All Charges Dismissed
And I didn't even have to pay for parking! My former church in downtown Chapel Hill, only a few blocks from the courthouse/post office, kindly agreed to let me park in their lot. Thankfully, I only had to impose upon their kindness for less than an hour. The whole court date thing was surprisingly efficient. If I were a writer, like CEP, I would describe the grandfatherly security guard, a smattering of the defendants in their multi-ethnicity, the well-clad assistant DAs. I don't have the patience to do that, though! Suffice it to say, there was a long but orderly line, an astonishing amount of politeness and good will (this being Chapel Hill, and we being the riff-raff and all), and shortly and sweetly, my case was dropped without my setting foot in the actual courtroom.

I doubt the trooper who issued the citation will have as easy a time of it facing the charges which will almost certainly be filed against him. We have had a rash of trooper scandals around here the past month or so, with "my" trooper's being quite possibly the worst. While I'm not overly sympathetic to illegal immigrants' plight (there being legal, if more time-consuming, ways to enter the country), nobody deserves to have a law enforcement officer attempt to coerce her (into what, you can probably guess). Thankfully, the intended victim went to a lawyer, and "my" trooper is now a former trooper. As there was no citation issued, I really can't see where these folks have any motive to make up a story like this. I hate to see a sworn officer of the law attempting to tarnish our country's commitment to rule of law, especially in so despicable a manner. *Sigh*

Labels: law enforcement

- posted by Lenise @ 7:45 PM |

 
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
I actually cooked something from scratch yesterday. It was a casserole, no big deal, but still kind of hard when you are under time pressure and have to keep chasing the boys away from the stove every 5 minutes. In Isaac's case, this involves bodily removal from the room. Anyway, the whole reason I cracked a cookbook was that I had volunteered to bring some church acquaintances dinner, as they have a handsome new baby boy. I've really been feeling like I should do this sort of thing more often, because it was a huge blessing to us when Isaac was born. We got lots and lots of food!!

Anyway, I was running later than I had intended, but I finally got the food packed up when the Dad called, wanting an idea of when to expect me. I probably should have called them myself, but I didn't (it's a learning curve thing). Anyway, I was able to tell him I was on my way out the door and would be there within 40 minutes. I had already studied the map, but as I was heading down the highway, decided to go on 85 instead of 40 and avoid a bunch of traffic lights. So here I am in the far left lane, preparing to take the 85 split, when I noticed a SHP car coming up behind me, really fast. I moved into the third leftmost of the four lanes, but the car followed and turned on its lights. *Sigh* Doesn't this figure? So I crossed the remaining 2 lanes and pulled off onto the shoulder. I was going faster than most of the cars out there at the time, but not fast for that stretch of highway when I normally travel it. In any case, my speedometer (I've been told) reads high, so I thought I was going about 70, thought that's not what the speedometer said.

Utterly unaware of what to expect, I turned off the engine, rolled down my window, and waited for the patrolman to approach. He came to the passenger side, so I had to turn the accessories back on in order to roll the passenger side window down. "I stopped you because you have an expired registration," he said, after we exchanged brief greetings. I was relieved, because I am really proud of my clean driving record (which probably should have been blemished in my college years, but escaped nonetheless). Then he ran my license through the system, which took quite a while and had me wondering whether it, too, had expired. I knew there couldn't be anything else to learn from it (see above reference to clean driving record).

Eventually, my license was returned along with a citation for the out-of-date registration, and I now have to go to court in September to avoid paying a heap of money for it. Paul found the renewal notice and renewed the registration online last night, so we should get the new sticker on the plate before the week is up. Hopefully no one will stop us in the meantime!!

Thankfully, three of the four lanes go to 85, so I only had to cross one lane of traffic (I only had about a quarter of a mile to accomplish this feat, but thankfully traffic was light), and I had no trouble whatsoever finding our friends' house, getting out of the car just as the Dad rolled in on his bike with baby's angelic big sister. I really like maps!

I saved half the casserole for us, which made for a tasty dinner, and I got each of us a small pan of brownies. I also demonstrated to myself that I can cook a meal and deliver it with minimal aid from others (I didn't have to bring the kids to the store or to our friends' house). Now if I can just keep my registration updated, maybe I will make more of a habit of this!

Labels: law enforcement, life

- posted by Gary @ 8:24 PM |