Announcing Quinlan James Floyd, born at BC Women’s this afternoon at 1:10pm PST, 7lbs 5oz. Mother and baby are healthy and happy!

On Monday we had our friends over for Thanksgiving.  I know it seems a little silly for some one a couple of weeks from her due date to host Thanksgiving.  That being said, I love dinner parties.  Having the dinner at our house means that we can have a good time with our friends and still get the boy to bed close to his bedtime.  He went to bed a little later than normal but he had a long nap in the afternoon.

We decided to have it buffet style with as many disposable parts as possible to make the clean up easier.  There was still quite a bit that need to go in the dishwasher, but without the plates and roaster it made clean up a lot easier.

What does this have to do with a baby pool do you ask?  Well, I had been joking about a baby pool with Tammy for a little while.  She is the only one convinced that this baby is a girl.  So we decided to start a pool.  Three things were needed, the date of the birth, the gender of the child, and the weight.  The one that gets closest on all three wins a bottle of wine and we get some guilt free babysitting.  If we have the baby before my mom comes one of these lovely people will be taking care of Aidan while we are at the hospital.

So to keep everybody honest we are putting their predictions on the blogs.  We will announce the winner when we announce the birth.  If you would like to get in on the action (well with a hearty congratulations instead of the wine) put your guesses in the comments.  You need to guess the date the baby will be born, the baby’s weight and whether it is a boy or a girl. The information everyone guessing had was this:  My due date is the 30th October.  Aidan was about 10 days early.  The ultrasound technician didn’t actually say boy, but (after an hour of trying to get all the measurements that ususally take 15 minutes) she said things get in the way so I would say 80% and looked at Aidan. ( She wasn’t supposed to say anything because I was only 19 weeks 5 days instead of 20 weeks.)  In the latest ultrasound there was no room to see.  According to the last ultrasound the baby is short and has a solid body and a very big head.  Care to guess?

Here are the friends guesses:

Tammy: 25 October, Girl, 9 lbs

Carla: 27 October, Girl, 8lbs 5 oz

Chris: 24 October, Boy, 8 lbs

Tomer: 23 October 8lbs 1 oz

Ali: 26 October, Boy, 8 lbs 14 oz

Noushin: 28 October, 8 lbs 6 oz

Anthony refuses to guess.  I just want it to be soon.  Good luck!

Eh, the election was last night.  I don’t want to talk about it.  If you follow me on Facebook, I’m sorry.  You really should be on Twitter too, it makes more sense there.  It was kinda like being at a bar, talking about the election results with 100 of your closest friends right across the country.

Life has been busy.  We’re pretty much prepared for Beta.

This past weekend we followed Gwen’s own advice and visited the pumpkin patch.  We decided to go to the Richmond Country Farm, down off of the Steveston Highway, on the advise of Cousin Vicki and others.  It’s quite a production, and they’ve got it well set up.  I bet that they probably get several thousand people passing through a day.

It’s a full package there.  The price is steep ($10/person over 3 yrs old) but you get a hay wagon ride through their decorated farmland, entrance to a corn maze, and the pumpkin patch.  You each get to take home any size pumpkin you’d like, and you get an apple each too!

Aidan liked tromping around the pumpkin patch and was pretty … um … discerning … in picking out his pumpkin.

After filling our bags with two large, heavy pumpkins and a few small pumpkins, Aidan and I left Gwen sitting on a hay bale while we went and explored the corn maze.  He was pretty interested in it, but the further we went in, the more nervous he became.

He started asking if we were going to find Mommy, and the deeper we went, the more frequent that question came up.  It seemed that he was genuinely concerned that we’d lost Mommy, so we short-circuited the maze and walked back along the outside.  Of course, there were blackberry bushes (with *gobs* of berries still on them) along the route back to the pumpkin patch, and it took us quite some time to walk that stretch.  Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your perspective, the questions about the lost Mommy stopped with the intake of ripe berries.

Of course, we eventually found her. :)

A few weeks ago, Gwen called me at work:

You’ve got mail from the Sheriff.

And immediately I knew it was a Jury Summons.

So, today I reported to the BC Supreme Court.  The first thing I noticed was that they weren’t really very friendly in how they handle prospective jurors.  When I showed up at the 800 Smithe Street building and walked in the front door, I was confronted by a sea of people milling every which way.  I stopped, looking at the various signs.  There were signs pointing to elevators, to various courts and so on.  Nothing said “juror” or “prospective juror” or anything like that.  There was a desk in the centre of the lobby with a guy in full uniform being harassed by all manner of people.  I wandered a little closer to that desk when the sheriff caught sight of a guy in a t-shirt and jeans who had entered just ahead of me and looked just as lost.  The sheriff cut off the suit who was trying to talk to him and snapped “Jury duty?  Fourth floor”.

The guy ahead of me looked at the sheriff, looked over his shoulder at me, and we slunk our way over to the block of elevators.  And crammed ourselves onto the next car.  Seriously?  There were maybe 8 of us in the elevator and there was no room to breathe.  I’m not sure if it was an elevator or a dumb waiter.

So, we arrived at the fourth floor and tumbled out into the hallway.  And once again, we were completely lost.  There were maybe 6 of us standing in a hallway that lead out into a nice atrium with a ceiling that was all skylights.  If you’ve been at Robson Square, you know what I mean — and if not, the photo to the right (from Will Pate on Flickr) shows the atrium from below.  Again, there were no signs.  There were no people around to ask directions.  As a group we wandered around, stumbling about as if we were trying to act out Brownian motion.  Waaaaaay down the other end of the atrium, we spotted a kiosk and a cloud of people.  As we were making our way down there, one of the sheriffs attending the kiosk bellowed at the hovering masses to form a line and have your papers ready.  We hadn’t established that this is where we were supposed to be, but it seemed pretty likely so we fell into line too.

The floor was sticky.  Really sticky.  According the the older guy who was standing beside me in the line, it was the trees dripping sap onto the floor.  And sure enough, he showed me one of the leaves and it seemed to be covered in dew … but the guy said it was sap.  The floor was sticky enough that I believe him.  We joked that it was to keep anyone from running away.  It was *that* sticky.

Anyway, after getting our papers scanned in by a surly sheriff we were told to take a seat in the neighbouring lobby.  This was fine for the first 20 or so people, but after that there were no more seats.  As a result, most of us were left standing around or sitting on the stairs.  For a half hour.

Eventually we were ushered into one of the court rooms.  Second verse just like the first.  The court room had 26 seats.  We numbered 80 prospective jurors.  We had people lined up against three walls of the court room, people standing along the rails separating the jury box from the rest of the court, people wedged into the doorway, people everywhere.

Next, one of the sheriffs explained the process.  This was the first helpful information we had all morning.  He explained that we were there to select the jury for A SINGLE TRIAL.  8 jurors.  There were 80 of us there.  Seemed a little excessive to me.  And, oh, the trial is expected to last 5 days.

So, the process went like this:  The lawyers came in, arranged all their books, laptops, gowns, etc.  The judge entered the chambers and then explained the process to us again, reviewing what the sheriff had already told us.  She told us a little bit of what the case was about (a car accident where the one party was allegedly injured and blamed the other driver … who denies fault).  The lawyers were then told to read their witness list so that if any of the prospective jurors knew any of the parties involved, we could let the judge know.  Then the court clerk drew names out of a box, reading names from each slip of paper.  Eight names were called and these people went up to the side of the court beside the jury box.  Next, each name was read out again, and this time each prospective juror had a chance to give the judge a reason why they couldn’t serve.  If the judge accepted the reason (if they gave one) then that person was excused.  If they gave a reason but the judge didn’t think it was valid, then that person was left to the lawyers.  The lawyers, you see, have the opportunity to ‘challenge’ the suitability of the juror.  No questions were asked of the prospective jurors (which was strange to me, given what I’ve absorbed from fiction about the American legal system) but the lawyers clearly had a list of the prospective jurors and some information on us.  Every person who offered an excuse to the judge but were denied ended up being challenged by one of the lawyers, and so didn’t have to serve on the jury.  Additionally one other person was challenged.  Out of the first 8 called, only 2 were seated.

Another 7 names were called.  This time all but one were kept and thus the case had its 8 jurors.  8 jurors, I might add, who get paid $20/day plus $13/day for incidentals.  Companies are required to give you unpaid leave for jury duty, so it can be pretty crippling for some people.

At any rate, I wasn’t one of them.  My name didn’t get called.

We were dismissed from the courtroom and once again left to our own devices.  This time though, it was like bats scattering to the wind.  Prospective jurors streaming to elevators and exits with no guidance required.

But, it’s not over.  Everyone who didn’t get seated (even those who were excused) has to return to go through the whole process for a different case on October 14th.  Woo-hoo!