We've been going like mad gathering cattle and getting ready for shipping. We had the fences and corrals and stuff ready but getting the cattle in and sorted takes a while. So, here I am at one of my busiest times of the year and what do I receive in the mail? A summons to report for jury duty on Tuesday.<br />n<br />nWhere I am at you are called for jury duty for a whole year and then they summon you when they need a jury for a trial. For the past three years I have been called for jury duty for one court or another. It's usually not a big deal that I am on jury duty since it is very rare they call.<br />n<br />nI received the summons and just shook my head. The only thing I could do was request to be dismissed. That meant of course a fast run into town yesterday afternoon to sign an affidavit requesting to be let out of this trial and the reason why. I wasn't too concerned, I figured the Judge would let me off since shipping was so close and sure enough, by the time I got home the clerk of court had called and informed me the Judge had approved my request to not be there. I was relieved.<br />n<br />nIn the previous two years that I have had jury duty I was called one other time for a trail. Two years ago I was called. Guess when I was supposed to report for the trial? You got it, a few days before I was going to ship cattle. I got out of it that time too for the same reason. Quite a coincidence if you ask me.<br />n<br />nOtherwise getting the cattle in and getting ready to ship is going good. Today we will move all the cattle from the upper fields to the lower alfalfa fields so we can start sexing the calves. It really helps the day of shipping if we all ready have the calves sorted into steer and heifer bunches so for the next few days we will be busy doing that.<br />n<br />nOne note of consequence, we had to doctor a calf two days ago. Just a general respiratory problem that you see this time of year but very odd for me to have to do. It's rare I have to doctor anything so I'm concerned. I have noticed while the storm was nice for moisture, it sure knocked the cattle down. Going from nice warm temperatures to 3 days of very cold rain really caused them to take a hit. My weaning weights will be down a little from it but I think the loss is well worth the good the rain is going to do. It sure seems like nothing good can ever happen without something bad happening also. Oh well, that's the way things work.<br />n<br />n<strong>When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty. Norm Crosby</strong>