Monday, June 13, 2005

Good and bad...

Back at work after a good weekend, we braved the near 90 degree heat and humidity and went to the National Zoo. I love the Zoo, it's free and since we're members parking is free too!! There are so many exhibits that we can always switch it up and see something new. The highlights on Sunday were the bald eagles and the octopus in the invertebrate house--this is an often missed exhibit that I highly recommend, it is located slightly behind the Ape House and the path to it is next to the Think Tank.

After we got home I dove into my preparation of the "home cooked Sunday dinner." I am so desperate for us to make this a family tradition, so far I'm doing it about 75% of the time. Hopefully that will change once we move to Buffalo and there is more family around to invite. Anyway, yesterday I made paella. Since I had already done this once with my sister-in-law a few weeks ago when we were visiting my dad in Florida, it turned out pretty well. Darling fiancé "GA" said it looked restaurant quality and asked did I want to take a picture.

But of course work today has already dampened my happy vibes. Don't you just hate when you think someone is on top of something that is their job and that really, really effects your job and then they just drop the ball. I found this morning that the domain name for my work blog had expired because no one was checking the email mailbox that was listed as the contact information for the registration. And I'm not the only one, other project's domains expired in the last week or so, and all the sites have been down for 2 days or more. I'm glad everyone’s really on top of things. At least I was able to get my site back up and running.

In other news, there is a presidential election in Iran on Friday and the moderate reformist candidates are doing well in the polls. After Friday there will be a run-off election with the top two candidates, according to Iranian law the president must receive more than 50% of the vote to win. Of course it remains to be seen if the new president can be anymore effective at instituting actual reforms than the current president Mohammad Khatami because of the tight control of the hard-line Guardian Council, dominated by six unelected clerics and six judges. This article about women protesting gender discrimination made me very proud of these courageous women and feel incredibly blessed to have been born in the US, where I am free to rail against my government, vote, and protest (at least for now.) I realize most people in the US aren’t paying any attention to this, even if they know it is going on, but this election is very important and how the US and Guardian Council react to the results is even more important. Will the new president continue the pledge to not produce highly-enriched uranium for use in nuclear weapons? What will the US do if he doesn’t? If the winner is Rafsanjani, who has made overtures to the West and the US in the past, continue to reach out? What will the US do if he does? For my money the best way to help stabilize the region is to work towards some sort of positive engagement with the strongest guy on the block-Iran. But I’m not in charge.

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