Some weeks ago, I got a postcard from the county informing me that I had jury duty. Time: Friday, June 15. Place: the 17th floor of Daley Center in downtown Chicago. So I got up early on Friday, caught a train and arrived ahead of the appointed time, 9:30 a.m.

Jury duty this time around was the same waiting slog it was some years ago. The large waiting room looked exactly the same, with its chairs and tables and a counter behind which the woman in charge of calling the panels spent the day as well. You might call the room design late 20th/early 21st-century nondescript public waiting space.

One small difference from last time: the wireless network name and password were posted on about a half-dozen small signs along the wall. Also, very visible green signs marked the location of electric outlets. There aren’t nearly enough of them.

Five or six panels of maybe 20 people each were called as the day went on, but not mine. I was able to do certain kinds of work: answering emails, deleting debris from my email account and my laptop, downloading picture and audio files, preparing documents to use later — all the sort of things that don’t involve writing. If I’d started a writing project that needed to be finished that day, sure as shooting my panel would have been called.

I also read some Patrick Leigh Fermor’s The Broken Road, the third book about his travels on foot across the now-vanished Europe of the 1930s. That’s a volume I pick up and put down with some regularity. The writing is so erudite and painterly that I read much slower than usual, as if savoring a particularly wonderful piece of chocolate.

Fairly late in the afternoon, the woman behind the counter said, “You’ve done your jury duty. Come collect your checks.” So we did. For our troubles, $17.20, exactly the same as nearly six years ago.