jury duty (m)

Got summoned for jury duty....again.  I got summoned a few years ago and went.  I recall a long day at this pit of a courthouse with a bunch of strange-looking people and a prison-like cafeteria.  I remember they gave us a lunch break and a voucher for lunch.  I felt like one of the inmates in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.  The food was gross...and fattening.  At the time, I remember it being just gross.  I wasn't counting points then; I was focused on quality and taste.  Awful.

So, you can imagine my dismay when I got my most recent call for duty.  Panic set in.  What am I going to eat?  How long would I have to serve?   What if I got one of those interminably long murder cases?  Would we eat pizza every night?  Or Chinese?  All that fat....all that sodium.  I pictured Debra Winger in Legal Eagles wiping the sludge off a hot dog right out of the package.  That would be me as I held out for a guilty verdict with all these Massachusetts people who are soft on crime.  Give me a pedophile and I'd hold out forever.


Then, I read the fine print.  Postponement Option caught my eye.  I called the number and got one of those civil servants who could not give a fat rat's ass if I served or not.  All he cared about was whether I was planning to come now...or later.  I told him I was on Weight Watchers and that I would have a hard time sticking to my diet in the courthouse.  Long pause.  I had to ask twice if he were still on the line.  "Yeah...I'm here."  Then he said, "When will you be done with the diet?".  I told him I'd like a year since that was the maximum time for which one could postpone.

"Okay.  You got it.  Good luck with the diet".

I wonder if I can make the same argument for Maintenance....