Kiwis at the EPA and other happenings...

So I went to a three hour (!) meeting over at the EPA this morning to get a semi briefing on the EPA's Allowance Tracking System for sulfur dioxide emissions (yay for lowering the occurance of acid rain) and the upcoming Emission-Allowance Tracking System (EATS) which will be a highly customizeable program that can be used by pretty much anyone around the world to manage their emissions in a large number of areas. ERT is looking into using EATS with water quality management. The New Zealand Government is working to implement their own emission and allowance tracking systems for Kyoto, so they swung by the EPA to talk about the EPA's experience with ATS, which has been running for 10 years, and to learn more about EATS as they work to develop their own allowance registry system (or modify EATS for their use). The meeting was reasonably interesting, but definitely covered more background on things unrelated to what I'm going to be working on at ERT; still it was pretty interesting. And New Zealanders (kiwis) have crazy cool accents - it's largely Australian, but with subtle British undertones - very cool.

I spent the rest of the day reading background materials (largely for the GHG Neural Conference project) - I'm going to be working on this project with Deanna who's leaving tomorrow for a week in Stockholm where she'll be attending a conference on "Industrial Ecology for a Sustainable Future", so we talked a little to get me up to speed so I can get some work done without here. I'm actually getting pretty interested in this project, so it will be fun to dive in next week.

So I had ramen for the first time last night. "Oriental" flavored Ramen and zuccinni - it was actually pretty good. Tonight was scrambled eggs and carrots with an orange brown-sugar sauce. Needless to say I rely on Sa'am's ingenuity to survive in this delightfully humid climate (and yet I know it's not even bad yet). I heard a funny rumor today that the British government (at least at one point) gave "tropical climate" bonuses to it's staff based in DC b/c of the summer weather...such fun. My gratitude to Willis Haviland Carrier for inventing the electric air conditioner knows no bounds.

So Friday morning is the tour of the Capital and tomorrow I'm going to try sneaking into a Norwegian Embassy/EESI Symposium on "Meeting the Climate Challenge in the Arctic Region". Senator McCain's in the lineup of speakers, so I hope I'll manage getting in. Unfortunately registration was closed by the time I found out about it today and it's apparently overbooked at present...so we'll see what they say when I show up.

I'm reading The Confessor, a spy thriller which my dad gave me last year - very engaging and interesting. Nice pick padre.

Planning on hitting the sack early to try to get to the conference + I'm out of commentary, so I guess I'll end here.