Cooking up a good ole Friday

Work is still chugging along and today was no different. Pinnacle of the day was when I went to go ask a gentleman a question that should have taken all but 5 minutes ended up turning into a two hour trip into three different offices. Made the day go really fast and the best part...payday!

On a good note to end the week there is a group called Envirofit International that is researching and building alternative cooking stoves for impoverished nations. Half of the worlds populations still cooks with traditional solid fuels (charcoal, wood, coal) with usually an open pit. These pits are usually within the dwelling causing the air inside the dwelling to be highly polluted and horrible for the health of those that live within that dwelling. Women are at high risk for health problems as they are the ones tending the cooking and chores within the dwelling.
The group hopes to provide a new more efficient and healthy stove in which to cook on. I give the group so much credit for doing case studies with these women to see what they would prefer to use, down to the color of the stove. I hope that this has a huge impact on the health and the lives of these people. More grassroots improvements like these can seem small but make huge strides!

Marathons and Martin Luther King Jr.

The 2008 Standard Chartered Dubai marathon was last Friday and it featured the top marathoner in the world, Haile Gebrselassi. Geb (as he is affectionately known) was trying to break his world record in the marathon and become the first person to run a sub 2:04 marathon. For those of you keeping score at home, that's slightly faster than a 4:45 mile repeated 26 times. I know I have probably not run 26 1-mile repeats in my life that average out to 4:45, let alone in one race. The speed at which all top marathoners run at is simply staggering.

In several articles though, Geb may skip the Beijing Olympics due to the pollution and heat. The heat part I don't buy, but he does have a breathing problem which has flared in the past in big races (see London '06). It would be a shame to not have the worlds best marathoner compete on the worlds stage. The Americans are sending a decent delegation Ryan Hall leading the way and with a bit of a chip on their shoulders, a friend up in the sky...Peace be with you Ryan!

Today is MLK day and on my run today I had a little bit of a thought to the man for which most mark on their calendar as a day off. I am one of those till I was noticing the bickering going on between Obama and Clinton, Jena, LA having protests, and the constant barrage from the media of White voter this, Black politics that. We as a nation have come a long since the death of Martin Luther King, but when are we, as a nation, going to finally rid ourselves of labels. Why does the media continually justify the need to label everything with color? Why are our "supposed" best candidates for the president of this country are bowing down to the pressure to turn this into a race/sex smearfest? Grow up! If you want my vote, drop the color/sex issues and convince me that you are the best person for the job.

From many conversations with friends from Grad school who have come from Kenya and Ghana, in their opinion racism in the US is a joke. The stories I heard are much to gruesome to repeat on here and in now way I am not belittling the struggles that the people of this country have, are, and will face. The atrocities are equal in many regards, except the time frame. In all honesty though we have it pretty good here, just ask a person about the violence in Sudan, Kenya, or the Congo...they go where is that??? So lets grow up, drop the race card and start helping others see that all people deserve to be treated equal, no matter what the color of their skin. Ok...I'm done....hope you all had a great weekend :-)