martini in an ice glass that you could pre-purchase (mom and I did not partake), and 4 rooms each with an ice bed and other small items, plus sculptures throughout. Including a playable xylophone. 

After the ice museum tour we had some time to kill, so we checked out the hot springs and saw that they had laid out a nice long, covered ramp into the water to ease my fears of having to run half naked through the snow and jump in feet first before you froze to death. We were planning on coming back tomorrow to try it. In the meantime, we decided to have a nice meal in their lodge. I had their rib eye steak and it was pretty darn good. We also checked out their gift shop where I ended up buying David something he already had (figures).

Then it was tine to check in for our Aurora Tour! Check it out in my next post!

Aurora Adventure (Night 1)

Read part 1 here.

So, we reach Fairbanks about 9pm and Jason called in an order for some pizzas for dinner to pick up on the way back to his property at North Pole.

Just some background here: Auroras are very finicky. They're an unpredictable phenomena and even when NOAA gives us the deets on a solar flare heading our way and website claims that it will come out that night doesn't mean it will. And even if it does, it's still flighty - appearing for short bursts and disappearing and returning randomly throughout the night. There's also weather to consider, of course. I had a lot going against me when I booked the flight for basically the sole purpose of an Aurora sighting. It was a long shot, but luckily, it was one that paid off.

Now first of all, a comment on Alaska Aurora Adventures - the name of the tour company Jason and his wife run. Small groups are great for one thing. But this Aurora viewing house he has was wonderful. It had electricity, a flat screen TV, a wood stove to keep us warm, a nice kitchen, chairs, tables, a couple of couches, and a fully functional plumed bathroom. This may not seem luxurious to most - probably expected. However you'd be singing a different tune if you ever go on the Chena Lodge Aurora tour, which I'll tell you about in another post.

So we settled in the cabin and a few more people joined us, including two Australian men who I could just listen to talk all night long. Jason brings us outside at about 10pm to show us a few different locations to shoot some good photos on his property, and already the Aurora decided to show up a little bit. It was very faint at first but started to become stronger. I set my camera in a few locations to get some shots.

These pictures I am going to show you may look epic, and they are nice, but my lens wasn't focused the entire night, so if you blow them up to size, the stars are very blurry.

Another interesting thing to note about Auroras is that they are not as visible to the naked eye as they are on a lens with a 20-second exposure. This was also a very mild storm - probably a 2-3 on the scale, so with only your eyes it was still fairly faint and the lines moved slowly.

It then disappeared for a while and I had to take a nap at one of the tables as it was difficult to stay awake for so long. There was nothing to do in the cabin besides chat with people (which I don't do because introvert) and wait for it to come back. Jason's wife brought cookies which I completely missed out on while asleep, but then when the Aurora came back around 1am, I was ready.

This time it came back stronger. This is probably my favorite shot, however this one -

- Looking like a rainbow over Jason's house, is a close second.

You know, in all honesty, I don't think I was really awestruck by the whole thing like I expected to be. I was so concerned with 

1. Setting up my camera for the best possible shot

and 

2. Not freezing to death

Considering what you see with the naked eye is a lot less impressive than the photos, it was difficult just to sit there and watch it. I wanted to capture it. I've always been that way - being so concerned with getting something on film that I miss the actual experience of it. But I don't regret it one bit.

I really wish my lens had been focused though, because then I could go and take some of these to be printed and hung. Instead they will have to be appreciated in a small size on my computer!

Around 2am the tour was officially over, and we were driven back to our respective hotels. Mom wasn't feeling very well, as she's been fighting pneumonia for over a month and had been on a few rounds of antibiotics already to fend it off. The wood stove exasperated her symptoms as did the lack of sleep. We didn't get in our beds until after 3am, completely exhausted. The next day was going to prove to be a challenge!

Alaskan Adventure (Day 1)

All of this goodness is way too long for a single blog post. I'd probably bore half of you to death since it's more about me journaling than making it interesting for others to read (sorry, peeps! It's how I roll). 

I could almost say that if you ever intend to go to Fairbanks, AK for a vacation then read this blog, but I can't because apparently their winter has been so mild this year that 17 degrees midday in March is practically balmy. We did not have a "true Alaskan experience" thank God, because I probably wouldn't have survived. 

I say "we" because I invited my mom to go with me. Truth be told, I didn't know anyone that could afford to travel this trip alongside me, and mom had to decline at first because she couldn't really afford to go either, until the next day when dad won at the casino and handed her $500 in an envelope that said "Alaska" on it. (It's okay, go ahead and say "awwwwww!" I'll wait.)

Our flight departed Seattle after 7pm on Thursday March 3rd, and we rolled back the clock an hour once we landed in Fairbanks over 3 hours later. That airport was so tiny it was probably smaller than some mansions I've seen on TV. Our hotel was a mere two miles away, and taxis were waiting outside to drive people to their destinations. Apparently it's cheaper for hotels here to flat rate taxis to drive patrons to their hotel than to own a shuttle. My first ride in a taxi was in a city smaller than Puyallup. Go figure.

We stayed at the Best Western Chena River which was in a perfect part of town, and the rooms were quite nice, with continental breakfast, free wifi (Thank goodness since I didn't have any service outside the hotel!) and even an elevator to get us up to the 2nd floor.

Starting at 10am the next morning, we were already pre-booked for an Arctic Circle tour that our guide, Jason, was going to take us on using the old Dalton Highway; or as some of you might know it as the famous road from Ice Road Truckers.

Of course, with the mild winter they've had, the road wasn't nearly so dangerous, although there were plenty of icy spots. 

This is where I found out that Alaska is rather unsightly. My background consists of living in one of the greenest places in North America, with gorgeously huge forests of Fir trees in an endless expanse of lakes and waterfalls. They don't call Washington the Evergreen State for nothing. I've been in Eastern WA and it looks a lot like death. In fact, very similar to Alaska's interior, with more rolling hills than mountains, and 200 year old trees that are barely 6 feet tall and scrubby as hell thanks to the permafrost. Beauty means different things to different people, and some people find deserts and/or tundra gorgeous, but I just don't. I was expecting Alaska to be more like Washington; oh well! 

Although I have to admit, I did grab a few gorgeous shots.

Our first tour stop was the Alaskan Pipeline. I tried to be artistic with my shot.

Mapwise, we weren't driving very far in order to reach the Arctic Circle, but visitors constantly seem to forget that Alaska is bigger than the state of Texas. What does not seem far on a map took over 4 hours by road, and we weren't even going half way to the other end of Alaska.

This depressingly beautiful map will put it in perspective for you.


As will this equally depressing road sign. (Found where Dalton Highway starts, which is shortly after passing Livengood).

I took some pictures once we reached the Yukon River, and it became a running gag about whether people would realize I was taking a picture of a river, or just a place where the trees don't grow.

As expansive as Alaska is, I was actually rather surprised about how little pristine, untouched snow their was. Up at say, Mount Rainier National Park, you would see tons of untouched powder, and then occasional footprints. Here, it was all about snowmobile tracks (they call them snowmachines up there; probably because they don't need actual snowmachines) or marred by animal tracks everywhere. And to make matters worse, the only animal I saw besides birds on the whole trip was a squirrel mom almost ran over with our rental truck. Figures.

We had been traveling in a van with 6 young 20-something male Asians (whom some were from LA) and one older woman from Virginia named Judy, who had rode shotgun the entire way up to the AC (Arctic Circle), and our guide seemed to make her very nervous with his driving habits, including straddling the middle line because there was no ice there. He had a CB radio and kept in contact with the truckers on the road, which I found fascinating. We had a conversation on the way back (when I rode shotgun because Judy was too freaked out) about how most of the Alaskan shows on the air these days were probably 50% fake. The truckers on Dalton highway are actually very nice. Jason would say something to the effect of "Northbound oil tanker, I'm right behind you, let me know when it's safe to pass". In fact, one stunt that made Judy upset was passing on a double yellow because the trucker said it was safe. I was not scared of Jason's driving in the least, in fact I found him a respectable driver and was very informative about Alaska in general - he gave us several good tips including how to take good Aurora photos and how it wasn't necessary to go on a dog mushing tour for more than a half hour (I'll explain why in another post!)

When we reached the AC, celebrations were abound because it was a very long drive, and Jason had the Gray Jays literally eating out of his hand during lunch.

The air outside was probably 0 degrees with the wind chill. Even with all my new gear it was hard to stay out there for too long.

There wasn't anything to see besides the sign, really, and an outhouse to pee in. But, we got a certificate and it is still awesome 

to say that I had traveled to the Arctic Circle.















Wow. I actually didn't expect for this post to be so long... (sorry for the awful editing, sometimes blogger can be a pain in the ass!) I should probably save Friday night for another post! Join me next time as Jason drives us back to his place for a night of fun. *grin*

So I Killed my Phone

WARNING... technobabble ahead!

I dropped the whole phone contract mentality before it became cool. In February last year, I actually quit Verizon early because I was sick of paying $90+ a month for minutes and texts that I was barely using. And even though I got stuck with an extra charge, it was worth it to switch to Ting for $30 a month, as I was saving that much in bills alone.

I had to outright buy my first phone, though.

I chose a OnePlus One because I had gotten an invite, and I wanted to switch to the GSM network anyway because it was better. Plus it was pretty much the best phone on the market and only $350 for like 64GB of phone (with no SD slot but who needs one??). I wanted to get away from the highly manufactured phones like Samsung, after dealing with shit like them trying to block my ability to root the phone just so I can get rid of all the pre-installed Samsung CRAP that was taking up space on my device.

Anywho, *breathes*, I loved my OnePlus at first but it ran a modified version of Google's OS called Cyanogenmod... it was built by tech people out in the wild and was stable but very glitchy... I was constantly having issues with apps giving me shut down errors, it randomly rebooting, and the bluetooth was so finicky it drove me insane. It could never easily connect to anything; including the new scale I bought that could give me my water % and all that jazz, because in order to save "all that jazz", it needed to connect to my phone and if it did it was a miracle. I ended up weighing myself several times to try to get it to save the data and it just wouldn't. 


I'm settling pretty hard right now.


Anyway I'm kind of going off on a tangent. But my point is, I was considering replacing my OnePlus but figured I'd wait a year from now because phones (at least the ones I want) aren't cheap. However, like all the smartphones I've owned in the past (okay, 2), their battery starts to degrade about a year in and your play time starts getting shorter and shorter before it needs a charge. I figured, since I was keeping the phone for another year, it wouldn't hurt to replace the battery with a new one. That and I am going on a trip to Alaska so might as well have a good battery for whatever.

Turns out it's not as easy as it seems. The battery inside a OnePlus is a non-removable battery. Or, it's not the kind that can be easily switched out, like in my Samsung Galaxy S4. While it only cost me $16 for the battery and some tools, it kind of almost cost me my face and probably my computer's monitor (which was my workstation). I was watching a youtube video on how to replace the battery and it turns out it's GLUED to the phone. So, I was trying to pry it off but the battery was bending so I took a Flathead screwdriver and -

Almost caught my face on fire.

Okay not really. But first their was smoke for a second. And then there was a spark. Then I took it outside and contacted David because I was scared of it turning out like some kind of Hoverboard disaster. I tried once again on the safety of my glass table outside but then there was a small flame for a second.

David told me I was lucky that the battery was only charged to 45% when I had attempted this otherwise the outcome would have been much different.

I had just killed my phone.

And I didn't have a replacement.

Slightly panicked (and pissed off at the same time) I quickly ordered the phone I had been researching and wanting to replace my OnePlus with for a while now: The Nexus 6P. (If there is any reason to research shit long before you actually need to, this would be it), because it was Tuesday night and I sure as hell wasn't going to go 3 days + a weekend without a phone.


Buying the gold one makes me feel richer than I actually am

So for $450 I had a replacement on the way (that I couldn't exactly afford at the moment but oh well), but in the meantime I had cut off my left arm and I felt a bit blindsided by the loss. So on Wednesday morning I asked David if he could come over and attempt to get the battery out of my phone. I hadn't lost hope. I still had a replacement battery.

It took him all of 2 seconds to remove the battery (figures). And when he plugged the new one in.... success!! A perfectly functional phone! It was a miracle! Of course, it was too late to cancel my replacement but I was okay with that. I was getting tired of its constant bluetooth issues and at least now I have a decent backup phone in case something happens to my new one.

I say this is a win-win. (except for my pocketbook!)

Jury Duty

Nothing like forced sense of obligation and duty with a threat of jail time for non-compliance to throw a kink in your routine.

This was my first time ever being summoned for Jury Duty and it was a very interesting process. There was a lot of sitting around and waiting. First you sit in a large room with 150 people and watch a welcome video about how great it is to be a juror (two hours later I had to pee so bad that I was about to run out of that room and probably be in some kind of contempt of court, who knows.) Then you wait around to see if you will be assigned to a possible case. Once your name is called, you are given a colored badge with your number that corresponds to a case. In my situation, there were only 34 other jurors with me for this particular case, but the bigger ones can call up to 60 people.

I can't even imagine this. 60 people. I'll tell you why.

The next step is to wait some more until the courtroom is ready. Everyone gets ushered into the pews and you're facing a judge, a prosecution lawyer, a defense lawyer, and the defendant. First you have to introduce yourself; Where do you live? What's your job title and where do you work? Are you married? kids? What jobs do your kids have? Basically at this point, they're trying to find out if there is any conflict of interest with the current case. They tell you the bare minimum about it (in this case, possession of a firearm). They were interested in anybody that said they loved to read (like crime novels), or people that had a bias opinion for or against cops etc. And for a couple of hours these lawyers go back and forth asking questions about what it means to be a good witness, or if any one of us would have a problem with applying the law to a case if we had a personal feeling involved. They went through the people that had "hardships" on green slips that told them about doctors appointments or how it will hurt them to not get paid their wage and mostly, they were excused or exceptions were made. There were 35 people total and only 14 spots available. I, obviously, was chosen as one of the lucky 14.

It was The State of Washington v. Jeremy James. The charge was unlawful possession of a firearm in the first degree. As it was a criminal case, we knew that all 12 (2 alternates) jurors would have to be unanimous in the verdict.
Mr. Horibe was the prosecution lawyer. He was as smooth as silk. The man was tall, handsome, and suave. He obviously knew what he was doing and was very confident in his ability as a lawyer to convince us that Mr. James was guilty. He also seemed to have some kind of habit of scrunching his nose up every few seconds like he constantly felt a booger he wanted to pull out of his nostril.  
Mr. Katiyama was the defense lawyer. Actually there were two. Mr. McDonald I would call a greenhorn (this is a shout out to anyone that's seen Deadliest Catch or knows about commercial fishing) and appeared to need more experience about cross-examining a witness on the stand for sure.
The Judge, Mr. Costello, seemed like a very nice man. I don't have much else to say about him, as we were technically never allowed to talk to him. All questions would go through his Judicial Assistant, and I can't seem to remember her name! Megan, or Michelle. I think it was Michelle. Let's call her Ms. Boobs. The dresses and shirts she wore, with a lanyard falling down the middle of her chest, kind of accentuated that... area. 
And then there was the Court Reporter. You know, the person who types verbatim all the stuff that goes on in the courtroom? I actually managed to sneak a picture of her:

Seriously, she was in constant state of frown like everything in the world annoyed her. So I will call her Grumpy Cat. Because I can.

Now, I will try to summarize all of the court happenings here:
There were 4 witnesses: Officer Moody, Officer Criss, Officer... tow truck watcher, and a detective whose job it is to examine evidence for fingerprints and such. There were a number of articles of evidence, including: a single bullet found at the scene, a gun (with a magazine of bullets), pictures of the gun in the vehicle, and most importantly, dash cam video sans audio of what went down that night.

Basically, a car was pulled over for not having transferred a registration within 45 days of a sale. They discover the driver, Mr. Aroyo (sp) had a suspended license and when frisked, they found a smashed pill encased in a burned pouch of aluminum foil. They also found a man with a warrant out for his arrest. There were two women, and then also Mr. James. When officer Moody searched the car (with consent from Mr. Aroyo), he found a single 9mm bullet in a blue jacket, in which Mr. James stated the jacket was his, but the bullet was not. Due to this and the fact that the women had not consented to have their purses searched, they booked the car in order to serve a search warrant on the vehicle. It was towed to the police station.

At this time, I would like to point out that a lawyer's job is to beat a dead horse. Repeatedly. Each lawyer would ask the same question of a witness. And each lawyer would reiterate statements until they bore it into your brain like a botfly laying an egg. Now, I would also like to point out that every move they made was verbalized, probably for Grumpy Cat to make sure it all ended up on the court record. "I am stopping exhibit 8 at 14 minutes 39 seconds. I am fast forwarding exhibit 8 to 15 minutes, 12 seconds."

After the search warrant was issued, Moody and Criss searched the car and found a glock 19 handgun - a 9mm hand gun, with a fully loaded magazine and in ready-to-fire condition, found under the front seat where Mr. James was sitting in the rear. I won't bore you with all the details about how and why, but basically the law states that possession of an item is not just owning it, or holding it, but having held it at one point, even if just to say "cool" and hand it back. It's also about being able to have control over the item, being able to stop someone else from taking it. The law also states that you must know that it's there. That was the main point of contention. Did the state prove - because they have the burden of fault - that Mr. James knew the gun was there?

After officer Criss found the gun and booked it into evidence, he ran into Mr. James a couple of days later, arrested him, as as he was in the backseat in handcuffs, Officer Criss asked: "Would I find your fingerprints on that gun?" Mr. James paused, and then said "I don't know." That clinched it for most of the jury. To most of us, this infers that he knew the gun was there, and he probably had touched it, but long enough to leave prints? He wasn't sure.
(FYI: no fingerprints were found on a gun, nor did it have a registered owner).

In my opinion, and the opinion of many other jurors, the defense did a horrible job actually trying to defend Mr. James. They had nothing to go on besides trying to redirect the jury into discrediting the police officer's testimonies, and possibly trying to infer that they may have planted that bullet and they were trying to frame Mr. James. They did a decent job on one of the jurors, though. We had an 11 out of 12 vote for guilty, and one guy just could not say he was guilty without more evidence. He kept talking about the blue jacket, where was it, what happened to it? Because tying the bullet to Mr. James would indicate that he had to know the gun was there, and therefore was guilty of possessing it. And we kept saying that it didn't matter - the blue jacket was not submitted into evidence, nor did it need to be, and so it could not be used in our decision one way or the other.

In reality, we only deliberated maybe 2 or 3 hours, but the one guy finally saw reason. Mainly because we were given a sheet that specified the law exactly, and explained what 'possession' and 'knowing' was.

Just for humor's sake, I wanted to talk about a juror that had been dismissed prior to deliberations. His name was Lee, and although I don't know his age, I believe he said he graduated high school in 1955. I don't really understand why old people constantly make noise. They constantly suck on their teeth, or hum, or make other such noises. As jurors, we are not allowed to whisper among ourselves or ask questions or make any kind of real motions while we're watching the case; Lee completely ignored this. He was always humming (this seemed to make Grumpy Cat more grumpy), and actually whispered to one of the others about something. That afternoon, Lee was dismissed. Lesson: don't piss off the judge or break his rules.

In the end, I was glad that I wasn't the only one who felt the way I did with my personal verdict. I really was the perfect juror, not discussing the case with anyone, nor did I ever really think about it outside of the courtroom, even over the weekend we were on break. We had learned that he'd had a prior conviction of a serious offense (not detailed) which caused him to be forbidden from possessing firearms - this was not given to us until after our verdict, so we wouldn't be biased against him. Now that it's rendered guilty in this case, his sentencing will be on Thursday but I'm not sure what it will be, and as jurors we couldn't concern ourselves with his outcome if he were to be found guilty because that might sway our opinion. We rendered our verdict, and now Mr. James will have to pay the consequences.

This is a picture of the Pierce County Armory Building next to the courthouse. 

Just because it's awesome.

credit goes to spaceworkstacoma.com

My First Parking Ticket

I had a busy and fun last couple of weekends!! I'll start off with Sunday, May 24th. I decided to destination trip (as opposed to road trip!) with my boyfriend David, down to Portland, Oregon. I wanted to stop at a place called The Grotto, and I'd also been craving some Voodoo Doughnuts. David wanted to visit Powell's Bookstore, which apparently was as large as an entire city block.
David is the kind of person you read about on the internet.

Not even gonna lie, this was written about him.

So we stopped there first and I tried not to look bored. Okay, I failed at that. I then tried to find a seat at the coffee shop and when I failed at that too, I came back and stared at a wall of books until David was done enough to be pulled away.

Now don't get me wrong; I love to read, but I'm a kindle-chick through and through. I don't browse random books at a bookstore. I have a specific set of books in mind and I will do my browsing on Amazon. I'm just too picky and lazy to gaze over lines and lines of book spines.

After we were done with that, we went to check out the McMenamins that took over the old Kennedy School. I'm not much into history but that place was pretty neat.

First we stopped off at the gift shop and I bought a shot glass and learned that the Detention Bar serves tasting of the brandys that are made locally so I made plans to do that after we ate. We had lunch at their restaurant, and the food was pretty good. After that, I spent fifteen dollars to try 3 brandys. Now had I known they were going to charge me so much I wouldn't have done it. The gift shop had told me it would only be a couple dollars. Fifteen is not a couple. It's not even a few. That's insane. I could have bought 2 whole drinks with the brandys in it - and it would have tasted better!

Anyway... after lunch we needed to burn off some calories so we went to check out The Grotto. I knew it was a Catholic shrine thing, but since I'm not religious I didn't go for that reason. I wanted to see the cool cave in the side of the cliff, and visit the gardens up top and see the view of Portland. What I didn't realize was how... Catholic the whole thing was. Expecting to find a shot glass in their gift shop is now laughable after walking in and seeing crosses and statues of Saints everywhere. I paid $5 pp to ride the elevator to see the gardens up top, and discovered that we could have gotten in for free because the ticket-taker was nowhere to be found -_- . The gardens were pretty, but every few feet there was a statue of Jesus being crucified so it kind of took away from the whole experience. We didn't spend too long up there before we decided to go.

Is there a word for "too Jesus-y"? Cuz that's how I'd describe this.

After the Grotto was when I guess I decided I was too good for the city of Portland. See, I'd parked there before, last time I'd gotten doughnuts at Voodoo Doughnuts (they have this amazing ability to make milk-flavored glaze, and with a cereal topping I just can't resist!) 

I'd parked across the street and been fine. I hadn't seen a sign saying that I had to pay. So, after standing about an hour in line for our doughnuts (which was per usual for that place) I came back to a $44 parking ticket. Dammit. What a great way to top off the afternoon, huh?

At least I had doughnuts.