subpoena?

I love that I always wake up to emails from my mother.  It's a great way to start the day.  This morning I got one about how I need to be a better family member etc. (standard mother fare), and that I'm going to get subpoenaed!  YAY!

This is very annoying to me. Now every time I'm home I'm going to be wondering if I'll get a knock on the door.  Rad.  Good thing I rarely answer the door, given that most of the time it's people wanting to tell me about Jesus or sell me shit.  I think the best thing to do is to look at this as a learning experience.  Yay.

Recently I listened to a This American Life show called "The Long Shot".  The whole show is really good, but one act struck me in particular. It was about a prisoner who was up for parole in a CA prison. The parole system (to my understanding) works this way: people have parole hearings every year, but are usually rejected. However if you are deemed suitable for parole, the request gets sent to the governor's office who can override the parole request after 90 days. I think that the governor overrides about 99% of these paroles. No politician wants to be responsible for releasing a prisoner who goes on to commit another crime. So prisoners know that getting their hopes up is not a good thing...but so hard not to do. So basically the prisoner sits and waits for 3 months...getting their hopes up, playing psychological games with themselves about not being hopeful, etc.

Anyway, the prisoner that they were interviewing was up for parole after about 30 years of not being up for parole. This American Life followed him through the next 3 months, seeing how he was reacting and dealing with the waiting. At one point he said that all of the things that he'd lived with in prison for the last 30 years suddenly became intolerable: the food, the setting, the cells, the life.  But that he'd never noticed how crappy his life was until he saw the possibility of being released.

Granted I'm not in prison, and there are many things that I like, indeed love about Davis and my life here, but the possibility of leaving suddenly makes the usual frustrations that much more frustrating.  Looking for climbing partners every weekend, feeling left out of the Bay Area crew's plans, driving 30 minutes to a crappy gym or 2.5 hours to climb on choss, avoiding an ex, feeling generally isolated...all silly and yes, I know, trivial complaints which don't usually bother me, but somehow are a little more aggravating now that I want to move.

I'm sure I'll settle down and become a good little appreciative privileged-girl soon.