Yesterday, while following tweets on the #coopertrial, I got the idea that _we_ should all go see the trial! After all, it's a national (albeit sleeper) spotlight murder trial and it's happening right in our front yard.
Unfortunately, wakegov.com, nccourts.org SUCK at providing relevant information to someone who wants to find out what trials are currently going on...even more so, the COOPER MURDER TRIAL that's been on the news every fucking day. I found out the court room (3c) from twitter. I called the main number and of course, it is totally recorded and if you want any general information? Forget it. I actually got to a point where the recording gave me numbers to call: if you need blah, hang up and dial this number. Are you kidding me? You can't even connect me?
No matter. None of those numbers helped. I decided to call a number at the courthouse and I kid you not, whoever answered was incomprehensible. It's like driving through a fucked up drive-in Mickey D's. I ignored whatever she said and asked if I could get information on the Brad Cooper trial. This is the professional response I got "Ummmmm...hang on..." then click. After about 30 seconds, I got to voicemail for someone else.
Fuck it. I decided we would just go to the courthouse and if we could just walk right in (as a friend of mine said), then we would.
First, we must eat breakfast. So I said we would hit Cafe Helios, a local coffee house (NOT STARBUCKS) off Glenwood (downtown Raleigh). We hit high tide since the place was pretty full and we waited a bit for our food but nonetheless, it has a great atmosphere and service and folks were great. We were sitting at the bar and when the waitress brought our food, I was pointing out who had what. When I mentioned that Tim's item was for "the man at the end of the bar" she laughed and said "the one I love". It was cute. Maybe you had to be there.
We made it to the courthouse and after looping around to find parking, we made it to the "back" of the building. We made it through security without a hitch (whew). Thanks to twitter, I knew to go to the third floor and found 3C. What timing as they were just coming in from a break. On the stand was James Ward, an "expert" for the defense who analyzed Brad Cooper's hard drive for any tampering. We soon noticed that the jury was not sitting and the prosecution was just drilling Ward's credentials. We stuck around for only about 30 minutes since the kids were getting bored. I think I could have stayed all day...After Raleigh, we headed to Fearrington Village, which is a common Spring Break destination. Tim has never been to the little "center" of the village, so we got to be his tour guide.
We were still to full from Cafe Helios so we skipped eating but we hit the shops
and McIntyre's Books
And of course, you just can't leave without visiting the cows
It was still early afternoon so we hit Franklin Street in Chapel Hill where we hit a couple of shops and then ate at Spanky's. We ended the day with a trip to the movies, where CJ joined me to watch a movie she and Tim watched last weekend, Insidious. Plot line starts great, gets weak but it still scared the shit out of me. Tim and MiMi ended up watching Rio and when I got in the car, after our movie finished, MiMi was like "we have so much to talk about!". She proceeded to tell CJ and I about the mom who decided to play Angry Bird during the movie (it wasn't me) and how her son was telling her to stop.
Then Tim, CJ and I couldn't stop talking about parts of Insidious that were so scary, to which MiMi exclaimed "I feel so left out! I am the only one who hasn't seen it!" Maybe one day...she didn't even see it and CJ managed to get her (and herself) scared on the drive home.
All in all, a very nice day one. I love seeing the sights and sounds of what's around me and sharing that with my kids. I love that my kids love doing this stuff too.
Sounds like a great day! We got married at Fearrington. I love it out there.
ReplyDelete