Law & Order: The Super Librarian Edition

It's been an unsettled week around the Bat Cave, which has led to me not being online very much.  Part of this is because work has been kicking my butt in the form of The End Times - which is what I call the end of our fiscal year.  What does this mean?  It means Wendy starts spending money like a drunken sailor in Bangkok.  The name of the game in my business is to overspend.  Because at the end of the day, all those books I pre-ordered will roll in, the discounts will apply, and those negative balances will turn positive.  The goal is to have numbers as close to zero as humanly possible.

So yeah, I've been making myself crazy so it would make perfect sense that now would be the time I get called for Jury Duty.  I actually don't mind Jury Duty all that much because it means a lot of sitting around with uninterrupted reading time.  Last time I was called it was for one of the "lesser" courthouses where they hear the not-quite-as-serious cases (that courthouse is in a "college town" so there you go).  This time though?  Superior Court.  You know, where the real villains hang out.  And yours truly sat in the courtroom gallery for three days while they selected a jury for a rape trial.  As you can probably imagine, they burned through quite a few potential jurors, although my number (#120) was never randomly called.  So basically I sat there for three days, listening to the judge, listening to the lawyers, listening to prospective jurors, and being very, very glad I've chosen to stay on the right side of Johnny Law.

+++++

In other criminally bent news, my mother sent me a small gift this week (pretty stationary) and in true Ma Kettle Super Librarian fashion, she sent me photographs of signs in the Alcatraz prison library.  Even when my mother isn't sending me newspaper clippings?  She's sending me things pretty dang close.  Anyway, I found this interesting:

"....most prisoners sought mental escape through books.  Literate convicts read 75-100 books a year."

Hey, what do you know online romance reading buds?  WE'RE JUST LIKE THE PRISONERS AT ALCATRAZ!  

"Books with sexual, violent or criminal references were not allowed." 

Um, OK.  Maybe not.

Which begs the question, would Wendy even read if books didn't have sex, violence or criminal references in them?  Because, dude - I NEVER, EVER WANT TO GO TO PRISON!  Yeah, uninterrupted reading time would be grand, but not if I had to read boring books.