Judgement Day

I realized late last night that my meeting with the Henrico Judiciary Club this morning was scheduled for 11am, not 9am as I had it set in my mind. Whoops! That's good for me because I got to sleep in..but bad for work because I had told them that I would probably be there by 11 or so.

Anywho, at 10:45am, I rolled into the Judiciary Clubhouse parking lot, followed by a lowered red Civic with euro clears, some wheels, and a coffee can exhaust tip. Poor bastard. They got him, too. I decided against parking in the "State Trooper" section of the lot, for obvious reasons. After being thuroughly frisked at the door, I made my way into one of the 6 court rooms and sat down. And that's where I'd sit for the next 2 hours or so. It brought back memories of when I used to sit through hours of court procedings, waiting for my 15 seconds of fame with the honorable one himself...who usually looked very similar to Bob Barker. Today's wait seemed extremely long, however. I watched a translator translate "You must have a driver's license to drive a car in America" into Spanish. I watched a lady try to weasel her way out of a "Following too close" charge. She lost. And then..he called my name.

I took my place beside Mr. Read in front of the (none-other-than) honorable Bob Barker. He asked me if I had removed the tint from my windows. "Not as of today, sir." "An the turn signals?" "Yes sir, I have replaced those with DOT approved ones. I brought one of them with me today if you'd like to see." The judge then gave the secret wink to Officer Read. They then did the secret handshake and wispered the secret password to each other and I was told that the Unapproved Equipment violation would be dropped and that I would be fined for the "Illegal Sunshading"...$35. Cool, I thought, only $35. I was escorted to the clerk's office where I promptly paid a total of $62. Grrr. Court costs.

I made my way back out to the truck in the parking lot, expecting to see at least 5 or 6 troopers examining it. Luckily, they hadn't come out yet. So, I booked it on out of there. Overall, I feel pretty good about the whole thing. $62. Whatever. If it keeps happening, MAYBE I'll put 50% tint on the side windows..but only if this becomes a real nuissance. The worst part of the whole thing was wasting my time sitting there in that court room all morning.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. I had a pile of work waiting for me when I got to work (at 1:30!), but I got it all pretty much knocked out by 3:00 or so.

Don't miss tomorrow episode where I go to the dentist...again. It's doomsday week on jeffpollard.net, by the way!

Posted by Jeff at August 22, 2001 12:54 AM