This week has been a good one. On Monday, I went to court. This was the first courtroom I had been in since the U.S. Supreme Court when I was about seven. I do not remember much about the Supreme Court either, because it was nothing significant to me at the time. Try explaining the Supreme Court to a seven year old! Going to court on Monday was a rather unexpected turn of events. I was at lunch with Karen, and Ashley came along and ate with us. As I was about to leave for work, she was on the phone. She turned to me and simply asked if I wanted to be a witness. I said yes, without having any idea of what I would even be witnessing! I couldn't imagine what it was. I thought it might be a wedding or something. When she got off the phone with her brother, she explained to me that I would be a witness in a court room, later that evening. I needed a shirt and tie, because I would be leaving with her and her brother to go to Salt Lake, right after work. I gave her my key, and assured her that none of my roommates would be home in the middle of the afternoon. She said she would go pick up some clothes for me to wear there.
At 4:30pm, I got off work, and jumped in the car with Ashley and her brother, Johnny, and we drove to the U.S. District Courthouse, in Salt Lake City. I had never been in there. It is a beautiful Greek revival building. When we got there, I got my clothes from Ashley. She told me a funny story about picking them up. Apparently I had been wrong about my roommates. Ashley said that she had gone into my apartment, and went back to my room. As she did so, she noticed one of my roommates asleep still, at 3:30pm! I guess she was a little startled, so she went in my room, closed the door, and then got my clothes. One of them started laughing uncontrollably though, so she decided it was time to leave, with what she had. She took off, and the sleeping roommate was then sitting up in bed. When I asked him about this later, he said he had no idea anyone had stopped by! I also learned then that one of my other roommates had been home, with his door closed, and he was the one who was laughing uncontrollably. It turned out that Ashley was only not able to grab socks, so she brought a pair of hers for me.
The court was interesting. As I mentioned, I was a witness. The case was a robbery and murder case, and I was a witness for the defense. Basically, the defendant had been accused of planning out a convenience store robbery. A buddy of his had actually carried it out, and the store owner, while trying to protect himself and the store from the burglar, had accidentally shot his wife. In most states, the criminal can be charged with that death, even though he was not the one who actually killed the person. I was testifying that the defendant was not the kind of person who would plan such a crime, and that he was an honest family man. Even though this was a mock trial, it was rather intense to be up there, at the bench, with people questioning me. It was a lot of fun though. I really enjoyed it. It was a final exam for Johnny. The defense ended up winning the case, although that was not required for a passing grade in the class. After the trial was over, we came back to Provo, and they dropped me off at my house. I made sure to grab everything out of the car, but I still felt like I was forgetting something.
On Tuesday morning, I figured out that I had been forgetting something. Ashley still had my apartment key. I guess I did not care too much about that, because she is a good friend that I trust, but I did think it would be a little inconvenient, especially for her, to call her up every time I got locked out, and have her come let me in! After classes and work that day, which were all pretty normal, I went over to her house just to pick up the key. I ended up being there for over an hour, just sort of hanging out with everyone. I was going to walk home, because the buses had stopped running for the night (don't get me started on that!), but she offered to drive me, assuring me that it would only take five minutes, instead of half an hour. It ended up taking an hour. Well, driving me to my apartment complex only took a couple of minutes, but then we sort of stayed in the car and talked for a while. I'm not sure why, but she is someone I find easy to trust, so I was sort of talking about a few things I was trying to figure out. I was going to go to bed at 11:00 that night, because I was tired and needed to go to bed early, but that did not exactly happen. I have mentioned this to a few people, and most of them have said something like, "Oh, you guys were 'parking'!" Well, my argument is that we couldn't have been "parking" because she drives a standard transmission, so there is no park gear, and we weren't in a parking space! We really were only talking!
Wednesday was April Fools' Day. I did not actually do anything to anyone this year, and no one really did anything to me. It was a rather dull April Fools' Day actually. Daniel got me, kind of, by telling me he had kissed a girl that he is really interested in. I wanted to believe him, but one little part of me didn't, so I was rather surprised. Later he told me it was an April Fools' joke. Then I was not surprised. I thought it sounded like a bit much, but I was excited for him.
Thursday and Friday weren't too exciting. I went to school and work, as usual. On Friday I also had to work at a volleyball game, against UC Irvine. I was taking tickets, so I am not really sure how that turned out. I know we beat them Thursday night, but I have no idea what happened on Friday.
This morning, I had my CDL test. It started out really bad. It was one of those mornings when everything that could go wrong, went wrong! My coach was not there. Someone had taken #324, which is the one I usually drive, and the one I wanted to do the test in. Well, I found another one, which looked like a good one to take. It was very similar to the one I usually use. I began the pretrip inspection, and got about halfway through, when I noticed a shattered window. Obviously we could not take that bus. I went to the next one, and started to inspect that one. Well, that one had no inspection reports, which you need to have, filled out, in order to drive. I looked all over the coach and in the other coaches for some reports, but could not find any extras anywhere. Basically, even though the coach was in good shape, I could not drive it at all, because it had no inspection report. There was one other coach that could be driven for the testing, so I went to that one, and begun the inspection. It had all the necessary paperwork, and the windows were all intact. As I went back to look at the engine, I found that it was fairly steadily leaking coolant. That one definately was not an option. There were no more options! I was very frustrated by this point. At that point, the examiner got back with the student ahead of me. He asked me to get one of the coaches going so it would be warm for us to test in, and I explained that we could not use any of them. We ended up using the one that the student ahead of me used. The test went well. I did not notice one sign, and it started out a little rough, probably because I was still annoyed at the other three coaches. It went well though, and I passed all three parts. We were tested first on driving on the streets, and then on the skills course. I had to demonstrate that I could back up straight, offset backwards, and back around a corner. Those went fine. At the very end he had me do the right side inspection, the engine inspection, and the interior inspection. That also went fine. I passed everything, which was great.
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