there's a sexual assault suspect on the loose in Fairfax County tonight

I am officially a Washingtonian transplant. I wore flip-flops to work this morning, carrying my shoes in my bag. I rode the metro standing, without holding onto the poles. I went in to work through the back employee exit. Yeah. I'm cool now.

This morning I got to watch my first arraignment and my first sentencing. Both were educational. Yvette had the sentencing; she was satisfied with the terms, 2 years probation, 180 days suspended sentence on 3 counts of criminal contempt, and 100 hours of community service. Then I sat through a rather depressing trial. It was a routine CPO, a woman (well, girl) against her former lover. They had two children together, a 18 month old, and a 6 month old. They had lived with her mother. She moved out two weeks ago with the kids (to her new boyfriend's house, of course), and he stayed with her mother, who actually showed up as a witness for him. Oh yeah, she's 17 and he's 38. She was 14 when they started dating. Judge Motley asked him, 'isn't she a little young?' The respondent said, 'when you fall in love, age doesn't matter.' I almost vomited. I'm pretty sure that in every state a situation like that is called statutory rape.

Kimberly felt bad because of one of the cases she was invested in, a Paraguayan woman who had been isolated by her live-in boyfriend, who also happened to be a police officer. He would give her a daily allowance, and when he found out that she was buying a phone card to call her family, he reduced the amount to $4 a day. Yesterday was the first day of the CPO, and things were going well. Today, they walked into the continuance arm in arm. They decided to drop the case. She'll probably go back to him, go back and live with him. Kimberly was pretty upset. We went to Potbelly's for lunch, the whole Section. I really like these women. A lot. It's strange, how we're dropped into other people's lives. And it's wonderful when it works out.

And now Lori's got me sucked into Grey's Anatomy. I haven't cried so much over a tv show since The X-Files series finale. For those who do not watch the show, one vein was about Izzy, a doctor who met and fell in love with a man with a serious heart problem. She did a lot to get him a heart transplant, tried to save his life. He asked her to marry him. She decided to get freshened up so that she could look great when she said yes. When she walked back into the room, he had died. She spent most of the episode on the floor, wearing the same dress she'd put on to say yes. How could you ever get over that? Ugh... now I'm hooked. And now I've just watched the premiere of Six Degrees. And it was good. Stupid ABC and their Thursday night lineup.

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