Yesterday was a strange one for me. I will try to explain.

My jury summons required me to report to the courthouse, coincidentally (I am sure) located near the Judiciary Square Metro stop, at 9 a.m. I left the house dressed in fresh khakis and a red plaid button down shirt at 8:15, and walked to the Metro, about 15 minutes from the house.

It was not overly warm, but I had done a lot of walking over the past several days (10,000 steps plus on two of the last three) and my legs felt it. In addition, my left foot bunion, which I have been able to ignore for more than 30 years, is finally making its presence felt, so my steps are not as carefree as they have been.

Whatever they reasons, when I got to the Metro (quickly discovering that the street escalator was not functioning), and on the train, I was already, as some used to say and some may still say, plumb tuckered out. How tuckered out was I? So tired that, along with one other man who kept his eyes closed the whole time, I was the only person on the entire and crowded subway car that wasn’t looking at their smartphone.

I got off at Judiciary Square just on time at 8:50, walked to the still sleek and attractive Moultrie Court House, and arrived early at the juror intake room. It was 8:58.

I stood in line for a few minutes, and then it was my turn. Two of three clerks were fighting over me. I told them I could only be in one place at one time. The one with the biggest smile (they were both smiling) won out. She looked at my summons and my driver’s license and said simply: “You want to be excused?” I said that I would like to be because I had a number of things scheduled for the next day, and she said,”Okay, you will get an email telling you that you are permanently excused.”

And that was it. On the one hand, I was surprised. On the other, I was a bit hurt. But as I thought about it, I realized that I had reported for jury duty over 20 times through my adult life and never served on a jury. So, really nothing had changed.

I also should say that I was planning on reading E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End while I was sitting around waiting to be called for a voir dire, but it was not to be.

I decided to walk to the Gallery Place Metro stop, and stay for a while reading at a café, and bought coffee at Gregory’s, where the coffee is always good, but my heart wasn’t in it. So I went to the station, saw four National Guardsmen, all unarmed and bored to death (as well as being cruelly overdressed), and got on the train.

Since I got home, I have taken one of our cars to the service station because it developed a flat tire over the weekend, all on its own. The tire, when placed on a thingamabob to test it for repair, looked just like my bunion. The tire will be replaced. I am stuck with the bunion.

By the way, I did go to a podiatrist several decades ago. He told me I would need surgery. I asked him if anything could go wrong. He said that the surgery might not work, the bunion might reappear, it may make things worse, there may be complications, or I may die. Enough said.

I also closed my eyes for ten minutes (opening them over a half hour later), and then went to the post office, bought a sandwich at Subway, and did a brief grocery run.

Still tired when I got home, I pulled together my strength and picked up my phone, going to Facebook and watching short “reels’ for almost 45 minutes, as they rotated between Rodney Dangerfield clips, short segments of terrific piano playing, and odd examples of Hasidic rabbis dancing with each other. Then, I wrote this much of this post.

Then I watched more clips. Many of the piano performances were from this year’s Cliburn competition. The winner was a young pianist from Hong Kong, named Aristo Wang. We will hear more from him. He was born in Hong Kong, had his early education there and in London, and has a degree in economics from Harvard, and music degrees from both the New England Conservatory and Julliard.

The rest of the day was quiet. J finished the biography of Max Nordau that I have been reading, and went back to Colum McCann’s Thirteen Ways of Looking, which I had started earlier.

I watched, out of the corner of my eye, the Nats-Yankee game. The Nats are shut out for 8 innings, allowing the Yankees to score 10 times. Then, in the 9th, the Nats score 5. It may be that the Nats are in last place in their division, but they are in first place in all the Majors in scoring in the last 2 innings of a game.  And, as I understand it, that is what really counts.