AS YOU CAN SEE ABOVE, yr. dangerously underemployed web editor bit the proverbial bullet of credit card debt and attained a replacement digicam.

The particular scene is the King County Regional Justice Center in the much-maligned suburban community of Kent, right in between the vestigial old small town and the strip-mall and office-park barrenscape. This big, magnificent 1997 building is NOT a grandiose waste-O-taxpayer-$$, in my opine. In places such as Kent where private-sector architecture’s particularly brutal & grim, we need governments to show what the built environment can be like when it’s made with care for the people who have to move through it.

Today, I was one who had to move through it. Called for jury duty, I spent a long under-caffinated morning being herded from room to room, listening to judges’ lectures and watching an instructional video on the juror’s responsibilities narrated by the late Raymond Burr (who probably did more to popularize misunderstandings about the trial process than anybody in U.S. history). At the end of all this, a state attorney kicked me out of the trial being empaneled that day. I get to go back Tuesday and make myself available for other trials.

Following that misadventure, I finally got to dine at an indie BBQ joint I’ve long heard about and even written about, the legendary Cave Man Kitchens. It’s one of those “you need no teeth to eat our beef” places. The meat is smoked and melt-in-your-mouth; the sauce is sweet and tomato-ey. Good eatin’. (Though I prefer the Pecos Pit on First Avenue South.)