I was trying to file charges against the lady who attacked me, so the other day I went down to the 1st District police station. The extremely helpful officer at the desk told me that I had to file it through Metro Transit Police.

Metro Transit Police refuses to take it, insisting I have to file it through the court.

The court, of course, told me I had to do it through the police some time ago.

This morning a fire alarm -- a legitimate fire alarm, mind -- went off in the building, and our floor followed the prescribed evacuation route down seven flights of stairs. The exit door at the bottom was locked and impassible. About fifty people had to turn around and go to the other staircase via the second floor. If there had been a serious fire, and the floors in between the staircases had been dangerous, it's entirely possible if not likely that every single person on that side of the building would have died.

Of course, I can't find a simple "report a life-threatening violation of the fire code!" link anywhere in the DC government web pages... or even a sensible contact number. So reporting this one is going to take a while.

In the meantime, I've got a crapload of extra work on my plate thanks to training (all the more exacerbated due to the fire alarm) and am having my ass chewed because I made a dumb mistake after being still rattled from a situation in which I could have died.

Hey siliconrose, remember how you asked how I could be so immune to hope? A definition of hope: desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfillment. Obviously I have no expectations of any of my desires coming true, because doing so would defy all logic and established patterns ever generated or experienced. To have hope, therefore, would require faith in something that has less evidence for it than any other object or institution of faith ever. Jesus of Nazereth and Siddhārtha Gautama were at least real people, for example. My question to you, or anyone, is: How can you believe so firmly in something that has literally no evidence, or even interpretations, in its favor? My mind just doesn't work that way.